The Society of Jesus and the Culture of the Late Baroque in Bohemia 1730-1773(*) (2000)

INTRODUCTION Nowhere is a reassessment of the Jesuit contribution to eighteenth century culture more overdue than in Bohemian studies.(1) The usual handicaps of confessional bias and political polemic are compounded by the selective reporting that contemporaries of the Suppression in the Habsburg lands engaged in and by the lack of attention given to Jesuits of the Bohemian Province by scholars of the past hundred years.(2) The removal of ideological constraints concerning the study of history in the Czech Republic, and the increased opportunities available to scholars working in archival collections now permit a fuller and more balanced view of the role of Jesuits in late Baroque Bohemia, although many important holdings remain lost.(3) This essay will endeavor to touch on three areas, education, missions, and economic enterprises, in which the Society of Jesus, collectively and individually, were engaged. In each of these areas Jesuits interacted with the forces moving Bohemia in the middle of the eighteenth century from a feudal state to an integrated part of the Habsburg monarchy, where Enlightenment ideas and nascent nationalism would intermix. While each of these categories was in some way independent from the others, the structure of the Society and the external forces seeking to thwart it often caused the various enterprises of the Jesuits to be conducted in a more integrated fashion. This essay will attempt to identify and briefly review several spheres of activity undertaken by the Jesuits of the Bohemian Province during these crucial final decades before the Suppression, in a culture emerging from a Baroque sensibility.(4) THE BAROQUE IN BOHEMIA Art historians are familiar with the extraordinary effusion of painting, sculpture, and especially architecture that characterized the Baroque in Bohemia. The final flowering of this aesthetic and value system included but extended far beyond these categories.(5) The Bohemian variety of the Baroque manifested itself in the veneration of saints, particularly Jan Nepumucky, in pilgrimages, religious processions, and in expressions of devotion to the ruling Habsburg dynasty.(6) The late Baroque was more than an artistic genre: it was a way of looking at the world, one drawing connections between the sensual and unseen worlds.(7) The human body was a central focus of concern, but in a way far different from the importance it held for either the Renaissance humanist or the scientist of the early modern era. For many devout eighteenth century Catholics, the body was neither a model of classical perfection, nor was it simply a complex machine to be studied and understood. Rather it was a source of both danger and solace. Danger when the plague swept through the Prague region in 1714, killing hundreds and creating profound disruption in the Jesuit community.(8) Solace when a believer turned to the physical remains of a saint in hopes of tapping their magical properties. A relation between humans and nature was recognized, but it was not that of the Baconian empiricist nor that of the Enlightenment scientific dilettante. Instead the understanding was heavily influenced by folk culture, and even by remnants of the pre-Christian beliefs dating to before the conversion of Bohemia in the tenth century.(9) The Baroque mentality often eschewed symmetry and systemization, reveling instead in layers of ornamentation and variations in texture, inconsistent and incongruent presentation of images, and theatrical postures and lighting. The Jesuit community also reveled in layers of ornamentation, producing a rich array of documents reflecting the theological, cultural, and scientific interests of these men, ranging from the systematic to the non-rational and mystical. The preceding is significant for the culture of the Jesuits in Bohemia, as it may be applied not only to the visual arts, also but to the intellectual and pedagogical endeavors of the Society as well. …