Jezuitští osvícenci – osvícení jezuité

Abstract

Jesuit Enlightenment – Enlightened Jesuits. Despite advances in research into religious orders over the last decades, the Jesuits are still associated (especially in popular consciousness) with their past as exponents of “darkness”. Yet the abolition of the Society of Jesus in 1773 did not mark a critical turning point, nor even a radical change; the Jesuits continued to flourish, and the odium they attracted from other orders was often retrospective in effect. Ignaz Cornova, an unusually interesting man of idiosyncratic temperament, was not the only “atypical” Jesuit, nor was he the only member of the Society of Jesus in the Bohemian provinces who was far from being an ossified upholder of the ways of the past. Besides Josef Stepling, provincial Bohemia could boast other remarkable personalities; and Prague’s Charles Ferdinand University, whose Faculty of Divinity was until 1773 dominated by Jesuits, was at the same time one of the great sources of Enlightenment thought.

Keywords

• jesuits
• enlightenment
• abolition of the jesuit order
• charles ferdinand university