From 1618 to 1620, Kircher occupied himself with religious duties, spending the time largely in prayer. After 1620 he continued with the usual studies for the priesthood—philosophy and theology. He studied philosophy at Cologne and briefly taught at the Jesuit Colleges at Coblenz and Heiligenstadt. Along with these pursuits, Kircher took a special interest in languages and in mathematics, the foundation for all scientific work. He completed his studies in theology at Mainz and was ordained a priest in 1628.
Kircher was given ample opportunity to take courses, despite the troubled times resulting from the wars. In the year 1629, he was at Speyer where he expressed to his religious superior a preference for missionary work in China. Next he took an interest in Egyptian writing, hieroglyphics, which were not to be translated until many years later. Chaldean, Arabic and Samaritan were added to Kircher’s language studies. Then for a short period he was professor of ethics and mathematics at the University of Würzburg.
In 1618, when Kircher had entered the Jesuits, the Thirty Years’ War had broken out. Then, as in our own time, Germany was no place for serious studies. Kircher, after he became a priest, spent considerable time in France where the organization of a powerful central government was being undertaken by Richelieu. The Cardinal was a patron of the arts, founding the French Academy. It is likely that word of Kircher’s learning reached Richelieu, for Kircher visited several of the colleges and universities in the south of France, stopping at Lyons and later at Avignon. Kircher continued all the while his remarkable studies, and began to write, publishing his first book in 1630.
Soon the fame of Kircher attracted the attention of the highest ecclesiastical and educational authorities. Pope Urban VIII, who had struggled in vain to prevent the Thirty Years’ War, and Francesco Cardinal Barberini (nephew of Pope Urban), summoned Kircher to Rome late in 1633. Just before the word to come to Rome reached him, he was invited to Vienna by the Emperor Ferdinand. Kircher started for Austria by boat from a French port but was shipwrecked and the order to report to Rome reached him after his rescue.
The invitation to come to Rome could not be refused. But there is every reason to believe that Kircher was delighted to have the opportunity of working in Rome under such high auspices. The civil situation was somewhat more stable in Rome than in Germany. Furthermore Rome was the intellectual center as well as focal point of much political maneuvering. Ambassadors and special agents representing Richelieu of France, the King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany and many of the other European powers, great and small, were constantly coming and going, seeking to increase the power of the state they represented and their own prestige as well. The heads of all the religious orders lived in Rome and hence it was the headquarters for knowledge of new developments in science and of news from the lands being explored in America and in the Far East.
Kircher stood apart from these struggles for political, religious and educational power. As a Jesuit he had put aside prospects of ecclesiastical advancement. He was content with his studies, his teaching and his inventions. But others were not content to leave him in peace.
At the request of Cardinal Barberini, Kircher was made professor of mathematics at the Roman College which was then popular with the young Roman nobility and the learned from all over the world. While teaching, Kircher continued his work in the Oriental languages and mathematics and also branched out into the natural sciences.
Kircher was a little man of boundless energy and once interested in a problem was never content till he knew all the facts, from personal investigation if possible, and had written an exhaustive tome on the subject. He made many field trips to test theories and ideas by practical experience. An active exponent of experimental science, Kircher made important contributions to human knowledge, though some of his books contained not a little error, and even some nonsense.
Kircher’s work with magic lanterns and his observations on the magic shadow art-science were released to the educated world in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae—“The Great Art of Light and Shadow”—published at Rome in 1646. Kircher defined his “Great Art” as “the faculty by which we make and exhibit with light and shadow the wonders of things in nature.” That applies to living pictures today as it did in the 17th Century. Even the sound of the modern motion pictures is recorded and reproduced through light and shadow action.
No clue is given by Kircher to the exact date he invented the magic projection lantern. But it was probably not long before he finished the book in 1644 or 1645. Kircher dedicated his thick quarto volume, which was handsomely published by Herman Scheus at the press of Ludovici Grignani in Rome, to Archduke Ferdinand III, the Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia and King of the Romans. Hence, knowledge of the screen first appeared in print under very distinguished patronage.