sz. kristof-local access to global knowledge: historia naturalis and anthropology at the jesuit...

A Divided Hungary in Europe

A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations,

1541-1699

Edited by

Gábor Almási, Szymon Brzeziński, Ildikó Horn, Kees Teszelszky and Áron Zarnóczki

Volume 1

Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships

Edited by

Gábor Almási

A Divided Hungary in Europe: Exchanges, Networks and Representations, 1541-1699;

Volume 1 – Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships, Edited by Gábor Almási

This book first published 2014

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2014 by Gábor Almási and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or

otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-6686-5, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6686-6

CONTENTS Preface ........................................................................................................ ix Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Gábor Almási Touring Europe: Comparing East-Central European Academic Peregrination in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century .......................... 17 Gábor Almási Changing Attitudes towards Study Tours among the Transylvanian Elite .................................................................. 35 Ildikó Horn From Padua to Leiden: Transylvanian Unitarian Study Tours ................ 55 Gizella Keserű The Influence of Dutch Universities on the Education of Seventeenth-Century Hungarian Intellectuals ............................................................... 81 Réka Bozzay Bridges to Königsberg: Students from North-East Hungary at Prussian Schools in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century .............................. 101 András Péter Szabó The Role of Albert Szenci Molnár in the Exchange of Ideas and Political Knowledge among the European Calvinist Principalities in the Early Seventeenth Century ............................................................................... 121 Judit P. Vásárhelyi Henry Oldenburg and the Mines of Hungary .......................................... 145 George Gömöri

Contents

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Alchemy and the Jesuits: Communication Patterns between Hungary and Rome in the International Intellectual Community of the Seventeenth Century ................................ 157 Farkas Gábor Kiss Martinus Cseles, SJ, Brother Julianus and the Rediscovery of Magna Hungaria .................................................................................. 183 Paul Shore Local Access to Global Knowledge: Historia naturalis and Anthropology at the Jesuit University of Nagyszombat (Trnava), as Transmitted in its Almanacs (1676–1709) ................................................................... 201 Ildikó Sz. Kristóf Hungary and Transylvania and the European Publishing Centres in the Sixteenth Century: The Cases of Paris, Basel and Venice ............. 229 István Monok Foreign Musicians and Their Influence in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Hungary ..................................................................................... 253 Péter Király Contributors ............................................................................................. 271 Index ........................................................................................................ 275

LOCAL ACCESS TO GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE: HISTORIA NATURALIS AND ANTHROPOLOGY

AT THE JESUIT UNIVERSITY OF NAGYSZOMBAT (TRNAVA),

AS TRANSMITTED IN ITS ALMANACS (1676–1709)

ILDIKÓ SZ. KRISTÓF Certain intellectual orientations and discursive elements of what we would today refer to as ethnography and anthropology—and which, from the end of the eighteenth century were simply called “science”—appeared in the publications of the Jesuit University of Nagyszombat (Trnava) during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Founded in 1635 by Arch-bishop Péter Pázmány, the University of Nagyszombat was the prede-cessor of the modern-day Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.1 It was an important centre for the dissemination of information and knowledge in East-Central Europe until the abolition of the Jesuit order in 1773. This knowledge concerned, among other things, the “distant other,”2 that is, the various non-European peoples in both the West and the East.

This kind of knowledge did not yet appear in the form of a separate discourse. It formed part of the various discourses then taking place in Nagyszombat. Treatises and natural history and geography textbooks, scholarly dissertations on the natural sciences and the handwritten or printed accounts (relationes) of Jesuit missionaries also appear to have contained knowledge of global ethnographical, ethnological and anthropo- 1 É. Knapp and L. Szögi, Az Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem Egyetemi Könyvtára [Library of the Eötvös Loránd University] (Budapest 2012). 2 S. Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford 1991); Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels: Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550–1630: An Anthology, ed. by A. Hadfield (Oxford 2001); Imagi-nationen des Anderen im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, ed. by I. Schabert and M. Boenke (Wiesbaden 2002). Cf. E. W. Said, Orientalism (New York 1978).

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logical relevance during the second half of the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth century.3 The present chapter focuses on the printed almanacs of the Jesuit University of Nagyszombat and their relevant sources. An analysis of such a complex transference of global information to local audiences requires both a material/textual and a historical sociological approach. Following the research methodology elaborated by cultural historians such as Roger Chartier and Peter Burke, or historians of science such as Claude Blanckaert,4 this chapter will discuss the ways in which knowledge about the non-European world was processed at the University of Nagyszombat, taking into consideration the following two areas of exploration: 1) What kind of information was conveyed in the almanacs of the University of Nagyszombat about the “distant other”? Where did this information come from? Via which media was it transmitted and received? 2) For what kind of local audiences was this knowledge intended, and how?

The nature and quality of information about the non-European world and the media of its transmittance

at the University of Nagyszombat

Despite being frequently omitted from Western European cultural, intel-lectual and historical surveys of the period,5 divided Hungary was far from being a mere battlefield exposed to devastating attacks by the Turks or a

3 I use these terms here according to the definition by C. Lévi-Strauss, which considers the science of ethnography as a description of “other” societies, ethno-logy as a comparison among the latter, and anthropology as a study of all human socio-cultural institutions as systems and techniques of representation and com-munication. See C. Lévi-Strauss, “Introduction: Histoire et ethnologie,” in Anthro-pologie structurale (Paris 1974 [1958]), 10–11. In another of his works, Lévi-Strauss describes anthropology as a science aiming to set up an overall inventory of human societies; see C. Lévi-Strauss, “Le champ de l’anthropologie,” in Anthropologie structurale deux (Paris 1973), 20. 4 R. Chartier, Culture écrite et société. L’ordre des livres (XIVe–XVIIIe siècle), ed. by R. Chartier (Paris 1996); id., “Le monde comme représentation,” Annales E.S.C. 6 (1989), 1505–1520; id., “Laborers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader,” Diacritics 22, 2 (1992), 49–61; P. Burke, A Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge 2000); La naissance de l’ethnologie? Anthropologie et missions en Amérique XVIe–XVIIIe siècle, ed. by C. Blanckaert et al. (Paris 1985). 5 For an exception see P. Shore, Narratives of Adversity: Jesuits on the Eastern Peripheries of the Habsburg Realms (1640–1773) (Budapest 2012), 251–279.

Ildikó Sz. Kristóf

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Figure 1. Prognosis conjecturalis astrologica, ad annum a Christo nato MDCCI. no-man’s land in terms of scientific knowledge. The Jesuit University of Nagyszombat referred to itself in the almanac issued for the year 1701 with the motto Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum, a quote from Proverbs.6 The engraving accompanying the text depicts the university building and its church below, while above appears the allegorical figure of Athena, goddess of wisdom, surrounded by books and the symbols of the various branches of science. The symbols of the natural sciences—geography,

6 Proverbs 9:1–2.


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geometry, astrology and probably also mathematics—are the most readily recognisable (Figure 1).7

Three years earlier, in 1698, the university’s almanac contained a similar emblematic representation of the highly prestigious knowledge taught in Nagyszombat. The engraving shows the university church as it still looks today, with a motto above that refers to the knowledge cultivated there: Vox loquens in lapidibus (Figure 2).8

These two images in praise of “elite” or official knowledge, included in a popular print, symbolise the remarkable process of knowledge circula-tion that was characteristic of the age and genre, but are also the result and product of the particular locality. This process comprised the infiltration of reading matter intended for wide circulation with “learned” knowledge—a frequent phenomenon in early modern Europe.9 In the case of the alma-nacs of Nagyszombat, however, the phenomenon seems to represent something more specific and local: a consciously chosen strategy on the part of the Jesuit editors working at the university.

