Page - 314 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 7314 future pursuit of the much-needed reforms.14 This provoked the members of the nobility to a concentrated effort to entrench their ancient privileges, while some of them were to combine this reaction with a vernacular version of en- lightened improvement. A policy line that, however, did smack of an endeavor at homogenization, was the propagation of the use of the German language for an expanding range of public purposes. Decrees issued in 1774, and especially the Ratio educationis of 1777, contain paragraphs on the desirability of increased teaching of the German language in the schools of Hungary. By 1783, German became the lan- guage of instruction at the University of Vienna. Finally, administration in gen- eral all over the monarchy followed. The language decree of April 26, 1784 ordered the replacement of German for Latin as the official language of Hun- gary (to be effective from November 1, 1784 in central government offices, and in a year’s time on the level of municipal administration as well).15 From the point of view of the emperor and his government, there was a perfectly sound rationale for this measure. It was absurd, so the argument went, for a large country to be governed in a dead language that was incomprehensible for most of its inhabitants, while the very fact that this was so proved that the lo- cal vernaculars were deficient and thus unsuitable for the purpose. All around Europe, Hungary and Transylvania, along with Poland, were alone in retaining Latin as the language of administration (this was wrong: by the middle of the eighteenth century, the Poles had virtually abandoned the use of Latin in offices), while the example of the French, the British, and the Russians dem- onstrated the benefits of a uniform administrative tongue. The logical conclu- sion from these considerations was apparently to promote German to this status in Hungary, many of whose inhabitants already had at least some famil- iarity with it. Joseph ii’s language decree has been described as a turning point in the re- lationship between Hungary and the ruler: while earlier measures concerned only partial interests or those of the politically sensitive (such as the abolition of religious orders in the one case, and the removal of the Hungarian crown, the symbol of the country’s integrity, to Vienna, in the other), this time the very 14 The most comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the Hungarian estates, the diet, and their relationship with the Viennese government is M. István Szijártó, A diéta: A ma- gyar rendek és az országgyűlés 1708–1792 (Budapest: Osiris, 2005). Concisely, see R.J.W. Evans, “Maria Theresa and Hungary,” in Scott, Enlightened Absolutism, 189–207. 15 Éva H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism 1765– 1800 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997), 205–11; István Soós, “ii. József nyelvrendelete és a ‘hivatalos Magyarország.’” in Tanulmányok a magyar nyelv ügyének 18. századi történetéből, ed. Ferenc Bíró (Budapest: Argumentum, 2005), 261–301.