Page - 101 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

101Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science except that he was an astronomer noted on account of his reliable calculations by Bernoulli in his Recueil pour les astronomes (Anthology for the astronomers [1771–73]). Two letters from him to Hell, both dated Bratislava in the spring of 1759, are preserved. Schumacher there presents himself as an almanac editor and astronomer who has previously stayed in Transylvania and the eastern parts of Hungary. He has had little success so far, but is determined to linger on in Hungary until God decides otherwise.37 Soon afterward, he appears to have returned to Germany, where he had been born, and died in Leipzig in dire cir- cumstances. As a Protestant, he is said to have “mocked” Catholics for having missed celebrating Easter on the proper date.38 While this was not “supersti- tion,” it naturally called for an academically sound defense of “Easter as it is practiced in the Roman Catholic Church,” which Hell undertook in the book- let. He underscored that he wrote this text on the paschal celebration “in the truly vulgar civic mother tongue” (in der gänz gemeinen bürgerlichen Mutter- sprach) because he wanted to reach the “common man” (gemeine Mann).39 Latin functioned well in learned communication, but Hell was willing to switch language in order to reach the public of the calendars. To return to the fourth point of the instruction and the final remark of the fifth one, the public aspects of the appointment appear in them in a different guise. They articulate an endeavor to strike a name for Vienna on an interna- tional plane by integrating the institution with state-of-the-art work in the field and making the imperial capital competitive in this regard—the same as the reforms of finances, the administration, the military, and so on taking place in the same period were to achieve in these respective areas. From early on, Hell indeed started to make international contacts. This can be perceived not only from the appendices of his Ephemerides, which give an idea of a rapidly expanding network, but also from entries in prestigious journals like the Nova  acta eruditorum (New transactions of the learned) of Leipzig or the Jour- nal des Sçavans (Journal of scholars) of Paris.40 What survives of Hell’s letters Innschrift Untersuchung der Oster-Feyer von Anno 1700. bis 2500. verfasset und Anno 1760. in Druk gegeben hat (Vienna: Trattner, 1760). 37 Schumacher to Hell in Vienna, dated Bratislava, March and May 1, 1759 (wus, secretary’s copy). 38 Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 1:62. 39 Hell, Kurzer Unterricht, preface, unpaginated. 40 See, e.g., Nova acta eruditorum for February 1762, 49–58; Journal des Sçavans (hereafter: JS) (October 1761): 672–75. As for the latter case, there is a copy of a letter from Hell to the edi- tors of the journal in Paris, dated Vienna, March 18, 1761 (Universitätssternwarte Wien; hereafter: wus), explicitly asking for a review of the Ephemerides.