The function of the almanacs was probably broader than that of mere livres populaires.10 The earliest copy surviving in the special collection of the library of Eötvös Loránd University dates from 1676,11 after which date they were published and preserved almost every year until the abolition 7 [Title page missing] Prognosis conjecturalis astrologica, ad annum a Christo nato MDCCI [hereafter: Calendarium 1701]. 8 Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Jesu Christi, MDCXCVIII. Tyrnaviae [hereafter: Calendarium 1698]. 9 The phenomenon has been identified, for example, in the historical and geographical essays inserted in Italian almanacs during the 16th and 17th centuries, in schoolbooks published in the Bibliothèque bleue, the French popular prints of Troyes during the 17th-century, etc. See, among others, L. Braida, “Les almanachs italiens. Évolution et stéréotypes d’un genre (XVIe–XVIIe siècles),” in Colportage et lecture populaire. Imprimés de large circulation en Europe XVIe–XIXe siècles, ed. by Roger Chartier and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Paris 1996), 183–207; J. Hébrard, “Les livres scolaires de la Bibliothèque bleue: Archaïsme ou modernité?,” in ibid., 109–129. On early modern Western European almanacs, see F. Maiello, Histoire du calendrier. De la liturgie a l’agenda (Paris 1993), esp. 125–152. 10 See I. Sz. Kristóf, “Anthropologie dans le calendrier: la représentation des curiosités de la nature et des peuples exotiques dans les calendriers de Trnava, 1677–1773,” in Proceedings of the conference “Le livre. La Roumanie. L’Europe,” international conference, Mamaia, Romania, 23–27 Sept. 2012 (Bucharest, forthcoming). 11 Calendarium Typographiae Tyrnaviensis. Ad annum a nato in terris Deo MDCLXXVI. … Ex calculis peritissimi et celeberrimi Astronomi Andreae Argoli [hereafter: Calendarium 1676].


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Figure 2. Calendarium Tyrnaviense … MDCXCVIII. of the Jesuit order.12 The series of the Latin almanacs entitled Calenda-rium Tyrnaviensis testify to the use of the printing press by the local Jesuits as an important means of transmitting information and instruction.

12 And also after that date, but that is another story, embedded in the history of the emergence of secular education supported by the Habsburg rulers of Hungary from 1777. See Az Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem története 1635–2002 [The history of Loránd Eötvös University 1635–2002], ed. by L. Szögi (Budapest 2003), 71–125.


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Such a long series of publications requires research from a double perspective: a macro-scale perspective or serial investigation, 13 on the one hand, and a micro-scale perspective focussing on the particularities of the publication in question and its interpretation, on the other. While the former implies the long-term14 concept of revealing the general function and most significant characteristics of the publication, the latter is based on a micro-philological and micro-sociological approach. It focuses on the particular messages conveyed by the form and text of the publication as a medium of cultural transmission and, at the same time, as a material object. The latter perspective also pays special attention to the targeted communities of readers, and to those who, while not targeted explicitly, might still have access to the publication.15

The macro-perspective: The long-term specificities of information and knowledge in the almanacs

of Nagyszombat

It would be misleading to regard the almanacs of Nagyszombat as popular literature in the strict sense of the term.16 Firstly, the almanacs do not

13 An étude sérielle as a specific research method was proposed by Jacques Le Goff. See J. Le Goff, “Les mentalités. Une histoire ambiguë,” in Faire de l’histoire III. Nouveaux objets, ed. by J. Le Goff and P. Nora (Paris 1974), 106–129; La Nouvelle histoire, ed. by J. Le Goff (Paris 1988 [1978]). 14 The idea of longue durée was proposed, in another context, by Fernand Braudel. See F. Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris 1949); id., “Histoire et sciences sociales: la longue durée,” Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 13 (1958), 725–753. See also M. Vovelle, “L’histoire et la longue durée,” in La Nouvelle histoire, ed. by J. Le Goff (Paris 1988 [1978]), 77–108. 15 This methodology appears primarily in the works of Roger Chartier: “Laborers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader,” in Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d’Ancien Régime (Paris 1987); and id., Culture écrite et société. L’ordre des livres (XIVe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris 1996). See also Histoire de la lecture dans le monde occidental, ed. by G. Cavallo and R. Chartier (Paris 1997). 16 Certain scholars of “popular culture” during the late 1960s and early 1970s were convinced that popular prints—especially the French Bibliothèque bleue of Troyes, which also included almanacs—were mostly written not only for the people but also by the people. See, for example, Robert Mandrou and Geneviève Bollème, the two pioneering French experts of littérature populaire: R. Mandrou, De la culture populaire aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. La Bibliothèque bleue de Troyes (Paris 1964); G. Bollème, Les Almanachs populaires aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Essai d’histoire sociale (Paris 1969); id., La Bibliothèque bleue. La littérature populaire


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appear to fit this rather simplistic interpretation. Rather than being written in one or other of the vernacular languages used in the area (i.e. German, Hungarian, Slovak, etc.), they were published in Latin, and they were regularly substantial publications of between 30 to 80 pages, rather than booklets. They were published by the Jesuit university of a multicultural city, and, most importantly, they contained not only “calendar” information in the strict sense of the term (astronomical data and predictions, lists of religious festivals or advice on ars vivendi),17 but also denser and more cumbersome “scientific” texts.

One of the long-term characteristics of the almanacs is that they incorporated the objective of popularising the natural sciences. Beginning with the first edition (1676), they feature long scholarly treatises on different branches of the natural sciences. These dissertationes are between 8 and 20 pages long, written in Latin and densely printed. Treatises are regularly inserted in the middle or towards the end of the almanacs, and are never illustrated.

The period between 1676 and 1709 stands out in particular: each year a different topic related to the natural sciences was featured. The Jesuit editor—during this period Father Martinus Szentiványi SJ—often referred to the topic covered the previous year, thus he was clearly pursuing a coherent project of instruction and the popularisation of the sciences, issue by issue. Below, we survey a few of these inserted treatises.

The topics covered include, for example, cosmography. The 1678 issue included the Dissertatio physico-mathematica cosmographica, seu de mundi systemate.18 The 1686 almanac contained the Dissertatio physica. De elementis.19 Geography and topography were frequently featured. The 1676 almanac contained the Dissertatio physico-mathematica. De admi-randis virtutibus et proprietatibus lacuum, fontium, fluviorum, etc.20 The 1681 issue included the Dissertatio geographica altera, continens praeci-

en France du XVIe au XIXe siècle (Paris 1971). For a critique of their approach, see R. Chartier, “Stratégies éditoriales et lectures populaires,” in Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d’Ancien Régime (Paris 1987), 87–124. 17 Maiello, Histoire du calendrier; Braida, “Les almanachs italiens.” 18 Calendarium Typographiae Tyrnaviensis ad annum MDCLXXVIII. 19 Prognosis conjecturalis astrologica … ad annum a Christo nato MDCLXXXVI (Munich: Sebastian Rauch). 20 Calendarium 1676.


