Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

civilisation. In this situation, Hell and Sajnovics filled the second edition of the Demonstratio
with references to several Hungarian-speaking erudites, most of whom were Jesuits, who had
read the first edition and embraced its main thesis: that there existed a close kinship between
Hungarian and Sámi. What is more, the concluding chapter contains explicit reference to the
support of Maria Theresa, and (more vaguely) to “each and every one of the highest men” in
the Hungarian capital Posonium. 239 However, by 1770 it was not sufficient to appeal to the
patronage of Maria Theresa and her protégés, for the Empress had become increasingly
estranged from her Hungarian Guards after a bitter confrontation with the Hungarian Diet in
1764-65. Nevertheless, in the local context of Vienna and Hungary, the discovery of a
Hungarian-Lappish relationship, and the speculations concerning the historical heritage of the
Hungarian nation that it entailed, was the main ‘scientific capital’ that the two Jesuits had
assembled in the High North. Father Hell was not willing to let all that honour remain with his
assistant. Nor was he willing to let his legitimacy as an authoritative investigator of Hungarian
history, which he planned to develop further in his grand Expeditio litteraria, be challenged
on the grounds that he did not master the Hungarian language. This explains why
Maximilianus Hell insisted on being ascribed the honour of the Lappish-Hungarian discovery,
and to be characterised as a native Hungarian alongside Sajnovics.
A “third edition” of the Demonstratio was to be published within the framework of the
Expeditio litteraria – or to be precise, it was to fill the third part of volume one. The
correspondence of Hell from 1771-72, along with several unfinished treatises and notes
preserved among his papers at the Vienna University Observatory, bear witness of an acute
interest in the ‘Hungarian question’. 240 Major sources for the early history of the Magyars
were examined by Father Hell in this period, including ‘The Deeds of the Hungarians’ (Gesta
Hungarorum) written around the year 1200 by the so-called Anonymus, or Notary of King
Bela, and the De Administrando Imperio (‘On How to Govern the Empire’) of Constantinus
Porphyrogenitus, a Byzantine Emperor and writer of the tenth century. 241
239 Sajnovics [1771], p. 127: “quemquam ex summis in Republica nostra Viris, […] prout mihi experiri licuit,
quando superiore Autumno plerosque Eorum præsens veneratus sum”.
240 See Unprinted Sources 1c and 2c.
241 Two chapters of the Expeditio litteraria were supposed to be devoted to the Anonymus and to Constantinus
VII Porphyrogenitus respectively (See Chapter III.2, Tomi I. Pars III. Caput VI-VII). On the Anonymus, see now
the edition of Martyn Rady and László Veszprémy in the outstanding series Central European Medieval Texts
(Anonymus 2010). On Porphyrogenitus, see the edition by Moravcsik, Jenkins and Dvornik (Constantine VII
Porphygenitus 1962-67).
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