Page - 362 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

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.