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puarum partium Terrae descriptionem,21 while the 1692 almanac included the Dissertatio geographica. De proprietatibus locorum.22

The various branches of natural history were also frequently discussed. The 1691 issue included the Viridarium philosophicum seu dissertatio physica curiosa de plantis.23 The 1695 almanac contained the A[u]cupium philosophicum seu dissertatio physica curiosa de Avibus,24 while the 1697 almanac contained the Piscatio philosophica seu dissertatio physica de piscibus.25

Almost all the treatises mentioned above contain a certain amount of knowledge and information on non-European peoples and cultures, describing the geographical-topographical features of distant places, their flora and fauna, or the strange physical forms and customs of their inhabitants. However, the richest sources of such knowledge are the treatises that are (almost) entirely devoted to knowledge of human beings and that deal with, besides the origins of human beings, their “perfect” or “harmonious” and “imperfect” or “unusual” forms (e.g. dwarfs, giants and various monstrous creatures).26 It is among the latter that the reader comes across, for example, the “hairy men of the woods,” to whom a whole chap-ter is devoted in the treatise inserted in the 1709 almanac. Confirmed by classical authors such as Pomponius Mela and Solinus, they are described as rude, uncultured, godless and brutishly ignorant of how to care for themselves. Such descriptions of the “men of the woods” could be—and indeed were—projected onto the newly encountered native inhabitants of

21 Prognosis coniecturalis astrologica … Ad Annum a Christo nato MDCLXXXI (Tyrnaviae: Mathias Srnensky) [hereafter: Calendarium 1681]. 22 Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Christi MDCXCII. … Ex calculis peritissimi et celeberrimi astronomi Andreae Argoli (Tyrnaviae: Joannes Adamus Friedl) [hereafter: Calendarium 1692]. 23 Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Christi, MDCXCI. … Ex Calculis peritissimi et celeberrimi astronomi Andreae Argoli (Tyrnaviae: Joannes Adamus Friedl) [hereafter: Calendarium 1691]. 24 Prognosis conjecturalis astrologica ad annum a Christo nato MDCXCV. [hereafter: Calendarium 1695]. 25 Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Jesu Christi, MDCXCVII. … ex calculis peritissimi, et celeberrimi astronomi Andreae Argoli (Tyrnaviae: Joannes Andreas Hoermann) [hereafter: Calendarium 1697]. 26 “Dissertatio curiosa miscellanea. De rebus falsae, et dubiae existentiae,” in Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Christi, MDCLXXXX … ex calculis peritis-simi et celeberrimi astronomi Andreae Argoli. Tyrnaviae. Typis Academicis excu-sum per Joannem Andream Hauck [hereafter: Calendarium 1690]; “Dissertatio philologa [sic] de homine,” in Calendarium 1709 [Title page missing] (Copy consulted: ELTE EK, RMK II, 591/a).


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distant places. The same treatise claimed that among the “Indians” (Indos), such “men of the woods” had dogs’ teeth and bellowed hideously. Refer-ring to the testimony of Jesuit missionaries, it confirmed that they were cannibals (anthropophagi), both in the East and West Indies.27

Treatises on geography and other areas of natural history contained references to distant peoples and cultures, from an individual piece of information to entire subchapters and chapters. Florida, for example, was mentioned as an island in the Dissertatio geographica altera in a treatise inserted in the 1681 almanac, and its inhabitants were said to be able to run faster than deer. This trait was attributed to their climate, which made people robust, powerful and energetic.28 The treatise Viridarium philoso-phicum (1691) informed readers, among other things, that, according to historians of the Indies, certain trees had golden veins (venas) in Hispaniola (Haiti).29 In Aucupium philosophicum, inserted in the 1695 almanac, several (more or less imaginary) birds of America were des-cribed, among them the Quietzaltototl (Quetzalcoatl), which, it was said, was held in such respect “in provincia Tecolothlani” (Tenochtitlan) that it was forbidden to kill it. In the event that it was killed, its feathers were to be used only by the superiors of the local people (i.e. the Nahuatl).30

The natural history contained in the almanacs was not divided clearly or consistently, even into the three great realms of nature—animals, plants and minerals—as it would regularly be the following century.31 It was pre-sented in a kaleidoscopic, Wunderkammer-like fluid categorisation of smaller, rather functional human-related and frequently overlapping units, and according to the particular relations established among its elements. Plants, birds, fish, domestic animals, dangerous animals, and medicinally useful and harmful species made up the main categories, and the treatises devoted considerable space to analogies and correspondences between the 27 § XIV, in Calendarium 1709. 28 §. I. “De rebus memorabilibus insularum,” 31, “Dissertatio geographica altera,” in Calendarium 1681. 29 §. XXI. “Admiranda plantarum, Viridarium philosophicum,” in Calendarium 1691. 30 §. XX. “Descriptio avium peregrinarum, 25, Aucupium philosophicum,” in Calendarium 1695. 31 K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500–1800 (London 1983), 66; P. Feuerstein-Herz, “Die Große Kette der Wesen.” Ordnungen in der Naturgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden 2007), 84–112; I. Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Natural History. Georg C. Raff’s Naturgeschichte für Kinder (1778) in its Multiple Translations and Multiple Receptions,” in Le livre demeure. Studies in Book History in Honour of Alison Saunders, ed. by A. Adams and P. Ford (Geneva 2011), 309–333.


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human and the natural world, their sympathies and antipathies.32 Never-theless, these texts transmitted various elements of nascent ethnographical-anthropological knowledge. They contained a considerable number of references—and sometimes quite systematic thought—related to the varieties of human culture.

The peoples of the world were treated most frequently according to a rather strict classification of the regions or zones of the world—cold, hot and intermediate—created originally, as it was thought and taught, by divine providence. Climates and their impact on the physical form, nature and character of human beings were a central topic in treatises relevant to anthropology. Geography of this kind was discussed at greatest length in the Dissertatio geographica. De proprietatibus locorum, inserted in the 1692 almanac.33 The geographical classificatory claims contained in this treatise tended, however, to be rather general and simplistic. Why are there so many parrots in Asia, Africa and America, but not in Europe? Because they like intense sunshine. Fruits and plants are bigger outside Europe (in India, for example) for just the same reason, and the same is true of corn, as well. There are vast deserts in the East. There are no quadrupeds in Ethiopia, since dense or melancholic humours affect the air there. The animals are rather large in Asia, while powerful in Europe, etc. There was much discussion of peoples (nationes): readers were informed that the variety of climates was the reason for the variety of characters (inclina-tiones) among the different peoples. Some were “inclined” to commit theft, others to take vengeance, some were more talented and others more moderate—all due to their exposure to the different influences of the stars. The treatise referred to the authority of such classical authors as Aristotle and Aelian to support its arguments.

The Dissertatio geographica was based on the main points of a treatise by the French Jesuit Honoratus Nicquetius (Honorat Nicquet, 1585–1667) on Physiognomia humana,34 in which various aspects of contemporary

32 Similar principles of classification have been identified in 17th-century natural history in England by Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 52–54. See also Feuerstein-Herz, “Die Große Kette der Wesen,” 15–83. On the practice of Renaissance natural history see B. W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago 2006); and Cultures of Natural History, ed. by N. Jardine et al. (Cambridge 1996). 33 “Dissertatio geographica. De proprietatibus locorum,” in Calendarium 1692. 34 According to a handwritten note on the title page, a copy of this work was inscribed in the catalogue of the library of the printing house of the University of Nagyszombat in 1680, thus it could well have been used for the compilation of the


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theories of physiognomy, character, inclinations, humours, geographical regions and climates were summarised. As for the non-European regions of the world, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Pomponius Mela and Aelian were cited in particular. The latter taught, for example, that in India honey flowed in liquid form, and that the herbs and reeds growing in particular bogs provided a wonderful pasture for sheep and cattle. The works of Petrus Martyr (Peter Martyr d’Anghiera), Father Ambrosius Perez, Baltha-zar and Melchior Nuñez and others were also cited to provide information on the equatorial regions, the East and West Indies (China, India and Bra-zil, for example), where fruits were said to ripen at an extraordinary speed.35

