Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

something Hell wisely refused. 282 “On the other hand”, Hviid presumes, “there may have been
a hint of Jesuitism involved. For if the first members of the Academy came from that
Company [i.e., the Society of Jesus], then the rest were likely to be selected from the same
regiment as well”. 283 Following Hviid, one may interpret Hell’s plan of 1774/75 as, at least in
part, an attempt to retain the Jesuit heritage. In his letters to Jean Bernoulli III in Berlin 284 and
to Weiss in Tyrnavia from this period, Hell emphasises that parts of the funds of the Academy
were to be used to preserve the Jesuit observatories in Graecium, Vienna and Prague, whose
directors were going to be members of the Academy as well. In her verdict of November
1775, Maria Theresa at least hinted to the presence of too many Jesuits in the Academy as
problematic. The political climate had changed. It did not work any longer, to appeal to the
alleged strengths of Jesuit science. Other networks had emerged and new alliances were being
forged with the political leaders.
Freemasonry represents one such network overtly opposing the Jesuit order. The freemasons,
or muratori libri, despite repeated condemnations from the Pope (in 1738 and 1751) gained a
foothold in Catholic Vienna in the early 1740s. From there freemasonry spread through other
urban centres of Central Europe. The Masonic lodges were partly military, partly civil. Their
creeds were strongly influenced by Protestantism and Enlightenment ideals, but as laws of
tolerance started to come in effect in the 1770s and 1780s, they also proved to have a wide
appeal among Catholics. As Hermann Haberzettl, historian of the ex-Jesuits of Austria in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century puts it, freemasonry in essence had three aims:
“enhancing the general level of education, religious tolerance, appeasement of misery”. 285 All
three aims were in harmony with the Enlightenment ideals as promoted by Joseph II. In 1781,
now fully acknowledged by the court, a group of Freemasons established a high-profiled
lodge “Zur wahren Eintracht” (‘For true Unity’) in Vienna. To this group, even a small group
of ex-Jesuits joined in. It was soon to become the dominant civil lodge in the Austrian capital,
282 Hviid 2005, p. 370; Feil 1861, pp. 372-373 (“ums Jahr 1764”).
283 Hviid 2005, p. 370: “Men paa den anden Side stak der maaskee ogsaa lidt Jesuitisme derunder; thi vare de
første Medlemmer af dette Compagnie, bleve nok ogsaa de øvrige valgte af samme Regiment”.
284 Jean (Johann) Bernoulli III (1744-1807), Astronomer Royal and director of the Berlin observatory since 1764,
had travelled across western Europe and England in the years 1768-69, and his Lettres Astronomiques (1771a)
were – and still are – used as a standard work of reference for the state of astronomy in France, Britain, and
German-speaking countries anno 1769. In the 1770s, he published the series Recueil pour les Astronomes and
Nouvelles Litteraires des divers pays, a kind of annotated bibliography with surveys of ongoing activities of
relevance to astronomy in every part of the world; his Lettres sur differens sujets (1777c) on a journey through
central and southern Europe are equally useful. He was obviously an important contact for Maximilianus Hell in
his attempts to win recognition in this period. They seem never to have met personally, however.
285 Haberzettl 1973, pp. 48-56, here p. 48: “Hebung der allgemeinen Bildung, religiöse Toleranz, Linderung der
Not”.
- 146 -