Page - 121 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

121Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science astronomical activity eventually gained a mention in the Ephemerides. The episode is nonetheless interesting and important due to its conformity with the procedural and ethical norms of scientific sociability. It illustrates the at- tention Hell as a responsible metropolitan man of science paid to information on high-standard work done among less fortunate circumstances at more ob- scure locations, and the importance he attached to promptly acknowledging the value of such endeavors. Second, while Protestants remained in a precari- ous situation across the Habsburg possessions, the appeal to the ideals of the supra-imperial Republic of Letters (“that common bond that unites all disci- plines in a sort of blood relationship”) as well as to sub-imperial patriotism (Ungaria, Patria nostra) enabled the Jesuit court astronomer and the Calvinist professor from the Hungarian countryside to communicate in a mutually re- spectful, even cordial tone. While there was certainly nothing marginal about Hatvani as a scholar, con- fessionally and geographically it is meaningful to perceive of his predicament in terms of marginality. Hell’s attitude was also quite open-minded toward an- other sort of marginality: the contributions of enthusiastic and proficient prac- titioners on the margins of the profession, usually called “amateurs.”82 Despite the obvious financial and practical challenge that the procurement of proper astronomical equipment and the development of a suitable observation site implied, there were a few in Hell’s network who cultivated astronomy as a mat- ter of leisure and pleasure. At the Castle Wetzlas near Pölla in Lower Austria, for instance, the nobleman Johann Felix von Ehrmans zum Schlug (dates un- known) built an observatory in 1729, which he and his son used to observe the Venus transit of 1761. A single letter from von Ehrmans to Hell is preserved, in which the former characterizes himself as a Liebhaber der Astronomie (ama- teur of astronomy), and asks for advice on where to obtain solar filters for his two telescopes, a one-foot and nine-inches long Gregorian, and a four-foot long Newtonian he had ordered at the instrument-maker Schulz in Vienna.83 In the subsequently published report of the Venus transit of 1761, Hell accords several pages to the observations of this nobleman, explaining that he had once been a pupil of the court mathematician Marinoni, from whom he had 82 The category of the scientific amateurs, with well-attested equivalents in various languag- es as amantes, Liebhabern, or dilettanti, has been the object of several sociological studies of the history of science; see, e.g., the special issue of Gesnerus: Swiss Journal for the His- tory of Medicine and Sciences 73, no. 2 (2016), especially the editors’ introduction: Hervé Guilleman and Nathalie Richard, “Towards a Contemporary Historiography of Amateurs in Science (18th–20th Century),” 201–37; cf. Aspaas, Maximilianus Hell, 37–8. 83 Felix Freyherr von Ehrmans zum Schlug to Hell in Vienna, dated Wetzlas, May 8, 1761 (wus, secretary’s copy).