Page - 64 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 164 the Kingdom of Hungary, Trnava [1739–49]) was long considered, mainly in accounts by Piarist and Protestant authors, a piece of epigonism (or worse),73 but today, together with his history of the University of Trnava (1737), it is ap- preciated as a respectable anticipation in methods and approach of the great Hungarian Jesuit historical school later in the century.74 Some of Hell’s fellow novices in Trenčín are even more interesting. They include Adam František (Franz) Kollár (1718–83), who was in the second year of his novitiate when Hell was admitted.75 Kollár was to play an important part in the shaping, advocacy, and implementation of Theresan enlightened reform policies.76 Like Kazy, he was also a native of northern Hungary and may have been Hell’s schoolmate in the gymnasium of Banská Bystrica; his studies in philosophy at the University of Vienna in 1741–43 (and the year he spent there studying Hebrew in 1745) also partially overlapped with those of Hell.77 He also began the curriculum in the- ology but left the Society of Jesus in 1748. In that year, his long-standing career at the Imperial and Royal Court Library began as a scribe, culminating in 1773 with his appointment as chief librarian (succeeding Van Swieten, and preced- ing the latter’s son, Gottfried [1733–1803]). This appointment earned him the title of court councilor, in which capacity he sat on the important Studien- Hofkommission (court committee for science and education), responsible for the general overhaul of the education system in the Habsburg monarchy. It was also the body that adjudicated on Hell’s plan for a Viennese academy of sciences in 1773–75.78 Kollár, who had a prodigious talent for ancient and 73 Specifically, Kazy was charged with following too closely the work of Sámuel Timon (1675–1736), who in the 1720s was the rector of the Jesuit college in Cluj, another signifi- cant venue in the early career of Hell. See, e.g., Bálint Hóman, “Tudományos történetírá- sunk megalapítása a xviii. században,” in Hóman, Történetírás és forráskritika (Budapest: Magyar Történelmi Társulat, 1938), 353–80, here 367–68. 74 Elréd Borián, “A történetíró jezsuita testvérek: Kazy Ferenc és Kazy János újraértékelése,” Az Egyetemi Könyvtár Évkönyvei 9 (1999): 45–64. The chief figures of Jesuit historical schol- arship in eighteenth-century Hungary were István Kaprinai (1714–85), György Pray (1723– 1801), and István Katona (1732–1811), all of whom were later interlocutors for Hell in his studies of early Hungarian history. 75 Lukács, Catalogi personarum, 8:332. 76 On Kollár, besides the slender volume of Jan Tibenský, Slovenský Sokrates: Život a dielo Adama Františka Kollára (Bratislava: Tatran, 1983), published in Hungarian as A királynő könyvtárosa: Adam František Kollár élete és művei (Budapest: Madách, 1985), the most up-to-date and valuable piece of academic literature is a Hungarian edition of his select- ed correspondence, with the editor’s introduction, István Soós, ed., Kollár Ádám Ferenc levelezése (Budapest: Universitas Kiadó, 2000). 77 Lukács, Catalogi personarum, 8:528, 589, 716. 78 See below, 345–51.