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The Viennese Jesuit court astronomer Maximilian Hell was a key figure in the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge. He was already famous by the time of his celebrated 1769 expedition for the observation of the transit of Venus in northern Scandinavia. However, the 1773 suppression of his order forced Hell to develop ingenious strategies of accommodation to changing international and domestic circumstances. Through a study of his career in local, regional, imperial, and global contexts, this book sheds new light on the complex relationship between the Enlightenment, Catholicism, administrative and academic reform in the Habsburg monarchy, and the practices and ends of cultivating science in the Republic of Letters around the end of the first era of the Society of Jesus.
Price: $225.00
Pages: 478
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Publication Date:
12 December 2019
ISBN: 9789004361355
Format: Hardcover
“This book is a careful and valuable source for historians of science interested in ways in which the Enlightenment affected the practice of science in the more remote lands of the Habsburg empire.”
J. L. Heilbron, University of California–Berkeley. In: Church History, Vol. 89, No. 4 (December 2020), pp. 953–955.
“Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe is a valuable contribution that provides an impressive account of the neglected aspects of the East Central European Enlightenment.”
Tibor Bodnár-Király, Eötvös Loránd University. In: Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 52 (2021), pp. 15–16.
“This monograph is essential for any study of the history of European astronomy and of Jesuit science.”
Agustín Udías, Universidad Complutense. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (December 2020), pp. 111–113.
“Hell’s vitriolic responses to public criticism, the familiar stereotype of the dissembling Jesuit, and the implosion and suppression of the Order in 1773 [...] undermined his reputation. While not formulated as a rehabilitation, Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe undoes much of that damage, showing the attractive aspects of this figure — as, for instance, his collaboration with the gifted painter Caspar Franz Sambach — and the considerable constraints under which Hell worked. Of particular value is the sustained and enlightening comparison of the Jesuits and their curious double, the Freemasons.”
Eileen Reeves, Princeton. In: Isis, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 2021), pp. 607–609.
J. L. Heilbron, University of California–Berkeley. In: Church History, Vol. 89, No. 4 (December 2020), pp. 953–955.
“Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe is a valuable contribution that provides an impressive account of the neglected aspects of the East Central European Enlightenment.”
Tibor Bodnár-Király, Eötvös Loránd University. In: Austrian History Yearbook, Vol. 52 (2021), pp. 15–16.
“This monograph is essential for any study of the history of European astronomy and of Jesuit science.”
Agustín Udías, Universidad Complutense. In: Journal of Jesuit Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (December 2020), pp. 111–113.
“Hell’s vitriolic responses to public criticism, the familiar stereotype of the dissembling Jesuit, and the implosion and suppression of the Order in 1773 [...] undermined his reputation. While not formulated as a rehabilitation, Maximilian Hell (1720–92) and the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe undoes much of that damage, showing the attractive aspects of this figure — as, for instance, his collaboration with the gifted painter Caspar Franz Sambach — and the considerable constraints under which Hell worked. Of particular value is the sustained and enlightening comparison of the Jesuits and their curious double, the Freemasons.”
Eileen Reeves, Princeton. In: Isis, Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 2021), pp. 607–609.
Per Pippin Aspaas, PhD, with a thesis on Maximilian Hell (2012), is senior academic librarian at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (Tromsø). With a background in classical philology as well as the history of science, he has published on various branches of early modern science and the uses of neo-Latin.
László Kontler, PhD (1996), is professor of history at Central European University (Budapest/Vienna). He has published on intellectual history, the history of political thought, translation and reception, and scientific knowledge production, including Translations, Histories, Enlightenments: William Robertson in Germany, 1760–1795 (Palgrave, 2014).
László Kontler, PhD (1996), is professor of history at Central European University (Budapest/Vienna). He has published on intellectual history, the history of political thought, translation and reception, and scientific knowledge production, including Translations, Histories, Enlightenments: William Robertson in Germany, 1760–1795 (Palgrave, 2014).