Page - 141 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

141The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame experience in astronomy, this illustrated manual12 was widely disseminated, even well beyond the Habsburg territories (see fig. 5). In parallel, Hell offered assistance with the placing of orders at the instrument-makers of Vienna, thereby forging new—and consolidating existing—contacts with profession- als as well as amateurs of science.13 An underlying strategic scheme was set in action: this was an opportunity not only for Hell personally but also for Vienna as a “capital of science,” and not least for the Austrian province of the Society of Jesus, to manifest itself as a fully integral part of the contemporary Republic of Letters, with its ideological focus on “utility” and the expansion of knowl- edge through the dissemination of scientific practices to an ever-growing seg- ment of society. Nowhere in the existing sources is Hell more outspoken on these aspects than in a letter to Christian Rieger (1714–80), who had just left a professorship in Vienna to teach mechanics, astronomy, and other exact sciences at the Co- legio Imperial in Madrid. Rieger was one of the Austrian Jesuits who found a career opportunity within the order outside their native province. He was born in Vienna and entered the Society of Jesus in 1731. Having taught for a while, probably at gymnasium level, in Gorizia (Goritia, Görz), he received his first chair as a professor of architecture at the Theresianum in 1748, before switch- ing to experimental physics in the period from 1753 to 1756. Probably as an ex- tension of this, Rieger was employed briefly as the prefect of the Museum Mathematicum in 1756–57, but for the university years 1757 to 1760 he was a professor of mathematics in Vienna. Whether he was called upon or sought himself to go elsewhere is unclear, but in 1760 he made a giant leap to Madrid, where he taught mechanics, mathematics, physics, and astronomy at the Cole- gio Imperial until 1765. In the 1750s and 1760s, Rieger published textbooks on architecture in Latin and Spanish, as well as a handful of works on astronomy and experimental physics, including electricity. Rieger observed the transit together with Spanish colleagues, and published a report in Spanish that was also summarized in Hell’s Ephemerides. In 1765, Rieger returned to the Austri- an  province to become rector of the Jesuit college in Passau and then Ljubl- jana. After the suppression of the Society, he resumed his teaching at the 12 Maximilian Hell, Transitus Veneris per discum Solis anni 1761: Die Astronom. 5. Junii calculis definitus et methodis observandi illustratus (Vienna: Trattner, 1760), also distributed along with most copies of the Ephemerides for the year 1761. 13 See, e.g., Hell to Christian Mayer in Heidelberg, February 9, March 12, and April 10, 1761; Hell to Ximenez in Florence, February 18, 1761; Freyherr von Ehrmans zum Schlug to Hell in Vienna, dated Wezlas, May 8, 1761 (all wus).