Page - 90 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 190 later in the century as a “constitution”), and a cultural heritage that was multi- ethnic, multi-confessional, and expressed chiefly in the Latin language (also the language of public affairs and political communication until 1844). “Lingua Slavus, natione Hungarus, eruditione Germanus”—I am Slav (Slovak) by (mother) tongue, Hungarus by nation, German by erudition: this is how the prototype of this kind of “patriot,” the Lutheran polymath Matej/Mátyás/Mat- thias Bel/Bél (1684–1749), explained his identity. The supranational Hungarus consciousness, soon to be challenged by the rise of linguistic nationalism, was compatible both with the cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment—in a way, given its strong anchorage in the home-grown traditions of secondary and higher education, the Hungarus elite also understood itself as a local Republic of Letters marked by emulation as well as tolerance—and the global horizons of the Society of Jesus.163 As it was also conducive to the cultivation of dialogue and the maintenance of equilibrium among diverse stakeholders and leading voices in the kingdom, nor was Hungarus patriotism antithetical to the views of the architects of Theresan reform in the imperial capital. Hell’s pursuit of the progress of his “fatherland” and the glory of God in the periphery of the Austrian province barely lasted three years. Before the 1755– 56 academic year had started, he was called back to its center, but this time principally as a servant of the state rather than God: he was appointed as impe- rial and royal astronomer at the helm of the newly established Viennese uni- versity observatory. 163 Some scholars have attributed the rise of the concept of Hungarus to the philosophy of history worked out by Hungarian Jesuits and, more generally, to the “national baroque”; others to the patriotism of the Slovak and German Lutheran professionals; still others stress that, from the mid-eighteenth century, the Enlightenment notion of humanity (Humanität/Menschenliebe) was crucial to it. See Gyula Szekfü, Magyar történet (Buda- pest: Királyi Magyar Egyetemi Nyomda, 1935), 4:378–79; Andor Tarnai, Extra Hungariam non est vita […] (Egy szállóige történetéhez) (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1969); http:// mek.niif.hu/05400/05453/05453.htm (accessed April 12, 2019), esp. 99–100; Moritz Csáky, “Die Hungarus-Konzeption,” in Ungarn und Österreich unter Maria Theresia und Joseph ii, ed. Anna Maria Drabek, Richard G. Plaschka, and Adam Wandruszka (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1982), 71–89; István Fried, “A hungarus- tudat kérdőjelei,” in A közép-európai szöveguniverzum (Budapest: Lucidus, 2002), 47–68; Ambrus Miskolczy, “A ‘hungarus alternatíva’: Példák és ellenpéldák,” Regio 20, no. 2 (2009): 3–46; Miskolczy, “‘Hungarus Consciousness’ in the Age of Early Nationalism,” in Latin at the Crossroads of Identity: The Evolution of Linguistic Identity in the Kingdom of Hungary, ed. Gábor Almási and Lav Šubarić (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 64–94.