Page - 83 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

83The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces executed before he left for Vienna in 1755. According to some of the litera- ture,  the new building, including the observatory, was completed around 1759,  and on an engraving from that year the building with a small tower is indeed visible.138 In various further sources, two of Hell’s successors as profes- sors of mathematics in Cluj, Matthias Geiger (1720–1800) and Miklós Benkő (1723–1801), are described as prof[essor] mathes[eos], praef[ectus] Mus[aei] Mathem[athici] et Spec[ulae] astron[omicae] (professor of mathematics, direc- tor of the mathematical museum [i.e., laboratory] and the astronomical obser- vatory) in the periods 1755–57 and 1758–62 respectively.139 However, in the last year of his Cluj appointment, Hell’s titles already also included that of praefec- tus […] spec. mathematicae, although at that time there was as yet certainly no specula at all. The Cluj observatory is not mentioned in the numerous works of Lalande or Johann iii Bernoulli (1744–1807) that provide Europe-wide surveys of contemporary astronomy,140 let alone in Hell’s Ephemerides. Over two de- cades after leaving Cluj, Hell provided this account in a letter to Bernoulli: A fourth observatory, the construction of which was begun by me in Claudiopolis [Cluj] in Transylvania in the year 1753—I had laid down its very stable foundations by the year 1755, when I was called to Vienna— has remained unfinished until now. As of the year 1773, work on this building was about to be continued and brought to an end, if it were not for that fatal dissolution of my order, which brought this task in disarray.141 I had in fact an astronomer there, a father of our Society by the name Hartmann, professor of physics, whom I had furnished with a mobile, 138 Heinrich, Az első kolozsvári csillagda, 47. 139 Fischer, “Jesuiten-Mathematiker in der Deutschen Assistenz,” 170; http://jezsuita.hu/ nevtar/geiger-matyas/; http://jezsuita.hu/nevtar/benko-miklos/ (accessed April 12, 2019). 140 See, e.g., Lalande, Astronomie, 2nd ed., vols. 1–2 ( Paris: Veuve Desaint, 1771); Lalande, As- tronomie, 3rd ed., vols. 1–3 (Paris: Veuve Desaint, 1792); Johann iii Bernoulli, Receuil pour les astronomes, vols. 1–3 (Berlin: l’Auteur, 1771–76); Bernoulli, Lettres astronomiques où l’on donne une idée de l’état actuel de l’astronomie pratique dans plusieurs villes de l’Europe (Berlin: l’Auteur, 1771); Bernoulli, Lettres sur différens sujets, écrites pendant le cours d’un voyage par l’Allemagne, la Suisse, la France méridionale et l’Italie, 3 vols. (Berlin: G.J. Deck- er, 1777–79). 141 As a matter of fact, the dissolution of the Society of Jesus heavily affected the Cluj acade- my. It was to be a secular university, with faculties of law and medicine added to philoso- phy and theology faculties, under the new name of Collegium Regium Theresianum Clau- diopolitanum, where ex-Jesuits were retained, but leading roles were assigned to the Piarists (who had hitherto played little role in education in Transylvania). In 1784, Joseph ii applied the “one country, one university” principle (already implicit in the Ratio educa- tionis of 1777) by regarding—for this purpose—Hungary and Transylvania as a single country, and relegated the Cluj institution to the status of Lyceum Regium Academicum.