Page - 50 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 150 Following the model of the similar school in Jáchymov (Sankt Joachimsthal) in Bohemia, founded in 1716, it offered a two-year curriculum for eight students, focusing on applied mathematics and physics (but, given the intricate legal affairs involved in the mining industry, also law) and supported by a special- ized library of up-to-date literature on engineering and natural knowledge. Instruction was free of charge and open to Catholics and Protestants alike, but admission was conditional on passing an exam in arithmetic; students from a poor background received scholarships. This institution was upgraded to a “practical training school” (Praktische Lehrschule) in 1763—with a course of studies in which, despite the name, the emphasis on theoretical background was to be enhanced—until in the year 1770 it was renamed again, to become a mining academy (Bergbauakademie) with a curriculum defined in the Systema Academiae Montanisticae (System [of studies] of the Mining Academy) ex- tended to three years. Some assessments of the impact of the school, especially in the early years when most of the training was done by the mining officers who were all too busy in their main job, are skeptical.38 However, the institution already boast- ed some outstanding faculty members in this period, such as Sámuel Mikoviny (1698/1700–50), the renowned mathematician, engineer, and cartographer.39 Mikoviny is generally regarded as the founder and main theoretical fountain- head of scientific cartography in Hungary, whose formidable legacy in this field—thirty-nine county and district maps40—is perhaps thanks to the unique combination of training in engraving as well as mathematics, astrono- my, and land surveying at the universities of Nuremberg, Altdorf, and Jena, and subsequently privately in Vienna. It has been conjectured that Mikoviny, be- sides serving in times of war as an army officer for purposes of military engi- neering, and from 1735 as supervisor of the engineering sector of the mines as výročie Banskej a lesníckej akadémie v Banskej Štiavnici: Jej význam pre vývoj montánneho školstva v Rakúsko–Uhorsku, 1762–1919/250. Jubiläum der Berg- und Forstakademie in Schemnitz; Ihre Bedeutung für die Entfaltung des höheren Montanschulwesens in Öster- reich-Ungarn, 1762–1919 (Košice: Banská agentúra, 2012), 12–53. 38 János Mihalovits, A selmeci bányászati akadémia alapítása és fejlődése 1846-ig (Budapest: József Nádor Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem, 1938), 3. 39 On Mikoviny, see Enikő Török, Mikoviny Sámuel (Budapest: Magyar Országos Levéltár, 2011). 40 These maps accompanied the five volumes of the Notitia Hungariae novae historico- geographica (1735–49) by Mikoviny’s master, polymath Mátej Bel or Mátyás Bél (1684– 1749). On Bél, Mikoviny, and the beginnings of Landeskunde (honismeret—roughly, local history, literally “science of the fatherland”) in Hungary, see Zsolt Török, Bél Mátyás, Mikoviny Sámuel és a honismereti iskola (Budapest: Országos Pedagógiai Könyvtár és Múzeum, 2003).