Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

Ephemerides Astronomicae in all countries of learning, and laid the foundations for his
membership in the informal, international ‘Republic of Letters’. As to the Vardøhusian
expedition, we shall see in a later part how Maximilianus Hell defined that as a “Danish
expedition”, just as the foreigners recruited by Catherine II’s Imperial Academy in the same
year undertook “Russian expeditions”. 411 Thus, when a recent book refers to Hell’s expedition
as a significant event in “the history of cooperation of the Norwegian and Slovak nations”, 412
this is an anachronism at best. No less misleading is a Hungarian author’s recent description
of it as a “Hungarian expedition”. 413 As is to be expected, the former scholar has included no
Hungarian publications on his list of references, and the latter quotes no Slovak publications
whatsoever.
Tackling the co-existence of conflicting national appropriations in the historiography can be a
challenge. 414 I do not wish to become a champion of any nationalistic cause. In order to avoid
this, I have consistently used the Latin forms of all names of places and persons from the
Kingdom of Hungary and Austria. Latin was, after all, the official language of the Kingdom
of Hungary as well as the Society of Jesus. The best way of avoiding anachronisms in the case
of the Hungarus and Jesuit Father Maximilianus Hell appears to be to stick with Latin.
Another sensitive issue is the distribution of blame and innocence in a history that is replete
with confrontations. The fundamental study of Hell’s life and scientific career that was
undertaken by Ferenc Pinzger has already been described at some length in Section I.1.1.4.
Later authors have in general followed in the same tradition. Pinzgerian hagiography has
prevailed over Littrowian slander. But is that really progress? I hope to have shown that there
were certainly blind alleys in the scientific theories promoted by Hell, and that his alleged
“modesty” was more than once overshadowed by jealous promotion of personal glory. In
brief, he was a human like most of us are.
What then about that concept, ‘Jesuit science’? Could it be that, despite the reservations raised
in Section I.1.1.2, the present treatment of Maximilianus Hell’s career as an example of Jesuit
science has turned out to be more helpful than previous classifications based on nationality?
411 See Chapter III.3.
412 Kafka [2003], p. 4.
413 Bartha 2004a, p. 50: “a várdői magyar expedíció”.
414 See Shore 2007, pp. 10-14 for a sound discussion of the challenges posed on western scholars in the study of
Jesuit history in early-modern Central Europe.
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