Ex-Jesuit Librarian-Scholars Adam František Kollár and György Pray: Baroque Tradition, National Identity, and the Enlightenment among Jesuits in the Eastern Habsburg Lands

Abstract

The former Jesuits Adam František Kollár and György Pray each devoted much of their careers to work in libraries; thereby contributing to the literary and scholarly culture of the eastern Habsburg lands during the second half of the eighteenth century. Kollár, who left the Jesuits early in his career, authored works defending the rights of the Hungarian crown, and chronicled the history of the Rusyn people, ultimately achieved an international reputation as a scholar, coining the term ethnologia. Pray is remembered for his discovery of the oldest written example of the Hungarian language, his extensive historical publications, and for his role, following the papal suppression of 1773, as “Historiographus Hungariae” (Hungary’s hagiographer). The impact of these scholarly efforts by these former Jesuits was a rich and enduring foundation upon which later Hungarian historiography and library science would be based.

Editors’ note

“…Ethnology has deep roots. Its earliest iterations have been traced back to 1783, when Adam František Kollár, a Slovak librarian and scholar, first envisioned ethnologia as “the science of nations and peoples” (Vermeulen, 2006, p. 132; see also Shore, 2019; Golub, this issue). The ultimate purpose of this new science, Kollár explained, was to “inquire into the origins, languages, customs, and institutions of various nations, and finally into the fatherland and ancient seats, in order to be able better to judge the nations and peoples in their own times” (Vermeulen, 2006, p. 132).…”

“…Focused on generating cross‐cultural comparisons, in order to both delineate specific cultural groups and trace their historical development, the new approach to knowledge purported to be objective and scientific, but it was far from politically neutral. As a defender of the Habsburg monarchy and a recipient of its largesse, Kollár—and then other scholars of Völkerkunde (ethnology), with their partisan interests—left a fraught legacy (Shore, 2019; Vermeulen, 2006). Over subsequent centuries, ethnological claims have been used to galvanize nationalist movements, fuel land claims, and buttress demands for political representation.…”