Magnes sive de Arte Magnetica
Kircher collected forty-three of these and combined them with observations from a network of other scholars including Mersenne to produce three tables and two lists with a total of 518 values.
[4] Magnes contained the first response by a Jesuit to the arguments of some heliocentrists who held that magnetism proved the Copernican model of the universe.
[7] Kircher was aware that he was the first scholar to mount a critical assault on the heliocentric theory that the Church had condemned as heretical.
[8][7] Kircher also rejected Kepler's view that the Sun created a magnetic force that caused the planets to rotate around it.
[7][9] To disprove the idea put forward by Gilbert that the entire Earth was a magnet, Kircher attempted to calculate the force it would exert and the weight it could move if it were so.
He likewise argued that if the Earth were a magnet then all the iron on its surface, even in mountains, would be pulled into itself and could not remain where anyone could find it.
Kircher found this unsatisfactory: how could a single, consistent magnetic force emanating from the Sun explain the different motions of the planets, with their varying speeds and trajectories?
[11][1]: 265–6 While Magnes is noted today primarily for its arguments against Copernicanism, the work addressed a wide variety of different phenomena, including some that have no relationship to the modern scientific understanding of magnetism.
[18] A lodestone on the eagle's breast carries the dedication to Emperor Ferdinand III and a banner above the eagle's head carries the Latin motto Regna Quis Adiunxit Regnis Nova Sceptra Coronis ("He has added kingdoms to kingdoms and new sceptres to crowns").
A second banner curling around its feet carries the Latin pun Et Boreae Et Austri-Acus (""Needle of the north and south - 'austriacus' also meaning 'Austrian').
Fourteen of these are depicted, with theology at the top, accompanied by philosophy, physics, poetry, rhetoric, cosmography, mechanics, perspective, music, natural magic, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic and geography, linked by a golden chain.
[5]: 23 [19] Weaving between these emblems was a banner bearing the motto 'omnia nodis arcanis connexa quiescunt' ('all things are at rest, connected by secret knots').
Among Jesuit scholars, Leonardo Garzoni wrote Trattati della Calamita ('Treatise on the Lodestone') (around 1580) which described the double polarity of magnets.
Magnetism was an important theme in Kircher's 1664 work Mundus Subterraneus as well as his 1667 book Magneticum Naturae Regnum.