It appears that the particular path of the European lore of ethnici (i.e. pagans, from the Christian point of view—as in the treatises) that led to ethno-graphy (i.e. the description of the pagans) emerged from a multiplicity of sources. The voyages of the early travellers and conquista-dors, and the practice of Christian—particularly Catholic and Jesuit—missionaries all contributed to the stock of knowledge.36 Pieces of infor-mation were gathered from mostly classical and Western European sources, to be restructured, synthesised and redistributed in various sum-maries, encyclopaedias, schoolbooks and treatises during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This information also found its way into East-Central European publications and appeared in the treatises of the Nagy-szombat almanacs. There were two main pathways, two main learned discourses, from which the science of ethnography-anthropology emerged towards the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century in Europe: an explicitly religious discourse, and a more (and more) scientifically oriented discourse.37 The scientific treatises con- treatise in question. See Honorat Nicquet, Physiognomia humana libris IV. distincta (Lyon 1648). 35 “Dissertatio geographica. De proprietatibus locorum,” in Calendarium 1692, 73 ff. 36 See for example La naissance de l’ethnologie?. See also J.-P. Rubiés, Travellers and Cosmographers: Studies in the History of Early Modern Travel and Ethnology (Aldershot 2007). 37 I. Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Natural History”; id., “The Uses of Demonology. European Missionaries and Native Americans in the American Southwest (Seventeenth–Eighteenth Centuries),” in Centers and Peripheries in European Renaissance Culture. Essays by East-Central European Mellon Fellows, ed. by Gy. E. Szőnyi and Cs. Maczelka (Szeged 2012), 161–182; and id., “Missionaries, Monsters, and the Demon Show. Diabolized Representations of American Indians in Jesuit Libraries of 17th- and 18th-Century Upper Hungary,” in Exploring the Cultural History of Continental European Freak Shows and “Enfreakment,” ed. by A. Kérchy and A. Zittlau (Newcastle upon Tyne 2012), 38–73.


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tained in the Nagyszombat almanacs in the late seventeenth century reflected both these orientations.

During the period in question, ethnographical-anthropological know-ledge was inscribed in a “language of wonders,” which, on occasion, resulted in a peculiar discourse that I call a “Wunderkammer in print.” This discourse was found not only in Western but also in East-Central Europe.38 The dissertationes in the Nagyszombat almanacs explicitly valorised curiosity and rarity and highly appreciated res memorabile.

The 1689 almanac contained, for example, the Dissertatio curiosa miscellanea. De Rerum memorabilium Orbis terrestris. It qualified as curi-osities certain classical and medieval concepts, objects and practices such as the “earthly paradise,” the “seven wonders of the world” and also devoted special attention to pyramids, obelisks, labyrinths and peculiar minerals such as obsidian and asbestos. Groups of “wondrous” human, or rather anthropomorphic beings, also belonged among such “wonders in print.” The category of giants was based, for example, on the idea of the “land of giants” mentioned in the Old Testament and apparently confirmed by classical authors such as Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Pliny. Accor-ding to Mela, there were once people in India who were so big that they could ride on elephants as we ride horses.39 The 1690 almanac included the Dissertatio curiosa miscellanea. De rebus falsae, et dubiae existentiae. It discussed, among other things, the gryphon, salamander and unicorn, certain anthropomorphic creatures, such as giants and dwarfs, and classical mythological beings, such as centaurs, satyrs, tritons, nymphs and sirens. Various anthropomorphic monsters (monstra) were also described, inclu-ding acephalous and cynocephalous monsters, tailed men, horned men and one-eyed men (monoculus).40 Remarkably, many such creatures were placed outside Europe or on its borders, most frequently in Scythia, India and Ethiopia. The “men of the woods” also appeared among them. Classical authors such as Pomponius Mela, Solinus and Pliny located them in certain border regions in Asia or North Africa, and the designation was

38 P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley 1994); L. Daston and K. Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York 2001 [1998]). 39 §. I, IV, VII, VIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII, XXXIII, XLVI, XLVII, “Dissertatio curiosa miscellanea. De rerum memorabilium Orbis terrestris,” in Calendarium Tyrnaviense, ad annum Christi, MDCLXXXIX. … ex calculis peritissimi et celeberrimi astronomi Andreae Argoli (Tyrnaviae: Joannes Christophorus Beck); at §. IV. 40 §. IX, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXX, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690.


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later transferred to the native peoples of America. They were held to be “without reason and lacking human form,” although according to the dissertatio inserted in the Jesuit almanac of 1690, even such people could be converted to the Christian faith. The description of Native American “men of the woods” was based in particular on the Physica curiosa (Würzburg 1662) of Gaspar Schott, a German Jesuit scholar. This work was of particular importance for the Nagyszombat almanacs, as discussed below.41

Treatises focussing on homo frequently described creatures that were not entirely human. The Dissertatio philolog[ic]a, de homine inserted in the 1709 almanac, discussed humans with usual and unusual forms. Among the latter we find, once again, giants and dwarfs, classical mythological beings, such as satyrs, centaurs, tritons and sirens, and various anthropomorphic monsters.42 The latter include, for example, the acephalous monster well-known in the age, whose eyes and mouth were located on its chest or shoulders. Such monsters, known as Blemijs, were said to live in Ethiopia and/or Scythia and were referred to by several classical authors, including Solinus and Pliny, and confirmed by the “eyewitness” testimony of Saint Augustine himself. Again, it was in such company that the native people of America were located and discussed. In the chapter on the unusual forms of man, a paragraph was devoted to a certain people living in Peru, the province of Caracas, whose heads lacked a front and back and who thus had flat faces.43 Animal-headed monsters were frequently discussed among anthropomorphic creatures such as those mentioned in the 1709 treatise. Along with the “dog-headed Tartars” described by Marco Polo, it referred to the indigenous inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, who, according to the same author, were cannibals and had dogs’ heads, eyes and teeth.44 Creatures with monstrous hands, legs, eyes, ears, lips and tongues were included among the “unusual forms” of people, such as “tailed men” and the “hairy men of the woods.” They were said to live in India and North Africa, and also in the Western Hemis-phere: the Caribbean islands and continental (mostly South) America.45

41 §. XXII, ibid. See G. Schott, Physica curiosa sive mrabilia naturae et artis libris XII comprehensa (Würzburg 1662). 42 §. II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, “Dissertatio philologa, de homine,” in Calendarium 1709. 43 The description possibly evokes the custom of skull forming well known among the Incas (Quechuas) and several other South and North American native cultures. §. V, ibid. 44 §. VI, ibid. 45 §. VII, VIII, IX, XII, ibid.


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Finally, to complete our survey of the learned treatises contained in the Nagyszombat almanacs, the issues published from around 1718 to around 1745 featured the Synopsis historica totius orbis.46 This provided a sum-mary of the history and geography of the then known continents and was inserted in the almanacs directly in place of the earlier treatises. Following a strict order, and repeating the same text annually, these long, dense Latin texts described the history of the exploration of Africa, Asia and America, and the history of the Jesuit missions there. The Synopsis constitutes another important channel for the dissemination of early ethnography-anthropology in East-Central Europe, in the sense that it provides an insight into the specifically Jesuit notions of Christianisation.

