Seite - 60 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 160 consolidated the finances. While mandatory courses had to be based on pre- scribed authors and readings, the religious tests for professors became less de- manding, and during the next few decades Protestant professors, even rectors, were tolerated. However, as the Jesuit college reaped quick successes, obtain- ing the right to confer magister titles and thereby breaking the monopoly of the university, conflicts over competences remained on the agenda and were resolved in the “Klesl era” to the advantage of the Jesuits. Melchior Klesl (1552– 1630) came from a Viennese Protestant burgher family but had a Jesuit educa- tion, was appointed as Generalreformator of the university and the region by the pope and the emperor in 1590, and as archbishop of Vienna in 1616. Though as university chancellor and then rector he took several steps that countered the Jesuits’ interests, he introduced a Catholic test for all graduating students, and was the first to raise, in 1609, the idea of transferring the whole of the philosophical faculty to the Jesuits. This took place in 1622–23 with the incor- poration of the college in the university, which secured all professorial chairs in philosophy (including—pertinently for the present case—branches of mathematics) and most in theology for the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits also obtained the building of the university and several boarding houses, with the obligation to erect in their place an academic college (Collegium Academicum Viennense Societatis Jesu) with a church, theater, library, laboratory, and (lat- er) observatory. Beginning in 1746, they also ran the Seminarium Nobilium or Collegium Theresianum, or simply the Theresianum: an “imperial academy” launched in the framework of the reform program associated with Count Friedrich Wilhelm von Haugwitz (1702–65) as chancellor, for preparing young noblemen for entering the civil service in Vienna. But this institution remained a separate entity, much like the Oriental Academy (in its full name, Kaiserlich- königliche Akademie für Orientalische Sprachen [Imperial and royal academy of oriental languages]), a school that offered training in Turkish, Arabic, and Persian, as well as some other skills for future diplomats in the East. It was founded in 1754 in the context of Chancellor Wenzel Anton Count Kaunitz- Rietberg’s (1711–94) general policy of administrative modernization, and also marked by a strong Jesuit presence.64 These latter developments took place in an era when, according to the stan- dard narrative on the subject, sweeping reforms initiated by Maria Theresa’s Dutch personal physician, Van Swieten, began to undermine the positions of the Jesuits at the university and, in the long run, more generally in the Habsburg 64 Given Vienna’s geopolitical situation and cultural exposure to “the East,” the Oriental Academy was a strategic institution. See David do Paço, L’Orient à Vienne au dix-huitième siècle (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2015).