Page - 7 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

7Introduction “scalar games”8—“trickster travels,” one might say9—pursued by Hell among these poles highlights hitherto unappreciated dimensions of the dynamics of science, state-building, Enlightenment, and Catholicism in the Habsburg mon- archy and beyond, in a period of dramatic transformations. Before delving into the depths of this saga, the remainder of this introduc- tion briefly examines the relevance to our subject of recent developments in Enlightenment studies, especially with regard to their integration with the study of Catholicism (the literature on the “Catholic Enlightenment”), includ- ing the Jesuit order and Jesuit science, and with the processes of state-building and cultural realignment known as enlightened absolutism. Next, while this is not a biography, the “life” of an individual is central to its argument to an ex- tent that it is pertinent to ask how the present account may benefit from the recent emergence of a new style of historical biography. The engagement with both of these topics is not meant to be exhaustive: rather, it is confined to the aspects that seem relevant to the present undertaking. 1 Enlightenment(s) It is helpful to continue by turning to yet another appreciation of Hell, this time cited from a piece of modern scholarship on the Society of Jesus in the Eastern European periphery: “While Hell’s academic and scientific accom- plishments place him firmly within the Enlightenment, he was also a product of the late Counter-Reformation culture of Hungary and one of several Jesuits who became identified with the development of Hungarian national consciousness.”10 Hell is only one, and by no means a central, figure in this analysis of “the politics of religious pluralism in eighteenth-century Transylva- nia.” Nevertheless, this brief characterization raises interesting questions about the relationship that an eminent mid- to late eighteenth-century Jesuit scientist of Hell’s peculiar background may have had to the various aspects, strains, and manifestations of the Enlightenment, and to the budding move- ments of national awakening in Central Europe that both incorporated the in- tellectual agendas of the Enlightenment and arose in response to them. 8 Cf. Jacques Revel, ed., Jeux d’échelles: La micro-analyse à l’expérience (Paris: Gallimard- Seuil, 1996). 9 The expression is borrowed, of course, from Natalie Zemon Davis, Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between Worlds (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006). 10 Paul Shore, Jesuits and the Politics of Religious Pluralism in Eighteenth-Century Transylva- nia: Culture, Politics, and Religion, 1693–1773 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 105.