Page - 370 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 8370 have recognized a potential champion of Catholic learning who might restore it to its former glory after the suppression of his order. Hell’s detailed report in the Ephemerides about the five-week journey he took with Madarassy from Vienna to Eger and back is a remarkable document. Besides recording the data of observations carried out at each station—aimed chiefly at a more accurate determination of the geographic latitude of several locations in Hungary, thus correcting the “grave errors” contained in Ignaz Müller’s Mappa geographica novissima regni Hungariae (The most recent geo- graphic map of the Kingdom of Hungary [1769])93—the account provides a wealth of interesting insights into the cultural environment in which the jour- ney took place. Praises lavished by Hell on the benevolent bishop of Eger, char- acterized as a munificent patron of learning, are a recurrent theme. Eger is portrayed as a virtual “center of advanced science,” and the bishop himself as a devout Christian purportedly with a Jesuitic frame of mind. Looking on as Hell and the rest of his team draws the meridian line of his observatory, Eszterházy is said to be contemplating no doubt, in his pious mind those words of David, the Heavens will tell of the glory of God, and the firmament announce the works of his hands as well as that holy dictum of Divine Ignatius Loyola, who having observed the stars at night said, O how dirty the Earth appears, as I look at the sky.94 Even apart from the bishop, the territory is quite densely populated with fur- ther men of eminent learning. They include not only old friends and associ- ates, such as Weiss in Trnava and Sajnovics, now professor of mathematics at the university recently moved to Buda, the “metropolis of Hungary.” Mention is made of Balajthi, Eszterházy’s first protégé to have studied with Hell at the Universitätssternwarte in 1762 (now vicar at the nearby market town of Kun- szentmárton), and the former archivist of the episcopal collections, Mátyás Kotuts (dates unknown), who had just succeeded Balajthi as professor of mathematics at the gymnasium of Eger. Further, we meet the illustrious prior of Eger (formerly the erudite librarian of the Collegium Germanicum et Hun- garicum in Rome, and later bishop of Alba Iulia [Gyulafehérvár, Weissenburg] in Transylvania), Count Ignác Batthyány (1741–98), and on the backward 93 An army officer, Müller (c.1727–1804) was only a namesake of Maria Theresa’s above- mentioned Jansenist confessor. The map project was supervised by the president of the Viennese military court council (Hofkriegsrat), the famous general count Franz Moritz Lacy (1725–1801), the future initiator of the land survey of Joseph ii. 94 Maximilian Hell, “Observationes astronomicae latitudinum geographicarum sive eleva- tionum poli, lep, factae 1776,” Ephemerides 1777 (1776): 273–89, here 279–80.