America, for example, was discussed according to a conceptual division that was as much mission-oriented as geographical, such as America Meridionalis, which encompassed Brasilia, Paraquaria and Peruvia, and America Septemtrionalis, made up of Canada and Nova Hispania, and the Insulae, that is, the islands of the Caribbean Sea. Within this, there was an even more detailed administrative sub-division, comprising some 17 smaller provinces in the northern and central part of the continent and eight in the southern part. The description of the provinces contained information on the native inhabitants, too, and the classical-medieval clichés of monsters were frequently projected onto them. The natives of the mountains of Chile, for example, were described as being of gigantic stature, and in general the treatise presented America as a “barbarous land” with “barbarous inhabitants.” According to its central argument, elaborated mostly in binary oppositions, native “life and institutions” in America were entirely different from those in Europe. Founded on the Eurocentrism and the cultural-religious interpretation (sometimes even prejudice) of the Jesuits, the basic structure of the description and its indi-vidual elements—social organisation, political system, economy, material culture, religion, etc.—are nevertheless reminiscent of later ethnographic profiles.

The principal binary oppositions according to which the Synopsis treats the cultural specificities of the native cultures of America are outlined in what follows. In terms of politics, they had only one law, namely, to live without law. In terms of settlements and the material aspects of civilisa-tion, they had no fields, towns or states: they lived in caves that differed little from those of animals. In terms of economics, they partly cultivated their hills and were partly nomadic, living on the fruits they gathered, 46 The period is approximate, since certain issues and copies of the almanacs around these years are missing from the collection of the Library of Eötvös Loránd University.


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while others ate human flesh. The native governments (regimena) of Mexico and Peru, however, were highlighted, where people “used to obey their kings (called Ingas).” Referring to the “ancient religion” of America, the Synopsis taught that it differed greatly in the different regions. Some honoured their gods in stones and trees, while others in “nothing at all” (e.g. the Brazilians, who lived “in the manner of animals”).47 The Native Americans were said to believe in signs and divinations “to insanity.”

The Synopsis enumerated a great number of explorers, conquistadors, scholars and Jesuit (and Franciscan) missionaries who had contributed to European knowledge of America since the middle of the sixteenth century. However, neither this work nor the earlier treatises mention any East-Central European missionaries, although several were active in the peri-od.48 It is with considerable delay that their activities became part of the printed knowledge circulating in either Western or Eastern Europe.49

As for the authorship of the treatises, another significant long-term characteristic is that they were published anonymously in the almanacs. While the author of the Synopsis historica totius orbis is still unknown, the author of the dissertationes published between 1676 and 1709 has been identified as Martinus Szentiványi SJ (1633–1705). He was an enormously erudite professor (and many-time rector) of the University of Nagyszombat. He taught exegesis, law, philosophy, physics, mathematics, astronomy, geography and history in Nagyszombat, Vienna and Graz. He edited the almanacs of the University of Nagyszombat for 30 years until his death. He also directed the university’s printing house from 1674 and was head of the university library. It is also significant that he was chief censor of the Jesuit order from 1673, and in 1688 was nominated royal

47 It is worth noting that the “inhuman ferocity” (ferocitas hominum inhumana) of the “Brazilians” was mentioned in several treatises inserted in the Trnava almanacs. It was discussed at greatest length in §. XVII, “Dissertatio philologa de homine,” in Calendarium 1709, based on the descriptions by Joannes Beterus that emphasised the various horrible manifestations of their cannibalism. 48 L. Bartusz-Dobosi, Jezsuiták és conquistadorok harca az indiánokért a XVII–XVIII. században [The struggle of Jesuits and conquistadors for the Indians in the 17th and 18th centuries] (Budapest 2006); Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Demonology”; Sz. Kristóf, “Missionaries, Monsters.” 49 It is only in the middle of the 18th century that accounts of missionaries were included in other almanacs in the Kingdom of Hungary, for example in the almanac of the city of Kassa (Kosiče in present-day Slovakia), issued for the year 1745, which contains a description by a missionary to the Nagay Tartars of the Crimea: “Crimaeae situs, incolae, mores…,” in Calendarium Cassoviense, ad an-num JESU CHRISTI MDCCXLV (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis Societatis JESU). See also Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Demonology”; id., “Missionaries, Monsters.”


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chief censor for the whole country.50 Almost all the treatises mentioned above were reprinted, with some degree of correction, in three substantial volumes in Szentiványi’s great oeuvre Curiosia et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea, published between 1689 and 1697 in Nagyszom-bat.51 Some were edited posthumously during the first half of the eight-eenth century.52 His practical and theological project of teaching and popularising the encyclopaedic knowledge53 elaborated in his Miscellanea

50 T. Pauler, Szentiványi Márton jellemzése [The characterisation of Márton Szentiványi] (Offprint of Magyar Akadémiai Értesítő, Pest 1857); J. Serfőző, Szentiványi Márton munkássága a XVII. század küzdelmeiben [The activity of Szentiványi in the stormy 17th c.] (Budapest 1942); R. Rapaics, “A természettudomány a nagyszombati egyetemen” [The sciences at the University of Nagyszombat], Természettudományi Közlöny 67 (1935), 1029–1030, 257–267, at 259–262; J. M. Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története [The history of physics in Upper Hungary], ed. by I. Gazda (Piliscsaba 1998), 14–15, 46–50; A táguló világ magyarországi hírmondói XV–XVII. század [Hungarian chroniclers of the widening universe, 15th–17th centuries], ed. by M. Waczulik (Budapest 1984), 392–402. 51 M. Szentiványi, Curiosia et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea. In tres partes divisa (Tyrnaviae 1689, 1691, 1696, 1697). 52 For example, “Dissertatio philologa, de homine,” in Calendarium 1709; and Dissertatio physica curiosa de plantis, seu viridarium philosophicum in Calendarium Cassoviense ad annum Jesu Christi MDCCLIV (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis Societatis JESU); “Dissertatio physica curiosa de feris, seu venatio philosophica,” in Calendarium Cassoviense ad annum Jesu Christi MDCCLVI (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis Societatis JESU). They are accessible in the special collections of the Library of Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest. See also P. Bikfalvi, “P. Szentiványi Márton SJ emlékezete” [The memory of Fr. Márton Szentiványi], Provinciánk Hírei 90 (Mar.–Apr. 2005), 38–39, available at http://regi.jezsuita.hu/ adattar/szentivanyi.htm, accessed on 6 November 2012. 53 I do not discuss here treatises such as Dissertatio optica physico-mathematica (1685); Dissertatio physica. De elementis (1686); Alodiatura philosophica, seu dissertatio physica de alodiaturae rebus (1698); Dissertatio physico-oeconomica. De noxijs animalibus, oeconomiae (1699); or the various Questiones curiosae that seem to represent a broader project of surveying the sciences. Hungarian historians of literature and science disagree about the extent to which the project of the Curiosiora can be considered truly encyclopaedic, in the sense of providing a sum-mary of all the branches of the late 17th-century sciences. Some argue that it was only a “diverse collection of selected curiosities from all the fields of human knowledge.” See “Szentiványi Márton,” in A magyar irodalom története [The history of Hungarian literature], available at http://mek.oszk.hu/02200/02228/ html/02284.html, accessed on 6 November 2012. Others are more inclined to recognise his efforts towards encyclopedism (Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története,


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deserves attention, since its principles are apparently compatible with what was published in the almanacs for almost three decades. According to the Hungarian historian of science Jolán M. Zemplén, Father Szentiványi’s project of instruction was motivated by a general lack of, and need for, books and libraries, and his aim was to provide interested people with a capacity for learning with easy access to knowledge. He also hoped that those who were unable to read books of “theology, literature, disputations, philosophy, history, mathematics and classical authors” would still benefit from a shorter summary and extracts (compendium) of those sciences.54

The Jesuit almanacs of Nagyszombat were not the only ones in Hungary to combine elite and popular reading matter. David Frölich (1600?–1648), geographer, astronomer and mathematician, wrote and published so-called Schreibkalender in Upper Hungary (Lőcse/Levoča, Bártfa/Bardejov) from the 1620s to the 1640s, which contained historical and geographical reading matter as well as “nützliche und lustige Fragen.” Among the latter were questions about, for example, the power of witches, the possibility of lycanthropy, the origin of the wind, the impact of eclipses, the influence of the stars and, in 1640, there was a description of the New World too.55 During the first half of the eighteenth century, the almanacs of the Jesuit academy of Kassa (Košice) contained longer reading matter, probably intended for more learned readers. They included posthumous treatises by Father Szentiványi, works by Athanasius Kircher on ecstatic travels to the Moon and Mars and Hungarian historical material such as the letters of King Matthias Corvinus.56 A combination of learned and popular reading matter thus seems to be customary in the almanacs published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Hungary, although the kind of systematic, consistent, long-term and apparently encyclopaedic project of teaching the natural sciences, such as that of Nagyszombat, is not found in any other almanacs of the period.

