Page - 246 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5246 insignia of the region, representing two arms holding a sword and a spear (or an arrow?), found in the Blaeu atlas.123 Each of these topics, besides several others related to the origin and ancient history of the Hungarians, are discussed in notes and letters by Hell preserved among the papers of Pray, deriving from the period of the preparation and the aftermath of the publication of the second edition of the Demonstratio.124 As regards karjel, Hell claims that this is the form in which all of their local inter- locutors referred to themselves, and in a letter to Pray he also underpins this from the Swedish description of Lapland by Pehr Högström (1714–84), pub- lished in Stockholm in 1747.125 Elsewhere, he claims to have heard the “Karjelian dialect” spoken among the Szekels of Transylvania, who supposedly migrated there from Karjelia itself with “King Attila.”126 Hell’s above-mentioned note was conceived as a response to Pray, who was apparently skeptical about Hell’s explications. Another effort by the astronomer at etymological analysis, deriv- ing Dentumoger—the name of the homeland of the Hungarians before the conquest of the Carpathian Basin in Anonymus’s Gesta—from Dán­ vad­ magyar, “Danish-fierce-Hungarian,” was dismissed by Pray in notes on Hell’s manuscript as “violent distortion” and “gross ignorance.”127 While these ventures of Hell into linguistics were clumsy, the zeal with which he pursued them and investigated a wide range of issues and sources of early Hungarian history are proof of his determination to be recognized as an expert in the field. Besides the exchanges with Pray, the evidence for Hell’s in- fatuation with the history of Hungarians during the later stages of the steppe migrations, the conquest and settlement in the Carpathian basin, and the early period of the Christian monarchy includes items of correspondence with the two other leading Jesuit historians of the time, István (Stephanus) Kaprinai (1714–85) and István (Stephanus) Katona (1732–1811), as well as notes, drafts, and fragments undoubtedly intended to feed the pages of Expeditio litteraria. Hell delved into and discussed puzzles found in primary sources like Anony- mus’s Gesta and the Byzantine emperor Constantine vii Porphyrogenitus’s (909–59, r.913–59) De administrando imperio (Of the governance of the empire 123 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1771), 119–24 (the insignia, 122). It is noteworthy that wherever the region’s name appeared in the 1770 edition, it was Careila (Karelia), i.e., without the “j” that supported Hell’s etymology. 124 These documents are included in the Collectio Prayana, vol. 18, Miscellanea, at the elte EK, now digitized; https://edit.elte.hu/xmlui/gallerymanager?reckey=HeadCollPray018# drop (accessed April 16, 2019). 125 Coll. Prayana 18:25; Hell to Pray, February 5, 1772. elte EK, G 119. no. 162. 126 Hell to Pray, March 29, 1771. elte EK, G 119. no. 165. 127 Coll. Prayana 18:23.