Palacký University Olomouc is, according to its own website, the second oldest university in the Czech Republic. Its tradition goes back to 1573, when a Jesuit college received the rights of a university.
Palacký University Olomouc is a higher education institution based in Olomouc. According to the university's website, it is the second oldest university in the Czech Republic.[1]
Beginnings and the first dissolution
The school's tradition goes back to 1573. In that year a college that had originally been Jesuit received all the rights of other European universities. They were granted by Emperor Maximilian II. At first the school had two faculties, devoted to the liberal arts and to theology.[1] Teaching began three years later. Lectures in philosophy were opened in 1576 by the Englishman George Warr. In the same year the first entry into the university register took place. According to the university, its influence reached from Moravia and Silesia to Poland and Hungary, and through the Austrian lands to Germany. It also extended to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.[1]
At the time of the Estates' uprising the Jesuit order was expelled from Moravia and the Olomouc university ceased to exist for a time. It was restored in 1621, after the uprising was suppressed.[1]
The Thirty Years' War and the Baroque
During the Thirty Years' War the city was occupied for eight years by the Swedish troops of General Torstensson and plundered. The university lost its rich library. As a result the Olomouc Collectary, a codex from 1142 produced in the scriptorium of Bishop Jindřich Zdík, ended up in the Royal Library in Stockholm. The military commander Albrecht of Wallenstein was also a student of the university.[1]
After the Swedes left, the university experienced its greatest flourishing. The Jesuits built a new college building, two residential colleges, a school building, the Church of Our Lady of the Snows and the Seminary of Saint Francis. Mathematics, physics, cartography and Hebrew studies were cultivated. The names of the Jesuit mathematician Jakub Kresa and also of Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, are connected with the university. The astronomer Karel Slavíček, who served at the court of the Chinese emperor, is associated with it as well. Astronomy was taught by the Jesuits Valentin Stansel and Jan Zimmermann.[1]
Changes in the 18th and 19th centuries
After the dissolution of the Jesuit order in 1773 the school came under state administration. On 24 May 1778 the Moravian university was moved to Brno, but on 12 September 1782 a decree of Emperor Joseph II transferred it back to Olomouc. There it was reduced to a three-year lyceum, because the emperor left universities only in Vienna, Lviv and Prague. A medical-surgical course, intended for wound surgeons and midwives, became a special part of the studies.[1]
In 1827 the Archbishop of Olomouc, Archduke Rudolf Johann, pushed through the elevation of the lyceum to Francis University. It had faculties of philosophy, theology and law, to which a medical-surgical course was added. In 1851, because of the advent of neo-absolutism and a decline in student numbers, the faculty of philosophy was closed, and at the start of the 1855–1856 academic year the faculty of law was closed as well.[1]