47–50), while yet others contest such intentions (Rapaics, “A természettudomány,” 259). 54 Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története, 344, note 95. 55 On Frölich, see ibid., 28–46. 56 “Athanasii Kircheri Itineris exstatici in Lunam,” in Calendarium Cassoviense, ad Annum JESU CHRISTI MDCCXLVIII (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis Societatis JESU); “Athanasii Kircheri Itineris exstatici in globum Martis,” in Calendarium Cassoviense, ad Annum JESU CHRISTI MDCCLIII (Cassoviae: Typis Academicis Societatis JESU); “Epistolae Matthiae Corvini Regis Hungariae ad pontifices, imperatores, reges, principes, aliosque viros illustres,” in Calendarium Cassoviense (1765).


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The phenomenon of mixing elite and popular culture has been considered by Peter Burke from the perspective of the broader context of early modern popular culture: the presence (and gradual withdrawal) of elite culture while attempting to “reform” and enlighten popular culture.57 Such efforts to transform and control knowledge are apparently present in the almanacs of Nagyszombat. It is worth further investigating the sources of the knowledge they transmitted about non-European cultures and the kind of audiences they were intended for.

The micro-perspective: A close reading of the ethnographical-anthropological knowledge

contained in the Nagyszombat almanacs

The ethnographical-anthropological knowledge conveyed in the Jesuit almanacs of Nagyszombat was entirely international in character. It did not derive from Jesuit sources alone, and in certain cases it could even be qualified as being of global relevance, as it concerned various aspects of non-European cultures. The geographical world of the treatises—as can be deduced, for example, from the Dissertatio prima geographica (1691)—comprised four areas: Europe, Asia, Africa and America. To these, two other regions were added: one to be found below the Arctic Pole, and the other below the Subarctic. The former region comprised, for example, Greenland, Iceland, Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya, while the second consisted of an imagined vast southern land, a terra incognita of which only certain coastal parts were (thought to be) known, such as New Guinea, the “region of parrots” (Regio psittacorum), and various islands of the Pacific Ocean.58

The ethnographical-anthropological knowledge of such a world was composed, on the one hand, of the concepts and descriptions passed on by the ancients—Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Aelian, Solinus, etc.—to Euro-pean culture, including descriptions of marginal cultures that were deemed barbarian. On the other hand, it consisted of a huge amount of miscel-laneous oral and written information and knowledge transmitted to East-Central Europe firstly through the works of Catholic missionaries such as

57 P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London 1978), especially 207–243. 58 Dissertatio prima geographica, republished in 1691 in Szentiványi, Curiosa et selectiora … decadis decundae, pars prima (Tyrnaviae 1691), 11. The same division of the inhabited world was also used in D. Frölich, Medulla geographiae ([Bártfa] 1639).


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Father Josephus Anchieta (on Brazil), Father Rochus Gonzalez (on Paraguay), Father Ludovicus Valdivia (on Peru and Chile) and Father Franciscus Zarfatus (on Nova Hispania and Mexico); and secondly from late medieval and early modern Western and Southern European travel-lers, navigators and historians of the New World such as Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, Marco Polo, Peter Martyr d’Anghiera, Pedro Cieza de León, Juan Ponce de León, Fernando Oviedo and many others.59

However, the three works most often cited by Father Szentiványi in his treatises of anthropological relevance were three great (more or less) contemporary summaries of natural history, written and published outside East-Central Europe. The first, the Historia naturae, was the work of the Spanish Jesuit theologian Juan Eusebio Nieremberg and was published in Antwerp in 1635.60 The second was that of the sixteenth-century Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, the Monstrorum historia (History of mons-ters), which was published posthumously in Bologna in 1642.61 The third work, the Physica curiosa sive mirabilia naturae et artis of 1662, was by the German Jesuit theologian Gaspar Schott, already referred to above.62 All three books were available in the library of the University of Nagy-szombat in the time of Father Szentiványi.63

While Father Szentiványi drew on Aldrovandi’s Monstrorum historia for various data on unusual or “monstrous” plants, animals and anthropo-morphic creatures, including acephalous men,64 he frequently extracted entire sentences, or even paragraphs, from the two Jesuit works (especially Schott’s), commenting on them, adding intratextual notes, and publishing them in his treatises. Aldrovandi, for example, provided him with a description of the so-called Rhinoceros avis, the Rhinoceros Hornbill of

59 It is in the field of botany in particular that Hungarian scholars have recognised Father Szentiványi’s scientific contribution. He described many exotic plants to an East-Central European readership, relying on the works of overseas missionaries sent to the University of Nagyszombat. Bikfalvi, P. Szentiványi Márton SJ emlékezete; Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története, 49–50. 60 J. E. Nieremberg, Historia naturae maxime peregrinae, libris XVI. distincta (Antwerp 1635). It was owned by the ancient library of the University of Nagy-szombat, but the copy has been lost from the library of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. 61 U. Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia. Cum paralipomenis historiae omnium animalium (Bologna 1642). 62 Schott, Physica curiosa. 63 See Sz. Kristóf, “Missionaries, Monsters.” 64 §. XXIII, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690.


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South East Asia, which had a huge, colourful horn on its forehead,65 and of the moray eel, which at that time was depicted as “bearded.”66 However, it is from the Historia naturae of Nieremberg and the Physica curiosa of Schott that he took the great majority of his information on the flora and fauna of the non-European world, especially America and its inhabitants, including the variety of human forms. Apart from emphasising the importance he attributed to specifically Jesuit scholarship, this fact also suggests that Father Szentiványi tended to draw on Jesuit (and scholastic) sources without distinguishing between them according to the date of publication and the accuracy of the data they contained. It was on the basis of texts by the sixteenth-century travellers Maximilianus Transylvanus, Antonio Pigafetta and other authors that the treatise Dissertatio philologa, de homine presented a people living somewhere in the Moluccas that had unusually long ears that reached down to their shoulders. This treatise was inserted in a Nagyszombat almanac in as late as 1709. It also described how another people (the Turanochas), mentioned by Nieremberg in 1635, had even bigger ears, so big that they actually reached the ground and six people could gather beneath them.67 Nieremberg (among others) was also the source of citations by Father Szentiványi of other examples of people with unusually big ears, belonging among the “men of the woods,” and the same work was the source for Szentiványi’s description of a people living beside a lake in California who would submerge themselves in the water for the night to sleep. These examples were included in his 1690 treatise, which also referred to fish, birds, satyrs, sirens and the “man of the sea” (homo marinus) along with other half-human, half-animal creatures of classical antiquity.68

Gaspar Schott’s work was also frequently used as a source for the dissertationes. It is from Schott’s Physica curiosa that Father Szentiványi cited—word for word—a reference to the “men of the woods” that were said to live in America.69 However, it is from the same work that he voices

65 §. XX 27, “Aucupium Philosophicum, Seu Dissertatio Physica Curiosa De Avibus,” in Calendarium 1695. 66 §. XIII, “Piscatio Philosophica, seu Dissertatio Physica de Piscibus,” in Calendarium 1697. 67 §. VIII, “Dissertatio Philologa, De Homine,” in Calendarium 1709. 68 §. XX, XXI, XXII, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690; §. VIII, X, XIV, XV, “Dissertatio Philologa, De Homine,” in Calendarium 1709. 69 “ut multorum annorum experientia, hoc et praeterito saeculo docuit multis in locis, et praesertim in noviter repertis Americae Regionibus” is an exact citation from Schott, Physica curiosa, 395. See §. XXII, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690.


