The Age of Pious Erudition: Kircher’s Critics in Context

Abstract

This essay argues that Kircher and his critics can best be understood in the context of a distinct epoch, “the age of pious erudition”, defined by the alliance of historical criticism and sacred history. It began at the turn of the seventeenth century when Joseph Scaliger and Isaac Casaubon applied the historicizing methods of classical philology to the study of ancient Judaism and the early Church, and it gave way a century later, when historical criticism belatedly revealed itself as a threat rather than a boon to Christian apologetics. Eventually, pious erudition brought about its own demise, but that was a cumulative process that unfolded over a century, rather than a dramatic rupture.