Symbols of Authority: Obelisks, Hieroglyphs, and Catholic Universalism in Baroque Rome

Through an interdisciplinary study of the work of Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), the authors investigate the relationship between the cultural policies of the Roman Curia, the Jesuit order, religious diversity, and the aesthetic–spatial configuration of Rome during the early modern age. This paper shares in-depth observations of the recovery of ancient culture and its reworking in a post-reformist Christian age through architectural and spatial elements adopted to endorse the continuity of the ancient past and the Catholic reformistic universalistic aspirations. In this context, Kircher worked to decipher hieroglyphics on obelisks of the Imperial age but from Egyptian times. These defined a specific topography of space as a visual convergence of points: an urban geography of sacral and historical–political value and a connection with the memories of the Roman Empire and the most ancient religions of the ancient times.