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his doubts concerning the existence of, among other things, the huge-eared people, again quoting word for word.70 Although the power of Jesuit authority may have guided him to a greater extent than the actual relevance of the information, it is clear that a demand for relevant know-ledge and a critical approach to the information received, being present in contemporary Jesuit discourse, were transferred to his treatises, too. In the long term, this critical attitude may have contributed to the emerging requirements of ethnography-anthropology as a science of empirical description.

In his excellent study of the “crisis of the European mind” between 1680 and 1715,71 Paul Hazard has contributed greatly to our understanding of the way in which contemporary ethnographical-anthropological know-ledge was processed by Father Szentiványi. Examining more or less the same period as that covered by the Nagyszombat almanacs, and discussing written and figurative representations in Western Europe, Hazard was able to grasp an important attitude, a peculiar relationship to the surrounding world that can apparently also be found to some extent in Father Szentivá-nyi’s treatises of anthropological relevance. It is, in Hazard’s words, a negation of wonders, a kind of uncertainty and a growing distrust. It is an emerging intellectual, scholarly suspicion and criticism.72

The representation of the “distant other” seems to be inscribed in the Nagyszombat almanacs via an intellectual process of rationalisation pinpointed by Hazard, Keith Thomas and, more recently, Joan-Pau Rubiés, which turns gradually against the old scholastic ways of thinking and which seems to be present to a limited extent throughout Europe at that

70 “Ego ut non nego homines reperiri, quibus solito majores sunt aures, ita ut credam tantae esse magnitudinis ut dictum, adduci vix possum; putoque pleraque hyperbolica dicta,” is an exact citation from Schott, Physica curiosa, 400. See §. XXV, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690. 71 P. Hazard, La Crise de la conscience européenne, 1680–1715 (Paris 1961). 72 Ibid., 149–170. Elements of a similar scepticism concerning “wonders” are described in late 17th- and 18th-century Protestant England by Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 79–80. For the intellectual foundations of Jesuit science culti-vated during the late 17th and 18th century in the University of Nagyszombat and its place between scholasticism and Enlightenment, see Rapaics, “A természet-tudomány,” 257–267; Cs. Csapodi, “Két világ határán. Fejezet a magyar felvilágo-sodás történetéről” [On the frontier of two worlds. A chapter from the history of Enlightenment in Hungary], Századok 79–80 (1945–1946), 85–137. The most recent history of physics at the University of Nagyszombat does not show great appreciation of Father Szentiványi: the author qualifies him as no more than “an anti-Copernican Jesuit polymath.” See Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története, 15, 46.


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time.73 In the case of the University of Nagyszombat, however, a peculiar Jesuit version of such scientific criticism and the rationalisation of know-ledge is identifiable, and also had its limits. If we take a closer look at the treatises of Father Szentiványi, we find that those of anthropological rele-vance relating to distant geography are intended, among other things, to teach two important things to their readers: what should and should not be thought about the distant regions and their inhabitants, and how exactly the flora and fauna there should be imagined. In other words, what might be expected of the non-European “other,” and what might not. It is worth noting here that an entire treatise devoted to dubious or false phenomena is inserted in the 1690 almanac, certain points of which occur in other dissertations, too.74 Although the religious authorities (the Bible, the Church Fathers and contemporary Jesuit writers) are not questioned,75 a distinction is often drawn between things that have truly been seen and things that have only been heard about. In the case of the “land of the pygmies (or dwarfs),” for example, the 1690 treatise argues that, unlike individual dwarfs, a whole region of them has never been seen but is something known about only from “reports.” A long series of linguistic formulas are also used in connection with “wondrous” phenomena in order to indicate their dubious value: fama est, dicuntur, narrantur, sic tradunt alii, sic proditur, ita audio, ita retulerunt.76

Things that should be regarded as dubious, unlikely or incredible fre-quently appear either under the subtitle Admiranda towards the end of the treatises, or are qualified by appropriate adjectives (dubiosus, fabulosus, falsus, etc.). This happens in the case of the Blemijs, or acephalous men of Ethiopia, for example. In the 1690 treatise Father Szentiványi argues that, on the one hand, headless men have never been seen, and, on the other, that men need heads as the location of many of their senses, without which they cannot exist: “From which it is evident that acephalous men and people are either entirely fabulous,” or they do in fact have heads—here he cites Aldrovandi—attached directly to their chests.77 Father Szentiványi provided a similarly sober and empirical explanation of the “dog-headed men,” located in India by classical authors and subsequently in the land of

73 Hazard, La Crise de la conscience, 149–170; Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 51–81; Rubiés, Travellers and Cosmographers, 237–263. 74 “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690. 75 As, for example, in the case of the existence of giants: “tam scripturae Sacrae authoritate, quam variis antiquis aeque et recentioribus demonstratur exemplis.” §. XVII, ibid. 76 §. XVIII, ibid. 77 §. XXIII, ibid.


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the Tartars by Giovanni da Pian del Carpine and Marco Polo. They may be “dog-headed,” he argues, but they are surely not human beings, merely apes that look like humans and that are clever enough to imitate the beha-viour of the latter.78 The Jesuit Gaspar Schott was often relied on as an authority in decisions as to what could be real and what could not, and thus in what could be expected in certain places and what could not. As for the “men of wondrous deformations,” in the same almanac Father Szent-iványi quoted a whole paragraph, word for word, from Schott’s Physica curiosa.79 Along with Schott, he suggested that it was difficult to believe there could be men without mouths or tongues, as classical authors like Pliny, Solinus or Mela had claimed, placing them in India or Ethiopia. The claim that people could exist without the use of language and could communicate only by bowing and other gestures was, he argued, either completely false or at last extremely dubious.80

An analysis of the case of satyrs and other monstrous creatures shows that there were two main ways of interpreting these dubious apparitions in contemporary Jesuit religious-scholastic thinking—and that both ways were taught to readers of the Nagyszombat almanacs. One of these, as mentioned above, was that monstrous apparitions were merely fables, written on the basis of “dubious and uncertain hearsay.” The other was that they could and should be considered the work of Satan and his demons, and thus should be taken seriously. The second interpretation was relied on especially in the case of the various anthropomorphic creatures of classical antiquity, but it provided a more general pattern, too, to ex-plain some of the incomprehensible phenomena encountered outside Europe by contemporary travellers and missionaries. “It is not to deny that centaurs, satyrs or fauns should be considered ill-willed demons who took such monstrous shape in order to frighten men,” argued Father Szentivá-nyi, adding that they also served to “increase superstition among the heathen, and to divert them from the cult of the divine.”81

As such examples testify, a certain kind of demonisation was also being taught in the Nagyszombat almanacs, and it is this particular interpretation that indicates the limits of the whole tendency of the Jesuit rationalisation of knowledge.82 Beyond the cases enumerated in the treatises as possibili-

