Page - 149 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

149The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame spent more than two years in Hell’s observatory, Lysogorski left Vienna soon after the observation of the transit with the intention to lay the foundations for an astronomical observatory at his home university of Lviv, which—as Hell was careful to remark—already hosted a decent number of Jesuit professors.32 Lviv belonged at the time to the Kingdom of Poland–Lithuania. Only one pub- licly known observation from this realm—namely from Kraków—was men- tioned by Hell, who suppressed the identity of its author and without further ado rejected it as “highly imperfect” (valde imperfecta).33 The hope for the fu- ture there lay entirely with the Society of Jesus: not only was (the Jesuit-taught) Lysogorski in place at the (Jesuit-dominated) university of Lviv but also two mathematicians of our Society have been called from France, the professors Rossignol and Fleuret, who will begin to cultivate astronomy in Vilna […]. It is therefore to be hoped that, with these three men in place in Poland—which thus has in its ranks intellects no less brilliant than those of other kingdoms—a substantial number of new astrono- mers will be created.34 In this way, two entire pages are spent on Poland, without any transit observa- tions whatsoever being reported from there. The Jesuit aspect is similarly emphasized in other regions within the Habsburg monarchy and its sphere of interest. Given Hell’s later expressions of patriotism on behalf of his Hungarian patria, the subchapter titled “Observatio Tyrnaviensis in Hungaria (Observation of Trnava in Hungary)” is surprisingly astronomy [i.e., both theoretical and practical]. In July of this year, he returned to Poland with the necessary instrumentation; we expect very good observations from him in the future.” Hell to Zannoni in Paris, dated Vienna, December 16, 1761. Transcript of the origi- nal made by Bigourdan, kept at the Bibliothèque de l’Observatoire de Paris. 32 Hell, “Observatio transitus […] 1761,” 17, 89–90. 33 The printed report in question was surely Jakub Niegowiecki, Transitus Veneris per discum Solis post peractas revolutiones tam synodicas quàm periodicas intrà annos circiter 122. iterum anno domini 1761. die 6. Junii. celebratus et per mathematicos universitatis Cracovien- sis sub elevatione poli gr. 50. min. 12. observatus (Kraków, 1761), cf. Barbara Bieńkowska, “From Negation to Acceptance: The Reception of the Heliocentric Theory in Polish Schools in the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in The Reception of Copernicus’ Heliocentric Theo- ry, ed. Jerzy Dobrzycki (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972), 79–116, here 88–89. 34 Hell, “Observatio transitus Veneris […] 1761,” 89. As for the two characters, Rossignol and Fleuret, we have failed to find more information. They certainly do not figure in the offi- cial lists of Jesuit mathematicians working at the Collegium Vilnense during the eighteenth century. Karl A.F. Fischer, “Die Jesuiten-Mathematiker des Nordostdeutschen Kulturgebietes,” Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 34 (1984): 124–62, here 133–34.