Matthias Bel and the Russian Academic Milieu during the Enlightenment

Abstract

Since the 1950s the Czech, Slovak, and Hungarian scholars have carried out research aimed at analysing the personal correspondence of Matthias Bel, a Hungarian polymath and one of the most significant intellectuals of the first half of the 18th century in the Habsburg monarchy. Analysis of Bel’s letters has revealed many interesting facts about Bel’s life as a Baroque scholar. It has also brought to light the sphere of his collaborations with various colleagues, both domestic and foreign ones. Amongst Bel’s contacts, there were also German scientists from the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, most importantly, Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer and Christian Goldbach. With the recent emergence of the projects supporting the publication of the bilingual Latin-Slovak translations of Bel’s major work Notitia Hungariae novae historico geographica, historians have been seeking for to widen a range of its possible interpretations or to compare Bel’s opus magnum with similar works of his contemporaries. The study thus focuses on the analysis of a trace, which Bel’s communication left in the Russian historical milieu in the first half of the 18th century. On the basis of historical sources, and with corresponding relevant scholarship, a connection with Vasilii Nikitich Tatishchev’s work Istoriia rossiiskaia is outlined. With Bayer being in contact with both Bel and Tatishchev, a rather unexpected bridge was built between the Hungarian and Russian science in the era of the early Enlightenment. The aim of the study is to introduce new, and yet unpublished discoveries about the work of Matthias Bel and Vasilii Nikitich Tatishchev.