Page - 38 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 138 The tradition of the mining of copper and precious metals in the region goes back to the ancient Celts, and although continuity is hard to establish, the Slavic inhabitants of the area also seem to have cultivated the mines well be- fore their incorporation into the Kingdom of Hungary. From the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, a relatively regular influx of Germans from Thuringia, Tyrol, Saxony, and Northern Bohemia, encouraged by monarchs, not only added to the region’s ethnic diversity; the migrants also brought with them new expertise, as well as experience in and triggers to urban autonomy. Royal control via appointed officials (comites et urburarii) was strong, espe- cially in the wealthier and more productive towns. The region’s rugged topog- raphy also enabled the towns to exist as “life capsules” and to resist the influ- ence of nobles, initially giving protection in times of war or political instability. The first charters of privileges—granting exemption from jurisdiction by the nobility that dominated the county administration, and recognizing the rights to self-government of the local entrepreneurial elite—were conferred on Ban- ská Štiavnica between 1238 and 1255 and on Banská Bystrica in 1255. The other towns achieved the same during the decades of prosperity enjoyed under Hun- gary’s fourteenth-century Angevin rulers.3 These urban communities were bound to one another by geographic proximity, similar histories of settlement and incorporation as autonomous entities, similar legal provisions and prac- tices (the code of Banská Štiavnica was adopted more or less everywhere in the area), and shared interests in both business and self-defense. This resulted in the rise of a league among the seven towns, superficially resembling more fa- mous precedents like the Hanseatic League or the league of the Rhineland towns, and more closely others much nearer, like the league of the Spiš towns or those of northeastern Hungary. The league was usually an efficient tool of asserting the interests of the towns at diets, though less a means of resisting military harassment during the conflicts of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether by Ottoman forces or the troops of Transylvanian princes, or occasionally the troops of the Habsburg rulers who inherited the Hungarian crown in 1526. no conclusive evidence for this, it may be added that in contemporary references in docu- ments of the Imperial Court Chamber, and elsewhere to his father and brother, the forms “Höll” and “Hell” alternate. Cf. Jenő Faller, A magyar bányagépesítés úttörői a xviii. század- ban: Hell Máté Kornél és Hell József Károly főgépmesterek élete és munkássága (Budapest: Aka- démiai Kiadó, 1953), 18–19, 34. Below, Maximilian will be consistently referred to as Hell, as he used it in most of his mature publications, and other family members in the original form as Höll. 3 See Boglárka Weisz, “Mining Town Privileges in Angevin Hungary,” Hungarian Historical Re- view 2, no. 2 (2013): 288–312.