Page - 110 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 2110 otherwise commendable and forward-looking decision to issue the annual in German proved somewhat counterproductive from the point of view of the chances of dissemination, if we are to judge on the basis of a comment that the first volume received in the Journal des Sçavans. The author of the review re- joiced that the international “taste” for calculating the astronomical tables had resulted in a new publication, but at the end of a rather detailed account add- ed that “we regret to see it printed in a language so little known in France, in Italy, in England, where astronomy is yet keenly cultivated.”60 To a certain ex- tent, the reviewer’s words may well have been just one of the many eighteenth- century instances of French condescension toward other languages and cul- tures. Still, Bode’s decision to promote scientific culture in the vernacular seems to have defeated the purpose of circulation, and the work of foremost German astronomers may have continued to be noted in France and Britain despite the Astronomisches Jahrbuch. At the same time, the apparently obso- lete Latin of the Viennese Ephemerides was still eligible as a lingua franca in the enlightened respublica astronomica. Besides expediency, Hell had other compelling reasons for choosing Latin. His being a member of a Catholic reli- gious order was only one of them. As discussed in Chapter 1, Hell was also a Hungarus: a member of a caste of learned men in the multi-ethnic eastern half of the Habsburg monarchy, who, regardless of their personal ethnic back- ground, harbored a strong sense of allegiance to the cultural traditions of the old Kingdom of Hungary, and—especially in the absence of improved vernac- ular languages—habitually resorted to Latin as their preferred medium of communication.61 The difference between the Ephemerides on the one hand and the Connois- sance des temps and the Nautical Almanac on the other was of a different na- ture. The latter two confined themselves, besides the astronomical tables and the necessary commentary and explanations, to publishing (in the case of the former, relatively extensive, while in the case of the latter rather scarce) mis- cellaneous additional material of astronomical interest, and their maintaining astronomischen Jahrbüchern und Fachzeitschriften 1755–1830” (Mag. Phil. diss., Univer- sity of Vienna, 2009), 31–37. 60 JS (March 1775): 173. 61 Not merely a specialty of the educated elite, Latin was even spoken by soldiers, mer- chants, and other ordinary people in eighteenth-century Hungary. István Tóth, Literacy and Written Culture in Early Modern Central Europe (Budapest: Central European Univer- sity Press, 2000), esp. 130–45. For a comprehensive bibliography, see Gábor Almási, “Latin and the Language Question in Hungary (1700–1844): A Survey of Hungarian Secondary Literature (Parts 1 and 2),” Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert und Österreich 28 (2014): 211–319 and 30 (2016): 237–90.