Well into the eighteenth century, substantive work in the history of astronomy could still readily be found in what Nick Jardine has called Renaissance “prefatory histories”: overtures concerning astronomy’s venerable origins, excellence, and utility that, like orations inaugurating a series of lectures, established the subject’s value and legitimacy for the reader or auditor. Joseph-Jérôme Lalande's comprehensive Bibliographie astronomique (1803) made clear, however, that the history of astronomy had moved decisively from the prefatory margins to take up a central role in Enlightenment histories of the progress of the human spirit (l’esprit humain). Yet far more critical to propelling scientific advance was a mode of investigating astronomy’s history that, for a time, gained generic traction as early modern European astronomers sought to engage with their colleagues, past, present, and future: "celestial history".