Page - 37 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

© PER PIPPIN ASPAAS AND LÁSZLÓ KONTLER, ����  |  doi:10.1163/9789004416833_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. Chapter 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 1 A Regional Life World Almost in the geometric center of present-day Slovakia, nestled among the green hills south of the majestic peaks of the Tatra Mountains, scattered along the valley of the winding Hron (Granus, Garam) River, seven towns arose un- der the sovereignty of the kings of Hungary from the eleventh century onward. In the fifteenth century, they became collectively known as “the mining towns of Lower Hungary,” an appellation based on their geographic position as com- pared to the Spiš (Szepes, Scepusium, Zips) mining region from the perspec- tive of Vienna and Bratislava (Pozsony, Posonium, Pressburg), the seats of the imperial and royal governmental offices of Hungary in the early modern period.1 The protagonist of this book was born just outside one of these seven towns, Banská Štiavnica, in the village of Štiavnické Bane (Szélakna, Wind- schacht), on May 15, 1720 and baptized at the Catholic parish church as Maximilianus Rudolphus Höll.2 1 Somewhat confusingly, the lands that now comprise Slovakia as a whole are, up to 1918, often referred to as “Upper Hungary” (or “Upper Region”: Felvidék), given their overall position in the Kingdom of Hungary. The seven towns are, besides Banská Štiavnica, already mentioned, Pukanec (Bakabánya, Baka-Banya, Pukkhanz); Banská Bystrica (Besztercebánya, Neusolium, Neusohl); Banská Belá (Bélabánya, Bela-Banya, Dilln); Kremnica (Körmöcbánya, Cremnici- um, Kremnitz); L’ubietová (Libetbánya, Libetho-Banya, Libethen); and Nová Baňa (Újbánya, Uj-Banya, Königsberg). The overview in the next few paragraphs is based on the following works. Kálmán Demkó, A felső-magyarországi városok életéről a xv–xvii. században (Buda- pest: Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, 1890); Oszkár Paulinyi, “Tulajdon és társadalom a Garam-vidéki bányavárosokban,” Történelmi Szemle 5, no. 2 (1962): 173–88; Richard Marsina, ed., Banské mestá na Slovensku (Žiar nad Hronom: Okresný národný výbor, 1990); Gábor Máté, “Az alső-magyarországi bányavárosok etnikai képének történeti és földrajzi vizsgálata,” Földrajzi Értesítő 56, nos. 3–4 (2007): 181–204. Bratislava became the main administrative cen- ter of the residual kingdom as a result of the fall of the medieval capital Buda to the Otto- mans in 1541. 2 The change of the orthography of the name has been the subject of some speculation. In of- ficial records of the Society of Jesus, for several years after his entering the order Hell appears as “Höll,” and he even published his first works under this name in the 1740s and early 1750s. His biographer surmised that the motivation was to avoid association with the German word “Hölle” (hell)—certainly bizarre for a Jesuit father. Cf. Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 1:9. While there is