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‘THAT HOPELESS LITTLE TOWN HERE’ – THE LOW COUNTRIES CONNECTIONS WITH EDUCATION IN OLOMOUC
71-86Views:48The year 2022 marked the 75th anniversary of the appointment of Aimé van Santen, then first secretary of the mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Prague, which reopened after the liberation of Czechoslovakia in August 1945, as a lecturer in Dutch at the University of Olomouc, reconstituted in February 1947. This article examines academic links between Olomouc and the Low Countries from the 16th through the 20th century and the circumstances of the beginning of the study of Dutch there in 1947.
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The DEVELOPMENT OF SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OLOMOUC IN THE 17TH-18TH CENTURIES
111-130Views:39The 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.
