Page - 63 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

63The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces multi-talented Jesuit fathers on the Viennese academic and intellectual scene was Joseph Franz (Frantz [1704–76])—mathematician, astronomer, and physi- cist, but also a master of oriental cultures who in the early 1740s collected pre- cious coins and natural objects while traveling in Asia Minor and briefly served as director of the renowned school of languages in Pera, the Latin quarter of Istanbul.70 His published output covers areas ranging from electricity through paleontology and botany to philosophy, but he also wrote Godefridus Hiero- solymitanus (Gottfried of Jerusalem [1757]), a drama performed in Latin and French as well as Turkish at the Oriental Academy, of which—no doubt be- cause of the Pera experience—he was also appointed as the first director. In addition, he served as dean of the university’s faculty of philosophy from 1752 to 1759, and as tutor of the future emperor Joseph ii (1741–90, r.1765–90), who had him buried at his personal expense.71 Kéri Borgia and Franz have been singled out from a crowd of similar figures on account of their relationship—probable in the first and ascertained in the second case—to the young Maximilian Hell during his early years in Vienna. After a consideration of the general milieu that surrounded Hell in the towns of Upper Hungary and then in the Habsburg capital, it is pertinent to attempt to construct a gallery of possible interlocutors—professors, fellow students— in these environments. As noted above, the Jesuit houses in Banská Štiavnica, Banská Bystrica, and Levoča were relatively small establishments, but a few of Hell’s teachers and colleagues even there are known as authors of theological, historical, and literary works of minor significance.72 It was during his novi- tiate in Trenčín that he may have first encountered figures whose stature sur- passed the boundaries of the local. The rector of the domus probationis there in these years was Ferenc Kazy (Kazi [1695–1759]), whose three-volume Historia Regni Hungariae (History of világ határán: Fejezet a magyar felvilágosodás történetéből,” Századok 79–80, no. 1 (1945– 56): 85–137; Jolán M. Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története 1850-ig, rev. and ed. István Gazda (Budapest: Magyar Tudománytörténeti és Egészségtudományi Egyesület, 2016 [1973]), 180–88. A previous, Slovak version of this study was published as Dejiny fyziky na Sloven- sku do polovice 19. storočia (Bratislava: Veda, 1974). On Scherffer, see below, 68–69. 70 Do Paço, L’Orient à Vienne, 27. 71 Johann Steinmayr, “Die Geschichte der Universitätssternwarte Wien,” in Die Geschichte der Universitätssternwarte Wien: Dargestellt anhand ihrer Instrumente und eines Ty- poskripte von Johann Steinmayr, ed. Jürgen Hamel, Isolde Müller, and Thomas Posch, Acta Historica Astronomiae 38 (Frankfurt: Harri Deutsch Verlag, 2010), 169–201, here 177–78. Steinmayr (1890–1944) generally highlights the blooming of mathematical talent among the Jesuits of the Austrian province. 72 The source for this is the Jezsuita névtár; http://jezsuita.hu/nevtar/?l=J (accessed April 12, 2019), collated with data from Lukács, Catalogi personarum.