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• MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENTS IN THE RESEARCH OF EARLY MODERN DISPUTATIONS

  28-54

  Gábor Förköli

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  54

   

  The scholarship of early modern disputations has focused on printed theses, given their status as one of the most prevalent forms of printed material during that historical period. Despite the paucity of extant minutes transcribing discussions of these theses, this article posits that such manuscript sources merit consideration when researching this topic. This article explores the potential of handwritten documents, such as university records and notebooks of Hungarian students, to enhance our understanding of disputation practices in Central Europe during the period between 1580 and 1660. A comparison of printed disputations characteristic of Protestant Europe with manuscripts of Catholic and Jesuit provenance reveals a divergent function of scholarly debates. This latter group of disputations was less focused on the individual performance of the respondent and served more as a method of recapitulation in everyday education. In contrast, Protestant examples illustrate that disputations played a pivotal role in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and expertise. As professors and students transferred information from their respective homelands to university centres and vice versa, the medium of disputations underwent a transition from print to manuscript or vice versa.

• The DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OLOMOUC IN THE 17TH-18TH CENTURIES

  111-130

  Libusc Spacilova

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  240

  The Jesuits founded a grammar school in Olomouc in 1566, adding a philosophy faculty in 1576 and a theology faculty in 1582. The document describing the Jesuit educational system, Ratio et institutio studiorum, divided education into three stages, the highest of which was called studia superiora, and included philosophy and theology. From the second year onwards, students studied mathematics, astronomy and geography, and in the third year, from 1637 onwards, ethics. The Jesuits did not pay much attention to the teaching of the natural sciences, as these subjects undermined the authority of the Church and contradicted fundamental Church dogma. As a result, in the second half of the 17th century and the early 18th century, only very sporadic research and education in the sciences developed. Nevertheless, the University of Olomouc did have professors engaged in mathematical, physical and astronomical research, including a number of foreign-born scientists. In scholastic disputations, topics approved by the ecclesiastical authorities, mostly controversial, were discussed. Nonetheless, we do find here scientific topics in philosophy, biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics, although not in as large a number as would have been desirable.