Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

Two choices have been made in the above account. First, I have deliberately tried to interpret
Hell’s career within the context of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus. It was this
administrative division that was constitutive to his early career, rather than the borders of the
state. By breaking down national barriers that have proven themselves virtually
insurmountable to those who prefer to interpret Hell’s career as part of the history of a single
nation state, I hope to have contributed to an appreciation of his biography that is more in tune
with the realities of eighteenth-century Central Europe. The second choice has been to
interpret his activities within the framework of Habsburg politics. This has led to a second
lesson, which in a sense contradicts the above interpretation. Maximilianus Hell was not only
a Jesuit and an exponent of Jesuit science, as one might think when reading the series of
‘parallel lives’ presented above. Hell was also a representative of the Habsburg Empire. For
example, his work instruction explicitly demanded international contacts. This was hardly part
of the professional work instruction of the average Jesuit professor in the Austrian province of
the Society of Jesus. Therefore, to interpret Father Hell as a Jesuit and little else, hardly does
justice to his career. Rather, he should be seen as an official representative of the Austrian
Province of the Jesuit order and of the Habsburg Empire. After the dissolution of the Society
of Jesus, he became a man of conflicting loyalties and at times self-contradictory political
statements, strategies and practices. His loyalties became increasingly alienated from the
policies of his rulers, although he never resigned from his office as court astronomer. In this
sense too, he was a human being – neither a monster nor a saint.
In coming chapters of this thesis, the contributions of Maximilianus Hell to the eighteenth-
century efforts to calculate the solar parallax will be analysed. The two transits of Venus both
fall within the part of Hell’s career as a Jesuit Professor and Court Astronomer. However, the
calculations based on the 1769 transit of Venus were made in an atmosphere of an imminent
and finally real spiritual disaster to the main character of this thesis. Neither did the
suppression of the Society of Jesus pass unnoticed for Hell’s colleagues in France, Germany,
Russia and Scandinavia. To what extent the rhetoric directed against the Jesuits by
enlightened philosophes influenced the professional work of European astronomers in the
1760s and 1770s is a complex question, which will be addressed later.
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