Mahaffy — The Origins of Learned Academies in Modern Europe. 441 



ItalianSf and Slavs among its members. But for want of State support 

 it died with its founder in 1508. Wars with the Turks, pestilences, and 

 religious differences prevented various other attempts from succeeding. The 

 spiritual conquest of the Empire by the Jesuits, which lasted from about 

 1590 to 1773,' acted as an insurmountable obstacle ; for though that famous 

 Order always valued letters and even science, both could only be studied 

 under its supervision. They obtained control of the faculties in Vienna in 

 1627, and founded universities in their own sense in Graz (Styria) and Prag 

 (Bohemia), the strongholds of southern Protestantism, from which their 

 counter-Keformation had swept out the Evangelical creed. But when Paris 

 and Berlin had founded Academies, Leibnitz thought it high time (1704) to 

 persuade the head of the Holy Roman Empire (Leopold I) to make a like 

 foundation in Vienna. For this purpose he came repeatedly to this capital ; 

 he had the support of the famous Prince Eugene of Savoy, and proposed the 

 founding, not of an Academy — for that title, he says, has become rather 

 cheap — but an Imperial Society of Sciences, combining the objects of the 

 French Academy and our Pioyal Society. He even included practical sciences 

 in his scheme. As elsewhere, he proposed to raise means by the monopoly of 

 the Calendar and taxes on various luxuries. The whole thing seemed settled 

 in 1715, for the Emperor had formally consented, when a new war with the 

 Turks and Leibnitz' death put an end to the almost realized scheme. The 

 famous Leipzig Professor Gottsched made another attempt in 1749. But his 

 plan, which would have made the Academy like our Eoyal Dublin Society in 

 character, though seriously discussed, ended in failure — again owing to 

 financial objections. The suppression of the Jesuits in 1773 immediately 

 produced renewed schemes for an Academy of Sciences free from theological 

 control; but the Empress Maria Theresa had no liking for it, and would not 

 promote it. Her successors were wrestling with great wars, and with the 

 dangerous poison of revolutionary ideas. 



The Napoleonic crisis had long passed before a group of learned men 

 resiuned the attack upon the Imperial Government, reminding it that in all 

 Europe there was but one other capital, Constantinople, which did not possess 

 such a Society. Their efforts failed for several years, being delayed by official 

 stupidity and political suspicions, till Metternich, when Prime Minister, at 

 last determined to play the part of Pdchelieu in France, and sketched out a plan 

 quite on the lines of the petitions of the learned ; and so the Academy was 

 brought into real existence. But the police authorities were still insisting 

 upon supervision of the papers and proceedings of the new body, when the 



' The date of the famous Bull, Bominus ac JCalemptoy iioaur, «hich suppressed them. 



