Page - 86 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 186 their popularization, even by weaving topics from physics and astronomy in his applauded funeral orations.150 In any case, the complex interaction of Jesu- its with their environment in Cluj thus included inter-denominational knowl- edge exchange. As Hell then goes on to explain, at that time I already had a desire to do some research about this secret, but as for the time being I wanted to continue my pursuits in electricity, so that I could examine in these electric phenomena the Newtonian theory, and after various experiments I had come so far as to conclude that magnetic phe- nomena are nothing else than a certain degree of motion of electric mat- ter; I postponed the exploration of the secrets of the artificial steel mag- net, until I have fully developed my theory of electricity —but then, though he had advanced considerably in this pursuit, his call to leave Cluj in the autumn of 1755 “interrupted all of my inquiries, as I had to dedicate myself fully to astronomy.”151 It is noteworthy, however, that Hell’s ap- parent enthusiasm about electricity also led him to assign to it a role in caus- ing, besides magnetism, another phenomenon that was a long-term subject of his interests: northern lights. As he wrote a few years later, already as director of the Viennese university observatory, to his Trnava colleague Franz Weiss: Honorable Father Colleague in Christ! Many thanks for the observation and elegant drawing of the aurora borealis that was observed in Tyrnavia [Trnava]. Your observation is in harmony with ours in most aspects, for here in Vienna, too, those tiny stripes as well as the ray that stretched out toward the north from the first pyramid were observed. However, since I personally observed the phenomenon somewhat later, I failed to see both the ray and those numerous stripes. Nor did I catch sight of those electric bundles to the left of the two northern rays because there was too much moisture in the atmosphere. I did observe, however, the three major beams. As for the cloud above the rays, I for my part could not distinguish it from here, but because this phenomenon is an electric phenomenon, I told my guests during the observation itself that there was bound to be 150 Katalin Németh S., “Magyar orátor a xviii. században: Verestói György,” Irodalomtörténet 73, no. 4 (1984): 877–80; Farkas Wellmann Éva, Irodalom és közönsége a xviii. században: Verestói György munkássága (Budapest: Gondolat Kiadó, 2013); Réka Lengyel, “‘A vi- lágosság a tudomány’: A felvilágosodás mint módszer Verestói György halotti beszédben,” in A felvilágosodás előzményei Erdélyben és Magyarországon (1650–1750), ed. Mihály Balázs and István Bartók (Szeged: szte Magyar Irodalmi Tanszék, 2016), 315–27, here 321–25. 151 Hell, Anleitung, 13.