Prague. Saturday, September 23, marked the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Czech (Bohemian) Province of the Society of Jesus. The Czech Jesuits celebrated this anniversary with several events in the third week of September.

For the general public, two talks with the British historian Prof. Gerard Kilroy were held in Prague and Brno on 19 and 20 September. He introduced the figure of the English martyr St. Edmund Campion (1540–1581), who spent the years of his Jesuit formation in the Czech lands just in Brno and Prague.

The main event of the celebrations was the international historical conference, which took place on 21–23 September in Prague.  The conference was organized by the Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Catholic Theological Faculty of Charles University, Prague, in cooperation with ARSI and the Catholic University of Leuven. More than forty historians from the Czech Republic and abroad took part in the conference. The language of discussion was English and German. Papers covered topics such as: hagiography, political and historical thinking, contacts between Jesuit provinces, Jesuit education, inspiration and competition, Jesuit school theatre, Jesuit university festivities, overseas missions, order houses and residences, spirituality and iconography. Among other things, the conference helped to place the history of the Czech Jesuits in the period 1623–1773 in a broader Central European context, thanks to the contributions of scholars from Poland, Austria and Hungary. With their contributions at the conference also spoke Jesuits P. Robert Danieluk SJ and Br. Wenceslao Sota SJ from Rome (ARSI) and P. Pavel Gábor SJ from the Vatican Observatory (Tucson).

The anniversary celebrations concluded with a solemn mass on Saturday 23 September in the former Jesuit Church of the Most Holy Salvator in Clementinum, Prague. Jan Graubner, Archbishop of Prague, presided over the eucharistic celebration together with the Czech Jesuits.

(Petr Havlicek SJ)