Page - 306 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 7306 and a half months of Hell’s absence from his post, his international reputation became further consolidated and reached a new height. It was from this new height that he may have reasonably expected to resume his activities in Vien- na: managing the Imperial and Royal Observatory, editing the Ephemerides, now complemented with working on the Expeditio litteraria as the definitive product of the Arctic journey. However, the climate in Vienna was gradually changing, and around the time of the Vardø expedition the impulse of reform that had begun in the Habsburg monarchy in the late 1740s was turning into its phase known as enlightened absolutism. Roughly simultaneously, and not un- related to the enlightened turn of reform from above, new platforms and ten- dencies of intellectual sociability—a critical “public sphere”—began to appear and exert an influence, too. These developments had a significant impact on the Jesuit court astronomer’s status and scope of action, and more generally on the conditions of cultivating “Catholic knowledge” in the Habsburg realm. 1 Habsburg Centralization and the De-centering of Hell The status of Hell and his observatory on the domestic and international scheme was an achievement undoubtedly attained thanks to a strategy care- fully planned and realized through strenuous work by him and his associates. At the heart of this strategy was the endeavor to answer at all times the con- temporary professional and ethical requirements of sound research: commit- ment, service, and accuracy. However, scientific adeptness and the cultivation of values associated with the dominant scientific ethos, while of paramount importance to the historical agents involved, were by themselves no guarantee of success. That depended on the confluence of several other factors, some of them outside the realm of the pursuit of knowledge. In the given case, these included a (still) powerful and well-networked religious order with a tradition of promoting science (a “science-friendly” Society of Jesus); the patronage of the dynasty and government of a Catholic power; and the choice of a univer- sally accessible language for the dissemination of the information thus ob- tained in the Ephemerides. Hell’s dedication to the Hungarus tradition could also be smoothly reconciled with each of these factors. The harmony among the elements of this combination, however, became subverted shortly after Hell’s Arctic expedition; his observation of the transit of Venus and his calcula- tion of the solar parallax had marked the zenith of his career and fame as an astronomer. Many of Hell’s subsequent activities and moves—his plan for an Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1774–76, the uses to which he apparently turned the stock of international recognition embodied in the Ephemerides