Jesuits Arrive at the Klementinum

JAN 01 1556 · 12:00

The Klementinum from Mariánské náměstí. The Jesuit complex grew on the site of the former Dominican house of St Clement after Ferdinand I summoned the Society of Jesus to Prague in 1556. Place: Former Dominican house of St Clement, Old Town Figures: Ferdinand I, who summons them · Petr Canisius, Jesuit provincial · twelve fathers led by Ursmar Goisson Ferdinand I has decided that Bohemia, more than half Utraquist and a great deal of it openly Lutheran, requires a discipline. He writes to Ignatius of Loyola in Rome. The general sends Petr Canisius north with twelve fathers. They cross into the city on 18 April 1556 and take possession on 21 April of the abandoned Dominican house at St Clement on the riverbank, vacant since the Hussite Wars. Within a year they open a school. Within five years it has two hundred pupils, including sons of Protestant nobles who want the Latin. The Society's pedagogical genius (free, rigorous, theatrical) is the wedge that will split the next generation of the Bohemian elite from their parents' confession.