Athanasius Kircher's Quadrivium

A Landmark Translation of the Original Renaissance Quadrivium Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) was the last great Renaissance polymath—and one of the first global scholars. In the mid-1600s, he published his monumental three-volume work, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, which aimed to decode the ancient world’s symbolic language. This volume contains Kircher’s exploration of the Quadrivium: Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy—the four liberal arts of classical education. Drawing on ancient sources from Pythagoras to Plato, Kircher weaves a cosmological vision in which number, form, sound, and the stars are reflections of divine harmony. Presented here for the first time in English translation, this edition restores Kircher’s original illustrations and offering modern readers a rare glimpse into the esoteric science and sacred mathematics of the 17th century.