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Chapter
5256
Therefore it would be desirable that after this fortunate discovery
about the Scythian peoples and languages no one dares to write of the
Huns, whom many have considered the forefathers of the Hungarians; at
first, they should learn more about the Scythian and the Turkish lan-
guage, following the example of our Sajnovics, who leaving behind his
homeland took long journeys in northern Europe and in Asia [sic]; de-
spite this, some do not cease building imaginary systems before assem-
bling sufficient material from experience […].150
The tenor of these remarks appears to belong to someone imbued with a sense
of triumph over having received what he had expected and hoped for. As we
shall see in more detail, by this time Kollár had been engaged for several years
in polemical activities directed at the political and fiscal privileges of the Hun-
garian nobility. He thus had a distinct stake in emphasizing that the Demon
stratio dealt a blow to the Hun–Hungarian discourse of origin and identity,
which was one of the cornerstones of the noble ideology—although as a schol-
ar he also pretended to suspend judgment, and addressed to the opponents a
rhetorical invitation to counter Sajnovics on the ground of as abundant and
sound empirical evidence as he had collected in support of his own argument.
Whether or not Kollár played a role, via Van Swieten, in instigating the linguis-
tic inquiry of the expeditionists, the results satisfied him greatly, and his con-
tributions had an important part in the development of an atmosphere in
which the credibility of Hell’s efforts to present himself as a Hungarus patriot
in the 1770s was questionable in the eyes of a broad segment of the country’s
elite.
4 Authority Crumbling
The items discussed in this chapter all point to a Maximilian Hell prepared to
vindicate his place as the hero who “came, saw, and conquered” all obstacles,
emerging as the celebrated and unquestionable authority on everything from
natural history and geophysics to linguistics and astronomy. Nothing went ac-
cording to plan. On some of these subjects, he either failed to publish anything
at all (as in the case of morild and other zoological and botanical matters) or
published much too late (posthumous weather reports with climatic delibera-
tions); on others, he encountered problems of attribution (the linguistic
150 [Kollár], “Joannis Sajnovics S.J. Ungari Tordasiensis & c. Demonstratio,” 22.
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Titel
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Untertitel
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Autoren
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Verlag
- Brill
- Ort
- Leiden
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 492
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- 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