Page - 252 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5252 It is quite noteworthy that just as Hell’s debate with European astronomers concerning the solar parallax (to be described in the next chapter) was unfold- ing, he threw himself, with increasing determination, into another controversy on the other substantial finding of the expedition on the home front. The ex- planation is probably that he realized with ever greater clarity the importance of the subject matter generally on the map of learning and specifically for the educated public of his fatherland, and wanted to capitalize on exaggerating his own role in attaining the results. Judging from the fervor with which he en- gaged in the debate, the stake of which was ultimately the unsettling issue of identity, Hell the man of the “exact sciences” was ready for a conversion into a cultural theorist—importantly, as we have seen, also attempting an act of methodological colonization. In regard of this conversion, it is worth observ- ing that while in the first edition of the Demonstratio only Sajnovics is referred to as a “Hungarus,” in the second one, issued about ten to twelve months later,141 Hell is also mentioned as such on several occasions. These were the beginnings of a process, to be amplified during the 1770s, of Hell’s (re)discovery 141 It is often overlooked that the year of printing is missing on the title page of both the first and the second editions of the Demonstratio. The Copenhagen edition states: Regiae Sci­ entiarum Societati Danicae praelecta Hafniae mense Januario anno mdcclxx (Read be- fore the Royal Danish Society of Sciences in Copenhagen, in the month of January of the year 1770). The Trnava edition reads: Regiae Scientiarum Societati Danicae praelecta, et Typis excusa Hafniae anno mdcclxx: Recusa Tyrnaviae (Read before the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, and printed in Copenhagen in the year 1770: Reprinted in Trnava). The date of publication is well documented in the case of the first edition: on March 4, the proofs were still being read, but on April 10, 1770, Sajnovics received a copy fresh from the press (Sajnovics, travel diary, entries for March 4 and April 10, 1770 [wus]). The second edition is not that easy. Correspondence confirms, however, that it was published later than January 1771, for in a letter to Pray in Bratislava Hell writes: “Father Sajnovics will hardly be able to go to Vienna in the month of January, and I doubt that his work will be ready from the press in this month either: if he can manage to come around the end of February, I shall be happy” (Hell to Pray, dated Vienna, January 4, 1771 [elte EK G 119. no. 168]). In a letter dated January 10, 1771, Hell asks Pray to pass on some papers to Trnava “for the new edition of Father Sajnovics’s work.” It is crucial that Pray takes care of this task as soon as possible, he adds, “for without this, Father Sajnovics has so far been unable to begin his work” (Hell to Pray, dated Vienna, January 10, 1771 [elte EK G 119. no. 167]). From a letter dated March 29, 1771, it emerges that Sajnovics had by then arrived in Vienna, probably to promote the new edition of the Demonstratio (Hell to Pray, dated March 29, 1771 [elte EK G 119. no. 165]). By May of the same year, Sajnovics had returned to Trnava and could boast about the favorable reception that his work had received in Vienna ( Sajnovics to Joannes Nagy, dated Trnava, May 12, 1771. See transcript in Flórián Holovics, “Sajnovics János a Demonstratióról,” Magyar Nyelv 68 [1972]: 432–501). For a good discus- sion of the internal evidence in the printed text of the Tyrnavian edition, see also Danilo Gheno, “Sajnovics e la Demonstratio: Problemi e caratteri dell’edizione di Trnava,” Atti e memorie, Accademia patavina di scienze, lettere ed arti 87 (1975): 45–59.