Page - 242 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5242 attenuation.102 Although in private correspondence Hell repeatedly expressed to Pray his reservations about de Guignes’s original thesis,103 to his mind the only consequence of his and Sajnovics’s findings for Pray’s analysis was the need to add Sámi to the Hun–Hungarian combination. He expressed his hope that Pray would do this in his forthcoming work, and offered to “share my argu- ments and the authors on the question with Your Reverend, so that you may turn them to your own use.”104 The same kind of “attenuation” was obviously the purpose of the additions extolling the beauty and the richness of the Sámi language, as a repository for the improvement of Hungarian,105 and even more of the references to the courage and valiance of the Lapps.106 There was indeed a great deal of anti-Sámi prejudice in contemporary lit- erature to dispel if Sámi–Hungarian kinship was to be made appealing. The representation of Sámi in the standard international works—like the above- mentioned Lapponia (1673) by Schefferus or the Géographie historique, ecclési­ astique et civile (Historical, ecclesiastical and civil geography [1755]) by Maurist scholar Dom Jean-Joseph Vaissète (1685–1756)—was patently unflattering. In these accounts, the Sámi are described physically as of a small stature, and thin; their skin inclines to black because of the perpetual smoke in their tents; they have a large head and a protruding thorax, and small, cavernous, rheumy eyes; their nose is short and flat, their chin elongated, their mouth large and always open. They walk humped. With respect to customs and manners, “for most of the year they have little society among themselves, as they live in the forest among the wild beasts; and each family is separated from the others by a vast stretch of land.” They are “cowardly and timid, and abhor war, which they never wage”; they are “cunning, and they sometimes cheat in trade.”107 These stereotypes were faithfully reproduced in works of the same genre  published in Hungary in the decades around the publication of the 102 Readers of the 1771 edition of the Demonstratio also familiar with Pray’s Annales could easily make the inference that Sámi were herewith to be included in the Hun–Hungarian community (originally forged in China). 103 Hell to Pray, April 14, 1770. elte EK, G 119. no. 169; Hell to Pray, January 4, 1771. elte EK, G 119. no. 168. 104 Hell to Pray, April 14, 1770. elte EK, G 119. no. 169. 105 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1771), 82–83, 107–10. 106 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1771), 119–29. 107 Dom [Jean-]Joseph Vaissète, Geographie historique, ecclesiastique et civile, ou description de toutes les parties du globe Terrestre, enrichie de cartes géographiques (Paris: Desaint & Saillant, Jean-Thomas Herissant, Jacques Barois, 1755), 101, following Scheffer. It was little compensation that their bodies are still acknowledged to be “well proportioned, without being deformed,” and they are said to be “charitable and hospitable, and not without tal- ent, because they produce all their utensils with much adroitness.”