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Chapter
8362
treatise conceived according to the Linnæan method and using the terminol-
ogy developed by the famous Swedish botanist. Thus, the genus of the monk is
in general defined as an “animal” that is “anthropomorphic, hooded, wailing at
night, thirsty.” Moreover, the body of the monk is “two-footed, erect, with a
back that is curved inward, a head that is flattened from above, always hooded
and clothed on all sides, except for certain species whose head, feet, ass, and
hands are nude.”60 The various monks are then distributed in their species
( orders)—such as Monachus Benedictinus, Monachus Dominicanus, Mona-
chus Camaldulensis etc.—and described as though they were specimens of
natural history. Jesuits were, strictly speaking, not “monks,” and the Society of
Jesus had in any case ceased to exist by this time, so it was spared description
in von Born’s merciless satire. Nevertheless, the first German edition of the
work was attributed to an “Ignaz Loyola Kuttenpeitscher”—and sold two thou-
sand copies in a mere three weeks.61 It might be added that the publisher of
the Latin original is also spuriously given as “P. Aloys Merz.” Alois Merz (1727–
92), dean of the cathedral of Augsburg, was another former Jesuit and one of
the sharpest Catholic polemicists of the time.
Worse was to come from Hell’s point of view, on an ad hominem basis. In
1771, as a central figure of the Prague cultural and scientific scene, in the inau-
gural issue of the review journal Prager Gelehrte Nachrichten (Prague learned
news), von Born still commended Hell, along with Rieger, Kollár, von Jacquin,
Stepling, and others, as an outstanding representative of enlightened science
in a “domestic” context.62 In the same year in the same journal, von Born pub-
lished a review of Sajnovics’s Demonstratio, not calling into question its main
propositions, but criticizing the author’s—according to von Born, a fellow ex-
pert of natural knowledge, not sufficiently stringent—notion of “demonstra-
tion” (i.e., proof). As an aside, von Born added that he sustained his judgment
on the implications of the treatise for the early history of Sajnovics’s country-
men until the publication of the “very promising work of the famous father
Hell, already announced under the title Expeditio litteraria ad Polum arcti
cum”—but worried that “the undertaking of Mr. Sajnovics to make Hungarians
the descendants of Lapps” would create some storms.63 By a decade later, all
the respectful distance was gone. Von Born then published a satire entitled
Telescopium Christiano Hellianum (Christian-Hellian telescope), targeting Hell
60 [Ignaz von Born], Joannis Physiophili Specimen Monachologiæ methodo Linnæana tabulis
tribus æneis illustratum, cum adnexis thesibus e Pansophia p.p.p. Fast […] (Augsburg: Merz,
1783), [17].
61 Robertson, “Curiosity,” 139.
62 “Vorbericht,” Prager Gelehrte Nachrichten 1, no. 1 (1771): 2.
63 Prager Gelehrte Nachrichten 1, no. 13 (1771): 200–6. Cf. Eszter Deák, “Born Ignác ismeretlen
recenziója Sajnovics János ‘Demonstratió’-járól,” Hungarológia 2 (1993): 117–21.
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Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Title
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Subtitle
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Authors
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Publisher
- Brill
- Location
- Leiden
- Date
- 2020
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Size
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Pages
- 492
- Categories
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Table of contents
- Acknowledgments VII
- List of Illustrations IX
- Bibliographic Abbreviations X
- Introduction 1
- 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
- 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
- 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
- 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
- 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
- 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
- 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
- 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
- Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
- Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
- Bibliography 400
- Index 459