Maximilianus Hell (1720-1792) - Munin

I have designated the texts thus:
L N m G F J
L refers to a printed leaflet in Latin, four pages in quarto, undated and with no indication
of place, but apparently printed by the Ghelen press in Vienna (Hell 1771a1). This is the
fullest version of the text, omitting only some details on the price and size found in the
dispatch note of the publisher (F). As regards choice of words, I have chosen to follow L
as the most authoritative text. The copy used was found among Hell‟s manuscripts at the
Wiener Universitätsternwarte, and contains pencil remarks by Hell in the margin and
between lines. These remarks have apparently been made at a later date, however, and
although they merit a discussion in Chapter I.3, they have – with one exception (Tomi I.
Pars III. Caput VII.) – been omitted in the editing of the text. 19
N refers to a Latin version included in the journal Nova Acta Eruditorum of Leipzig for
September 1770, pp. 427-432 (Hell 1770c). This text omits some details on the first page,
namely, the unnecessary repetition of Hell‟s title and membership in scientific societies
found in L. The heading Relatio („Announcement‟; L) is also missing. Apart from these
omissions, an occasional variation of phrasing between L and N occur in the Relatio
section. However, although the grammar varies, the meaning is fairly identical. These
variations can may be taken as indications of the existence of different manuscripts;
possibly they came as a result of creative editing from the part of the journal or the
publishing house Ghelen. Be that as it may, in the list of chapter contents N is
consistently corresponding to the text L, with only minor variations. However, as far as
orthography, punctuation and use of capital letters are concerned, there are numerous
deviations between this text and Hell‟s practices as detectable in L and other printed
works. These deviations result, I suspect, from a wish on the part of the publisher to have
a consistent, recognisable lay-out in the journal. In this respect, the conventions followed
by the editors of the Nova Acta Eruditorum certainly deviate from those of Hell in e.g.
the Ephemerides Astronomicae, and I have chosen to omit them in my apparatus. The
19 Alexius Horanyi presented a seemingly loyal transcript of L in his Memoria Hungarorum from 1776.
This is reprinted in Pinzger 1920, pp. 50-52. I have not collated the Horanyi/Pinzger version.
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