Seite - 214 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
Bild der Seite - 214 -
Text der Seite - 214 -
Chapter
5214
by means of barometers (in Kjelvik);14 to catch and make sketches of species of
jellyfish (at Havøysund);15 to collect specimens of hermit-crabs on the shore
and cook them for long-term preservation (at Selsøya);16 and so on.
When they finally reached Trondheim on August 30, another two weeks
were spent in the company of Gunnerus and other notables, including General
von der Osten and his Catholic soldiers, who were again offered a string of
“church” services at Kristiansten fortress. Prominent among the persons who
greeted Hell was the city mayor and littérateur Niels Krog Bredal (1733–78),
whose slightly mock-heroic poem on the occasion contains reference to the
Keeper of the Winds in Greco-Roman mythology (Aeolus), the gods of the Sun
and the sea (in the guise of Phoebus and Neptune, respectively), as well as an
allusion to the conquests of Julius Caesar by the immortal phrase veni, vidi, vici
(I came, I saw, I conquered):
What truth there is in the declarations of prophets, you now know,
My sweet friend! You return, having achieved what you prayed for.
Narrow straits do not scare you, nor shipwrecking reefs;
Neither the ice-covered sea, nor the polar winter nights.
The Alps dressed in fog, the long-lasting winter with its eternal masses of
snow;
None of that is capable of preventing your voyage.
You come [venis], you see [vides] everything that is worthy of being
observed;
You conquer [vincis] the Gods that are up against you from either side.
The heroic endeavor was favored by Phoebus, Venus, and Aeolus,
As well as by all the spirits that Neptune has under his sway.
I congratulate you! Now safely return to visit the Penates of your own:
May the Gods hear my prayers this time as well!17
Many years later, the heroic explorer, who “sees everything that is worthy of
being observed,” included Bredal’s poem in an article in the Ephemerides. Some
14 Hell’s manuscript “Methodus observandi,” as reproduced in Lynne Hansen and Aspaas,
Maximilian Hell’s Geomagnetic Observations, entry on July 7, 1769.
15 Hell’s manuscript “Methodus observandi,” as reproduced in Lynne Hansen and Aspaas,
Maximilian Hell’s Geomagnetic Observations, on July 19, 1769.
16 Sajnovics’s travel diary, draft version (wus), on August 17, 1769.
17 Latin poem in Bredal’s own hand, dated September 1, 1769 (wus); edited with translation
in Per Pippin Aspaas, “Astronomy, Latinity, Enlightenment: Niels Krog Bredal’s Poems
Commemorating the Transits of Venus, 1761 and 1769,” Symbolae Osloenses 90 (2016):
205–34, here 224.
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Titel
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Untertitel
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Autoren
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Verlag
- Brill
- Ort
- Leiden
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 492
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Acknowledgments VII
- List of Illustrations IX
- Bibliographic Abbreviations X
- Introduction 1
- 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
- 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
- 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
- 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
- 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
- 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
- 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
- 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
- Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
- Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
- Bibliography 400
- Index 459