Seite - 254 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5254 transformations of the academic scene in Vienna during the previous two de- cades: Gerhard van Swieten.143 Van Swieten may well have been the implacable opponent of the Society of Jesus that he is usually described as being, but as we have seen, in his campaign against “vampirism” he resorted to an argumentative strategy familiar from Je- suit polemics against superstition, and competent and qualified Jesuit savants still retained important positions under his regime. On this occasion as well, he apparently found it possible to cooperate with them. However, one may also conjecture that one further step was included, and that Van Swieten, who is not known to have ever studied linguistics and the problems of language kin- ship, relied on expert advice in instructing Hell to do so. There is at best circumstantial evidence for identifying Van Swieten’s potential source. Hell’s apparently strange prompt that the Sámi “are no Americans, but real Orien- tals” may provide a clue. Notions about the peopling of America from Asia, and thus an ethnic and linguistic link between the indigenous peoples of both con- tinents, were already in circulation at the time.144 The man in Vienna known for both his prodigious command of Oriental languages and his inquiries into native American cultures (including the curating of a carefully assembled col- lection of artefacts) was the first custodian of the Imperial and Royal Library, hired there by Van Swieten and the direct subordinate of the latter as the direc- tor of the institution: Adam František (Franz) Kollár, already introduced in Chapter 1 as a fellow novice of Hell in Trenčín in the 1740s. Kollár must also have been eagerly awaiting the publication of the linguistic results of the Vardø expedition. He was aware of the Copenhagen edition of the Demonstratio as well as at least the main elements of the theory it contained as early as May 1770.145 Shortly after, he thanked Pray for sending excerpts of the early 143 Naturally, the explicit ascription of the inspiration behind the investigation of linguistic kinship to Van Swieten relativizes the doubt expressed earlier about the purposiveness of the enterprise. The puzzle may be resolved by surmising that clues about the topic were supplied to Hell and Sajnovics from Vienna not prior to their departure but in correspon- dence while already en route, but no surviving letters known to us support this. 144 Several passages in Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, based on accounts of Jesuit missionary and traveler Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682–1761), played a prominent role in giv- ing the idea currency. See, e.g., Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon, Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1749), 1:224–25. 145 In a letter of May 29, 1770, his friend, teacher and jurist József Benczur (1728–84), thanked Kollár for reporting (in two letters that are not extant) about Sajnovics’s discovery of peo- ples in the Arctic “who ought to be reckoned as the brothers of Hungarians,” expressed his hope that the book would be reprinted once the author was back in Vienna, and asked Kollár to help him obtain a copy of the book. However, Benczur, who “easily allowed that our Hungarians are not the descendants of Attila’s Huns,” also warned that “our