Page - 148 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 3148 three-foot telescope equipped with a micrometer and a lens that he himself had darkened. However, according to Hell, Müller’s observation of the final contact of Venus with the limb of the Sun was not exact enough, “probably because the correction of the clock’s time-keeping had not been made in the way it should.”29 The third amateur mentioned by Hell was an anonymous merchant (Mercator quidam), who had observed the transit in a suburban gar- den, using “an exquisite telescope.” However, since this merchant had no more than the public clock (indicating only the minutes, not the seconds) at his dis- posal, his successful observation of both the interior and exterior contact at egress was of little scientific value.30 The rhetorical value of the account of these Viennese amateurs, none of whom had contributed anything of substance, worked in tandem with another public purpose: that of demonstrating the capability of members of the Soci- ety of Jesus, and of the Austrian province in particular, to instigate, coordinate, and publish scientific observations. In the historiography of the transits of Ve- nus, the Jesuit involvement has generally not been emphasized. A closer look at Hell’s report gives ample reason to reconsider the master narrative, in which the Venus transit projects of the 1760s are depicted as predominantly Franco- British—and secular—endeavors. Hell’s text is partitioned according to the designations Germania (including Austria), Gallia (France), Anglia, Hispania, Italia, Hungaria, Polonia, Svecia (Sweden, including Finland), and Moscovia (Russia). Yet this seemingly innocent division conceals a bias, which merits some consideration. No deconstruction can, however, take away from Hell his success in demonstrating the important contributions of Jesuit science, and of Vienna as a capital, to the international Venus transit project of 1761. Alongside the above-mentioned Jesuit professor Herbert, the transit was ob- served in the imperial observatory by Hell’s assistant, the Jesuit magister Ignaz Rain (dates unknown), titled repetens matheseos (assistant teacher of mathe- matics). At their side was the young canon Dominik Lysogorski, who had been sent to Hell as a student by the archbishop of Lviv in 1758 or 1759.31 Having 29 Hell, “Observatio transitus Veneris […] 1761,” 21. 30 Hell, “Observatio transitus Veneris […] 1761,” 21. 31 Hell, “Observatio transitus […] 1761,” 17. Lysogorski’s identity is somewhat obscure. Several years later, in a letter to the bishop of Eger, Károly Eszterházy (cf. above, 129–30), Hell mentions that a priest by the name of Lysogorski had been sent in 1758 to study mathe- matics with him by the archbishop of Lviv, Wacław Hieronim Sierakowski (1700–80). Hell to Eszterházy in Eger, Vienna, February 17, 1777. fle, AV, 2629; in Hell, “Observatio transi- tus […] 1761,” 89, the year 1759 is stated. In a letter to the professor of geography at the College Royal (now Collège de France) in Paris, Hell explains that “the friar Lysogorski […] lived in my observatory as a guest for two years, where I instructed him in both kinds of