Page - 39 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

39The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces Despite fluctuations, there was a significant amount of economic prosperi- ty, especially in the golden age of Hungarian mining—the only important branch of industry in a predominantly agrarian country—between the four- teenth and sixteenth centuries. The volume of silver production, concentrated around Banská Štiavnica, was the greatest on the European continent (to- gether with the Erzgebirge and Kutná Hora, about twenty-five to thirty per- cent), and became somewhat eclipsed only after the cultivation of the fields discovered in Potosí in the New World started in 1545. Gold was also found near Kremnica in the early fourteenth century, and it is estimated that in the ensu- ing period the region supplied eighty percent of the European output and one- third of the total global gold yield. In better times—like under the Angevins, or Matthias Corvinus (1443–90, r.1458–90)—the royal monopoly on the purchase of precious metals and coinage, and the resulting community of interest be- tween the burgher elite of the towns and the court, favored urban growth, as did the attractiveness of the mines (including, in this case, especially those of copper, around Banská Bystrica) for wealthy investors like the Fuggers of Augs- burg and their local allies, the aristocratic Thurzó family. The region survived the tripartite division of the kingdom after the 1526 Battle of Mohács in relative economic health, but once the Fifteen Years’ War (1591/93–1606) had thrown the economy of the country into disarray, the mining towns suffered, too, and periods of growth alternated with those of decline. Yet, centuries of relatively steady accumulation bred an appetite, and cre- ated the means, for cultural consumption and recognition for the value of good education among the well-to-do burghers that were not stamped out by more or less severe recessions. Studies of last wills and inventories4 have revealed the dwellers of especially Banská Štiavnica, Banská Bystrica, and Kremnica to have been eager collectors of art objects and books. Between 1550 and 1750, 2,808 paintings were held in 138 collections, the largest of them boasting as many as 146, and the owners including not only prominent burghers (among whom the mining entrepreneurs or Waldbürger deserve special mention) and officials but also priests, teachers, and even some artisans. Though the regional centers of book printing lay elsewhere—mainly in Bratislava, Trnava (Nagy- szombat, Tyrnavia, Tyrnau), and Košice (Kassa, Cassovia, Kaschau)—many households in the mining towns contained quite impressive private libraries. For Banská Štiavnica in the sixteenth century, twenty-four inventories list a 4 The overview below follows Viliam Čičaj, “Stredoslovenské meštianstvo a výtvarné umenie v období neskorého feudalizmu,” in Marsina, Banské mestá, 249–60; Čičaj, Bányavárosi könyvkultúra a xvii–xviii. században (Besztercebánya, Körmöcbánya, Selmecbánya) (Szeged: n.p., 1993).