78 §. XXIV, ibid. 79 Schott, Physica curiosa, 401–402. 80 §. XXV, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690. 81 §. XXI, ibid. 82 On the early modern demonisation of the “other,” see, for example, S. Gruzinski, De l’idolâtrie. Une archéologie des sciences religieuses (Paris 1988); F. Cervantes, The Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain


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ties of demonic intervention (centaurs, monsters, etc.), it is lycanthropy and other transformations into beasts that best demonstrate how contemporary Jesuits were indeed counting with the influence of Satan in the world. On the one hand, Father Szentiványi gave an affirmative answer to the question of the existence of diabolic presence and influence in 1690: “The work of demons,” he argued, “could transform human beings into beasts,” especially wolves. He cited a number of examples from Pomponius Mela (referring to Scythia), Saint Augustine and Olaus Magnus (referring to Prussia, Livonia and Lithuania). He by no means regarded such transformations as impossible (nor did other Jesuit scholars such as Martinus Delrio, whose work was also available in the library of the University of Nagyszombat),83 although he seemed to place greater emphasis on the argument that they were only delusions created by the demons themselves. He also thought it reasonable to mention the existence of several physicians who argued that it was rather the densification of humours (especially bile) that made human beings think they had transformed themselves into wolves.84 A similarly careful argument was repeated in the case of transformations into cats, horses, asses and other animals, or transformations known, for example, as witchcraft (and cited in the work of Martinus Delrio, among others). It was again Gaspar Schott’s interpretation that Father Szentiványi most relied on in being rather cautious in judging the earthly influence of demons.85

The target readership and the impact of the anthropological knowledge conveyed by the Nagyszombat almanacs

While they all followed a general, possibly European, pattern, it is undoubtedly the place of publication that played a significant role in the style of the Jesuit almanacs of Nagyszombat—that is, the way they merged popular and learned discourses as described above. The Nagy-szombat almanacs were apparently aimed primarily at an academic reader-ship (students and professors), along with other interested readers with a (New Haven 1994); W. D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Colonization (Ann Arbor 1995); J. Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic 1550–1700 (Stanford 2006). For Eastern Europe, see I. Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Demonology,” and, especially in relation to the early modern Jesuit context of Trnava, id., “Missionaries, Monsters.” 83 M. Del Rio, Disquisitionum magicarum libri sex. In tres tomos partiti (Mainz 1603); See I. Sz. Kristóf, “Missionaries, Monsters.” 84 §. XXX, “Dissertatio … de rebus falsae,” in Calendarium 1690. 85 §. XXXI, ibid.


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knowledge of Latin and capable of understanding the texts. Both these intended publics largely belonged, however, to the learned strata of con-temporary society. Father Szentiványi’s project of practical teaching con-cerned the middle and high(est) groups, the most educated and intel-lectually most open groups of late seventeenth-century Hungary. This characteristic of the target readership seems to continue into the first half of the eighteenth century, too, as suggested by a subtle reference to the intended readers of the Synopsis in 1720. It was “to satisfy the curiosity of the learned reader” that the Synopsis had gathered the names of the explo-rers, conquistadors, scholars and missionaries to America mentioned in the text.86

Even further distinctions can be drawn. The treatises on natural history and mission history may have been addressed in particular to the novices of evangelisation, the future missionaries, since the University of Nagy-szombat was also an institution for training in missionary work.87 After completing their studies in Seville, Spain, many of its students left for America (Mexico, Peru and Paraguay) to convert the native peoples, and also to Asia (India, China and Japan) from the middle of the seventeenth century.88 One focus of the scholarly project of the treatises inserted into the almanacs, that is, what was to be expected in distant lands in an ethnographical-anthropological sense, would have been particularly meaningful and important to them.

A more profound socio-cultural contextualisation, however, reveals other groups of target readers, such as the multi-ethnic (Hungarian, Slovak, German, etc.) citizens of Nagyszombat and the neighbouring regions who had a sufficient knowledge of Latin as the lingua franca and who were thus capable of using the almanacs for their own everyday purposes (e.g. observing the festivals, forecasting the weather, caring 86 “Continuatio. America,” in Calendarium 1720. 87 The East-Central European missionaries educated at the university during the 17th and 18th centuries are missing, for example, from the excellent edition by C. Blanckaert, La naissance de l’ethnologie? 88 On their overseas activity, see, among others, F. Pinzger, Magasztos eszmék útján [Following majestic ideas] (Budapest 1931); T. Ács, Magyarok Latin-Amerikában [Hungarians in Latin America] (Budapest 1944); L. Szabó, Magyar múlt Dél-Amerikában 1519–1900 [Hungarian past in South America] (Budapest 1982); L. Boglár, “XVIII. századi magyar utazók Dél-Amerikában” [18th-century Hungarian travellers in South America], Ethnographia 63 (1952), 449–461; Bartusz-Dobosi, Jezsuiták és conquistadorok; Sz. Kristóf, “The Uses of Demono-logy”; id., “Missionaries, Monsters”; D. Babarczi, “Magyar jezsuiták Brazíliában 1753–1760” [Hungarian Jesuits in Brazil, 1753–1760] (PhD diss., University of Szeged, 2013).


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about hygiene, practising divination, etc.). It should not be forgotten, however, that it was also partly from among such readers that future scholars (and missionaries) were recruited.

As for the intended impact—or meaning—of the ethnographical-anthropological knowledge conveyed in the almanacs, it formed part of a directed and controlled Jesuit master narrative of what could be regarded as expectable in distant lands. The fact that Father Szentiványi functioned as a literary censor perfectly symbolises the power of that narrative in late seventeenth-century Hungary. Jesuit learning and cultural influence trans-mitted an international (and internationally shared) stock of knowledge to Hungary. It seems that more than one way of interpreting “otherness” was transmitted in the Nagyszombat almanacs. Alongside paganisation, a cer-tain way of simplifying and exoticising the non-European “other,” along with various methods of demonisation (including “monsterisation”), co-existed with an emerging and more empirically oriented interest in non-Christian peoples and cultures. Such an overwhelmingly stereotypical appropriation of the “distant other,” based on the application of existing—medieval and Early Modern scholastic, geographical and demonological—clichés, seems fundamentally similar to descriptions by the scholars of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of the exploration and appropriation of non-European cultures in Western Christian culture.89 It should be emphasised, however, that the treatises—especially those of Father Szentiványi—and the critical, rationalising approach identifiable in them, may have contributed to the fact that demonisation did not become widespread in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Hungarian Jesuit missionary discourse.90

The intention of rationalisation is a highly important phenomenon. Although it would be an exaggeration to argue that ethnographical-anthropological description started as observers stopped believing in miracles, the dissertationes of Father Szentiványi and the Synopsis testify, in this respect, too, that there already existed at least two pathways for these emerging sciences in the late seventeenth century in the Kingdom of Hungary. One was a strictly religious discourse, while the other was a

89 A. Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man: The American Indian and the Origins of Comparative Ethnology (Cambridge 1990 [1982]); A. Grafton, with A. Shelford and N. Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge 1992); A. Pagden, European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism (New Haven 1993). 90 Hungarian scholarship, evaluating Father Szentiványi as a conservative scholar (see especially Zemplén, A felvidéki fizika története, 15, 46), should take into consideration this aspect, too. See Sz. Kristóf, “Missionaries, Monsters.”


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gradual tendency, embedded in the former, towards scepticism in the face wonders, and thus towards secularisation and the empirical observation and explanation of human cultures.

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