Associate Professor Monica Azzolini
University of Bologna
Reimagining Hell: Life and Providence in the Underworld in Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus
Please register for the event here.
When:
Wednesday, October 29, 16:15-17:45
Where:
VUB Main Campus Etterbeek
Pleinlaan 2
1050 Elsene
Raadzaal C2.07a
*Free of charge*
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Professor Cornelis J. Schilt invite you to a lecture by Associate Professor Monica Azzolini (University of Bologna), entitled “Reimagining Hell: Life and Providence in the Underworld in Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus“. This lecture is part of the ERC lecture series ‘Knowledge in International Perspective’ (KIIP).
Contact: nicolo.cantoni@vub.be and demetrios.paraschos@vub.be
Associate Professor Monica Azzolini: From Giotto’s and Bosch’s Last Judgments to Dante’s Inferno and Jan Brueghel the Younger’s Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl, pre-modern Western culture consistently reflected a deep-seated fear of the underground. Crucially, however, the descent into the nether regions was not solely a perilous ordeal; it was also presented as a journey of profound instruction and transformation. This paper explores Athanasius Kircher’s Mundus subterraneus—arguably the most comprehensive treatment of the underworld in Western culture—to reveal how Jesuit theology and cosmology merged to forge a novel vision: an underworld teeming with life, resources, and possibilities, where God’s Providence was as active below the surface as it was above.
About Associate Professor Monica Azzolini
Monica Azzolini is an Associate Professor in the History of Science at the University of Bologna, where she researches early modern science, medicine, and the environment, with a primary focus on Italy and a growing interest in transnational networks. After earning her degree from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, she completed both her MPhil and PhD at the University of Cambridge. She has held teaching positions at the University of Cambridge (U.K.), the University of Washington (U.S.A.), the University of New South Wales (Australia), and the University of Edinburgh (U.K.), and her research has been supported by prestigious fellowships from Villa I Tatti – The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, the Warburg Institute in London, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University. Professor Azzolini has also published widely on Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical investigations, Renaissance astrology, and the culture of courtly science.
About Prof. Dr. Cornelis J. Schilt
Cornelis J. Schilt is a research professor in History and Philosophy of Knowledge at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specialising in Renaissance, early modern knowledge formation in general and the life and writings of Isaac Newton in particular. In 2022, he received a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. With it, he started the project VERITRACE in which he investigates the influence of ancient wisdom writings on the development of early modern natural philosophy.
