Page - 103 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

103Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science Sciences of Paris shortly after the episode related above. This was the first time that a representative of the Austrian province of the Society of Jesus had re- ceived this honor,43 also marking the start of a close and long-standing— though sometimes rather strained—scientific cooperation between the impe- rial astronomer of Vienna and his colleagues in France. Hell’s surviving letters bear witness of a rather frequent correspondence with the major French con- temporary astronomers—Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (Abbé Lacaille [1713–62]), Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (1688–1768), Charles Messier (1730–1817), César- François Cassini de Thury (Cassini iii [1714–84]), the abbé Jean Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche (1722–69), Alexandre-Guy Pingré (1711–96), and Joseph-Jérôme Le- françois de Lalande (1732–1807)—from the late 1750s onward. The court as- tronomer of Vienna never visited France personally, and he never learned French well enough to speak or write it properly. This did not hamper commu- nication, however, as the French astronomers would tend to write their letters in their own language while Hell composed his in Latin. The same kind of bi- lingual communication probably took place whenever he received French- speaking visitors.44 Outside the German- and French-speaking world, in the early 1760s Hell forged contacts with colleagues at observatories in Madrid, St. Petersburg, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Padua, and Stockholm, using Latin in all cases.45 Correspondence with England (and election to membership in several other academies) came later. 43 In September 1758, astronomer Lacaille suggested Hell as a corresponding member. With support from Lacaille’s colleagues Giovanni Domenico (Jean Dominique) Maraldi (1709– 88) and Guillaume le Gentil de la Galaisière (1725–92), Hell was formally appointed a corresponding member of the Académie Royale des Sciences on December 23 of that year (Archives de l’Académie des sciences, Paris. Protocol de séances and Lettre de nomina- tion, signé par De Fouchy; also, Weiss to Hell in Vienna, dated Trnava, December 23, 1758 [wus, secretary’s copy]). According to the Connoissance des temps for 1760 (published 1759) and later editions, Hell’s formal correspondent at the academy initially was Lacaille. After the latter’s demise, his contacts were Delisle (1763–68) and Lalande (1769–92). 44 The first verifiable visits took place in 1761, when Chappe d’Auteroche passed by on his way to Tobolsk in Siberia, and Cassini de Thury arrived to observe the transit of Venus from the Jesuit observatory and to initiate a joint project of cartography. Cf. Jean Chappe d’Auteroche, Voyage en Sibérie fait par ordre du Roi en 1761, ed. Madeleine Pinault Sørensen and Michel Mervaud (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), entries from December 31, 1760 to January 8, 1761, 2:250–51; César-François Cassini de Thury, “Observation du passage de Vénus sur le Soleil, faite à Vienne en Autriche,” in Histoire de l’Académie Royale des Sci- ences (hereafter: hars) 1761 (published 1763), Mémoires, 409–12. 45 For a complete list of Hell’s extant correspondence, see “Metadata Serving as Basis for Il- lustrations of Maximilian Hell’s Network in the Book Maximilian Hell (1720–1792) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe by Per Pippin Aspaas and László Kontler