Page - 125 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

125Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 1761.95 While Hell was the first local astronomer he met there after disembark- ing the boat that had carried him down the Danube from Ulm, Cassini de Thury joined the observation of the famous transit of Venus before the Sun on June 5, 1761—which will be discussed in detail below—at Liesganig’s observatory. Besides his cooperation with Cassini de Thury, Liesganig was also the main Viennese contact of Boscovich, and this gives occasion to consider the relationship—or rather, the apparent lack of it—between the great Dalmatian savant and Hell. Boscovich stayed in Vienna for long periods in the late 1750s and early 1760s, and during the mid-1760s he held a position as professor of mathematics at the collegium in Pavia, which was under Habsburg rule.96 It would be hard to imagine that he never met Hell.97 There are some affinities among their publications, too. In his Dissertationes quinque ad dioptricam per- tinentes (Five articles on dioptrics [1767]), Boscovich presented a refutation of the existence of a moon of Venus based on similar arguments to those that Hell resorted to in his De satellite Veneris (Of the satellite of Venus), published only two years earlier. Boscovich’s work was even published by the same publisher as Hell’s, Trattner in Vienna (where a German translation by Scherffer also ap- peared in the same year). However, Boscovich makes no reference at all to the work of his confrère.98 95 See, e.g., Sven Widmalm, “Accuracy, Rhetoric, and Technology: The Paris–Greenwich Tri- angulation,” in The Quantifying Spirit of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Tore Frängsmyr, John L. Heilbron, and Robin E. Rider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 179–206; Simone Dumont and Suzanne Débarbat, “Delisle–Cassini iii: Deux pèlerins de la cartog- raphie scientifique en Europe centrale et orientale,” Revue xyz 18, no. 67 (1996): 70–76; Moutchnik, Forschung und Lehre, 86–90; Cassini de Thury’s visit and his collaboration with Liesganig was also important for the development of cartographic projects within the Habsburg monarchy, see Veres, “Constructing Imperial Spaces,” 364–80. Hell gave an account of this collaboration to Lalande in Paris, in a letter dated Vienna, June 12, 1761, reproduced in Per Pippin Aspaas, “Le père jésuite Maximilien Hell et ses relations avec Lalande,” in Jérôme Lalande (1732–1807): Une trajectoire scientifique, ed. Guy Boistel, Jérôme Lamy, and Colette LeLay (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 129–48. 96 Boscovich visited Vienna in the period April 1757–March 1758 and again in January–May 1762. Hill, “Roger Boscovich,” 47–51 and 79; cf. 79–83 on Boscovich’s period in Pavia. 97 According to some of the literature, “Boscovich was in contact with Hell,” a claim ad- vanced on the ground of the parallel roles of Hell and Boscovich in the design and construction of astronomical observatories. However, no evidence is presented for such contact. Harris, “Boscovich, the ‘Boscovich Circle,’” 538. 98 On these grounds, the monographer of the issue of the moon of Venus concludes that “there is no indication in the literature that Hell and Boscovich were in contact with one another.” Kragh, Moon That Wasn’t, 85. It may be of interest that Hell seems to have tried to make sure Boscovich read his book on the moon of Venus. In a fragmentary draft for a