Page - 284 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 6284 dangerous expedition, is emphasized at the outset, and the concluding lines are certainly full of flattery of both Hell and his sponsor, the king of Denmark, who “could have made no better choice than that of giving this task to Father Hell.”80 In-between, however, the reviewer raises some objections. “We are un- aware of what might have forced Father Hell to keep an important observation hidden for so long, while Europe’s astronomers made haste to publish their data,”81 Lalande states, without exploring the matter further. Furthermore, he strongly criticizes Hell’s determination of the latitude and longitude of Vardø, which Hell had calculated through a method—“hilarious,” according to the critique—differing from that explicated by Lalande in his Astronomie. He also disagrees with the Jesuit’s determination of the duration of the transit, ques- tioning his peculiar definition of the moments of “true contact” between Ve- nus and the limb of the Sun. However, all these objections did not detract from “the importance of this observation from Vardø, the most complete that we have received from the European north.”82 For all its criticism, then, Lalande’s official review was written in a sober style. The stinging sentence has to do with the incomprehensible “hiding” of the observation, but that is not the same as accusing the author of fraud. “Be- hind the scenes,” however, the tone was harsher. In a letter to the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, probably written immediately after receiving Hell’s report, Lalande raised queries about the belated communication of the Vardø obser- vation, adding threats which Hell found rather abusive. Lalande also charac- terized the Danish society as “virtually unknown” and wondered whether it planned to publish memoirs, and if so, when. Unfortunately, the original of the letter is lost, and we know its contents only from the travel diary of Sajnovics.83 It must be added that the criticism of Lalande was not shared by all Parisian savants. An anonymous reviewer in the Journal enyclopédique (Encyclopedic journal), May 1770, wrote very favorably about the Observatio and added flat- tery about “the thoroughness and clarity that are characteristic of him [i.e., Hell] and that render his works so useful for those who cultivate practical 80 JS (September 1770): 622. 81 JS (September 1770): 619. 82 JS (September 1770): 622. 83 Sajnovics’s travel diary 1768–70, entry on April 3, 1770 (wus): “A letter arrived from La- lande yesterday in which he rather arrogantly complains about the late communication of the observation to the astronomers of Paris, adding some rather abusive threats. To- ward the end of the letter, he characterizes the Danish Society of Sciences as virtually unknown, and asks if it plans to publish some journal, and if so, when, etc.”