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311Disruption
of Old Structures
[1734–85], the Benedictine abbot of Braunau) and the reformist canon Johann
Peter Simen (1715–75), respectively. The censorship commission, formerly fully
controlled by Jesuits, had not a single Jesuit member by the eve of the suppres-
sion: what is more, Jesuit works now became indexed because of the condon-
ing of regicide in Jesuit political thought.9 From 1760, Jesuit confessors of
members of the dynasty were dismissed one after the other, and in 1767 the
empress—whose growing uneasiness with excessive forms of baroque piety
and emphasis on private devotion drew her closer to the increasingly influen-
tial Jansenists—herself decided to replace in this position the Jesuit Ignaz
Kampmiller with the Augustinian and Jansenist (and staunchly anti-Jesuit)
Ignaz Müller (1713–82).10
At the turn of the 1760s and 1770s, the situation was still ambiguous. On the
one hand, the Catholic powers of Western Europe that had recently expelled
the Jesuits from their lands—including, importantly, the Habsburgs’ new ally:
France—were pursuing a strong campaign for the wholesale suppression of
the Society of Jesus with the newly elected pope, Clement xiv (1705–74,
r.1769–74), known to be amenable to listening to them. Influential voices in
Vienna, including Van Swieten and von Sonnenfels as well as jurist Karl Anton
von Martini (1726–1800), also spoke out in favor of following the example of the
Bourbon monarchies. Yet, in 1769–71, when the establishment of a state educa-
tion system was intensely discussed in the highest government circles, the con-
sensus of the chief decision-makers was that—contrary to a proposal by Count
Johann Anton von Pergen (1725–1814) as minister of state to completely ex-
clude all regular clergy from education—it was impossible to dispense with
the contribution of ecclesiastical orders in the field. Given their still central
role in education, this was essentially a debate about Jesuits, whom Maria The-
resa, Joseph ii, and Kaunitz continued to hold in respect, and claimed to be
largely innocent of the abuses that led to their expulsion from the other Catho-
lic realms. Even Kaunitz, who by this time seems to have been the most ac-
tively hostile of the trio vis-à-vis the monastic orders, thought that Jesuits were
not as bad as others, and keenly emphasized that it was the institution that
9 Norbert Bachleitner, Die literarische Zensur in Österreich von 1751 bis 1848 (Vienna: Böhlau,
2017), 50–51. Chapter 2 (41–92) of this book is fully dedicated to censorship “in the service
of the Enlightenment.”
10 On these developments, particularly in censorship, the most comprehensive, contextual-
ized account is Grete Klingenstein, Staatsverwaltung und kirchliche Autorität im 18. Jahr-
hundert (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1970). See also Hersche, Spätjansenismus, esp. Chapter 2,
103–62; Winfried Müller, “Der Jesuitenorden und die Aufklärung im süddeutsch-
österreichischen Raum,” in Klueting, with Hinske and Hengst, Katholische Aufklärung,
225–45.
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