Page - 142 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 3142 Theresianum, though he no longer taught astronomical subjects.14 In his letter to Rieger, Hell states: The method of observing the transit of Venus across the disc of the Sun you have access to in my printed Ephemerides. However, since I obviously lack the funds needed to distribute my Ephemerides to every single one of my correspondents (who are really quite numerous), I have decided to make a separate edition of my treatise Transitus Veneris per discum Solis, six copies of which are here enclosed for you to distribute among your correspondents.15 We see here a new node of science in action. Given the strategic importance of the transit of Venus, the Ephemerides alone could no longer suffice: Hell em- ployed further means (printing and distributing a manual) to awaken interest in this particular observation. In a scientific culture permeated by the princi- ple of “favor for favor,” an implicit message in the distribution of the give-away copies was that recipients were more than welcome to report back to the au- thor what they observed.16 In the same letter, misguided notions of scientific inferiority in regard of the Jesuits of the Austrian province are jealously combated: Father Liesganig, who sends his greetings, hopes to be able to finish his measure of a degree of meridian by the beginning of this summer. 14 On Rieger, see the entries in Fischer, “Jesuiten-Mathematiker in der Deutschen Assistenz,” and in Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexikon (1874), 26:113; for the Madrid years, Agustín Udías, “Los libros y manuscritos de los profesores de matemáticas del Colegio Imperial de Madrid, 1627–1767,” Archivum historicum Societatis Iesu 74 (2005): 369–448; Victor Navarro Brotón, “Science and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Spain: The Contribution of the Jesuits before and after the Expulsion,” in O’Malley et al., Jesuits, 2:390–404. 15 Hell to Rieger in Madrid, February 6, 1761 (wus). 16 Similar wording is found in a wide range of letters from January until March 1761; e.g., Hell to Lacaille in Paris, January 31, 1761; Hell to Braun in St. Petersburg, February 8, 1761; Hell to Christian Mayer in Heidelberg, February 9, 1761; Hell to von Condie, March 2, 1761 (all wus). Also, comments on the Transitus Veneris manual were uttered in letters to Hell by Christian Mayer in Heidelberg, April 17, 1761; Lacaille in Paris, April 18, 1761; Messier in Paris to Hell, [May] 1761; Poleni in Padua, May 25, 1761 (all wus). In his letter to Lacaille, dated January 31, Hell says his work was meant solely for learners in astronomy: “The cop- ies of the Transitus Veneris per discum Solis you may distribute as you will among learners of astronomy, it is for their sake only that I decided to write it.” That many observers were inspired by the reception of this manual to report their Venus transit observations back to Hell is seen in the report he subsequently compiled and issued as an appendix to the Ephemerides for the year 1762 (more on this below).