Page - 168 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 3168 the fruits [quonam autem fructu]? This whoever wishes to know, may un- derstand from reading the famous periodicals of France, the Journal des Sçavans, Journal étranger, or Ephem. Astronomicae Parisinae [i.e., the Connoissance des temps], as well as of Germany, the Göttingische Anzei- gen, and other astronomical books.97 Hell’s satisfaction was not unfounded. From 1758, the Journal des Sçavans re- ported on the appearance and the contents of the Ephemerides each year,98 at varying length, but usually in substantial detail. As hinted above, the awaken- ing of French interest in the Ephemerides may be ascribed to the operation of the “Jesuit network,” with two of Hell’s German Jesuit contacts, Mayer and Hu- berti, bringing the first volume to the attention of Parisian astronomers on the occasion of a visit in 1757 at the observatories of the French capital.99 In any case, given that the number of astronomical works reported and reviewed in this most widely circulated French review journal was a maximum of about half a dozen every year, the coverage it secured for the Ephemerides is quite noteworthy. From the point of view of publicity, polemical engagement with Hell’s positions in the Journal des Sçavans, as in the case of Trébuchet, was also far from being obviously of adverse effect:100 being regularly reported in the Journal des Sçavans, engaging responses from reputed figures of the French academic public, the Ephemerides and Hell earned as much notice among that public as was possible. A private, but very important response by Lalande—by this time, the most renowned French astronomer of his age, himself a highly prolific science writer and editor of the Connoissance, the French counterpart of the Ephemerides—in a letter to Weiss couched the French astronomer’s ad- miration for Hell in a comparison of his own significant textbook, the Astrono- mie (1764), with the famous Almagestum novum (New almagest [1651]) of Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598–1671): 97 Hell, Ephemerides 1776 (1775), 2 (Monitum). To the titles mentioned, Hell could have add- ed the Leipzig-based Nova acta eruditorum as well, which also published reviews of the Ephemerides from 1762 on. 98 See, e.g., the review of the Ephemerides for the year 1761 in the JS (October 1761): 672–75. This volume was sent by Hell to the editors of the journal with an explicit request for a review (letter from Hell to the editors of the journal, dated March 18, 1761; wus). Shortly afterward, a review of the Ephemerides for 1762 appeared in the Nova acta eruditorum (February 1762): 49–58. 99 Huberti to Hell, October 3, 1757. wus, Manuscripte Hell, vol. 3. 100 Another case was, more significantly, the critical letters of Lalande himself in February 1773 concerning the parallax calculations of both Hell and Lexell from the 1769 Venus transit, to be discussed below. JS (February 1773): 90–93, 113–15.