Page - 113 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

113Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science observers and the instruments used by them, and finally a collation of the data. Other astronomical observations are then reported at some length, besides places already familiar from above, also from Prague and Polling (Bavaria). The 1763 volume neglected observations, but in 1764 the picture about the  Transit enterprise was rounded off by reports on the expeditions to the Isle  of Rodrigues, Tranquebar (Tharangambadi), the Cape of Good Hope, and Tobolsk—Hell not failing to note, “benevolently communicated to me by that author [i.e., the Abbé Chappe d’Auteroche].”64 Hell also published, with his own explanations, the Swedish astronomer Anders Planman’s (Andreas Plan- mann [1724–1803]) tables of the calculations of the solar parallax by various scholars on the basis of the 1761 observations. In subsequent years, additional information source locations appeared in the appendix of the Ephemerides on astronomical observations: Uppsala, Lund, Pont-à-Mousson, Naples, Milan, Nancy, Toulon, Auxerre, Brest, Hamburg, Lviv (Lvov, Lwów, Leopolis, Lemberg) (1765); Greifswald, Finnmarchia, Blekinge, Berlin, Leipzig, Sagan, Altona, Wer- nigerode, Wrocław (Vratislavia, Breslau), Elblag (Elbing), Frankfurt am Oder (1766); Kremsmünster, Graz (1767); Copenhagen, Warsaw, Vilnius (1768). In 1768, Hell also published a separate set of observations from China, based on a manuscript of observations compiled by the Jesuit astronomer Augustin von Hallerstein (1703–74). In ten years from the launching of the Ephemerides, its coverage of astronomical observation activity reached continental dimen- sions, with a remarkable density especially in regard of the German-speaking territories. Finally, besides issuing tables of the Sun, the moon, and the planets of the solar system and widely collected observation results, supplements to the Ephemerides for the years 1763 and 1764 also contained new editions of the solar tables of Lacaille, the lunar tables of Tobias Mayer (1723–62), and the planetary tables of Cassini de Thury. These were precious items for any skilled astronomer. The way in which the information was collected is an interesting and impor- tant question, but it is difficult to provide a conclusive answer. As a broad gen- eralization, one may safely point to the operation of the “Jesuit network”: out of the fifty-three locations from which data were collected and published in the Ephemerides between 1758 and 1768, twenty were homes to Jesuit colleges with observatories,65 and the sources of the information from more exotic 64 Hell, Ephemerides 1764 (1763), 221. 65 Paris, Pont-à-Mousson, Rome, Bologna, Florence, Lyon, Milan, Naples, Madrid, Ingolstadt, Schwetzingen, Würzburg, Trnava, Graz, Vienna, Prague, Wrocław, Poznan, Lviv, Vilnius. To this number one may add places with Jesuit colleges that had no observatories but sup- plied Hell with data (such as Dillingen and Ljubljana), and two observatories maintained by other prestigious Catholic orders (Benedictines at Kremsmünster and Augustinians at