Page - 54 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 154 and related fields, which in turn may have revealed his special talents to his elders. The same discovery could have been made by a teacher, or indeed the local Jesuits themselves, who not only maintained a convent in Banská Štiavnica but also performed ordinary parish duties due to a lack of secular priests, and were thus a permanent presence in the everyday life of the urban community. In this sense, the Society of Jesus was no different from the mining chamber, the chief employer in the town. The relationship between the two entities went beyond such parallels: several documents show the mining chamber to have shown concern with the proper care of the souls of their workers by the Jesuits to whom this was entrusted, and a willingness to support the efforts of the Society with financial donations.48 The Hölls as both promi- nent figures in the mining sector and staunch Catholics may well have been brokers in this relationship. Interesting light is shed on this in a letter from the superior of the Banská Štiavnica residence, Father Anton Grueber (1701–46), to Queen Maria Theresa, probably in 1744, the year after Höll senior had died and when Grueber was appointed. Grueber began by reporting that the miners of the area “have humbly solicited us already for the second time to secure a place in Windschacht for the better worship of God and the special comfort of their souls, and to provide two fathers, the one proficient in the German and the other in the Slavic [i.e., Slovak] language” for this end. He went on to make the following recommendation: Now, as in consequence of the death of the former Kunstmeister Cornel Hell a shabby house, consisting of two very small and one somewhat big- ger room, belonging to the Chamber here, has become vacant, it would suit us very well because of its vicinity (it is just a few footsteps from our filial church of St. Joseph).49 48 mol, E 152 Acta Jesuitica, Irreg. Coll. Schemn. 13. t. 3–7. 49 šúba bš, hkg 2617, 35. On Grueber, who was himself also an ethnic German native of Banská Štiavnica, see the online compendium of Jesuits in Hungary based on the legacy of the eminent Hungarian Jesuit, László Szilas (1927–2012), Jezsuita névtár; http://jezsuita. hu/nevtar/grueber-antal/ (accessed April 12, 2019). Besides Szilas’s work, we have also used other collections of a prosopographical nature about Jesuits, according to the differ- ent angles from which they look at Jesuits for different purposes. These include Carlos Sommervogel’s (1834–1902) monumental Bibliothèque de la Compagnie de Jésus […] Bibli- ographie, 12 vols.(Brussels: Oscar Schepens, 1890–1932); László Lukács, Catalogi persona- rum et officiorum provinciae Austriae S.I., 9 vols. (Rome: Institutum Historicum S.I., 1994); and http://www.jesuitscience.net/ (accessed April 12, 2019), created as part of a PhD pro- ject at the University of Wuppertal by Dagmar Mrozik.