The university and "black swan" events ****************************************************************************************** * The university and "black swan" events ****************************************************************************************** COVID-19 has forced the academic community to leave its lecture halls and classrooms empty transition to distance learning. Students in the medical fields joined the front lines and in hospitals. Others, in the social and psychological disciplines, are helping as well. Wh swan” events are rare, for Charles University it isn’t the first time something like this Medical students also helped during the plague epidemics and in wartime. There are reports the “Black Death” on the university in the 17th and 18th centuries, when epidemics of the Czech capital. There were several waves that befell Prague in the 17th century. The most w in the years 1679-1681. In their publication “Jezuité a mor [Jesuits and the Plague],” Kar Jiří Černý report that at the end of May, 1680, the plague was the reason for the semester at the Clementinium (Klementinum). Students of philosophy left for Liběšice, near Litoměři theologians went to Tuchoměřice, near Prague, where the Clementinium college had farms at Doctors to the hospitals, students to their holidays The last wave of the plague epidemic struck Prague on its way from Vienna in 1713, and was than the previous one in 1680. It resulted in the deaths of around 13 thousand people in P the time was one-quarter of the city’s population). Across the country, an estimated 200 t died. At the time, it was assumed that the medical faculty would assume supervision of the care during an epidemic, and care for the infected was immediately entrusted to the facult and graduates. One distinctive personality who joined the fight against the bubonic plague Antonín Ignác Šamský (also known as Schamsky), who was considered one of the most talented Prague medical faculty. He was sent to serve in Louny on higher orders due to a lack of do was also likely one of the plague’s victims. In “Jezuité a mor [Jesuits and the Plague]”, Havlík and Černý write that the epidemic did inside the Clementinium and that none of the students became infected: the only ones who d who served the ill outside of the college. The epidemic shortened the academic year: in th the rector sent a query to the stadtholder, the provincial leader. He asked whether the sc down during the plague – when many of those studying had already left. The stadtholder res days later that it still wasn’t time for the closure of schools, but because the holidays the corner, students were allowed to leave immediately. The plague epidemic also interrupted meetings of the university’s commission, which was to reforms inspired by proposals by Petr Theodor Birelli. Birelli criticised the practice of private lectures at the expense of their public ones, as too many vacations and holidays, autonomy for the professorial corps. He also revived the idea to merge the archbishopric s theological faculty. Anti-plague measures It is definitely worth mentioning that rulers at the time didn’t just preside over matters with the cities tried to protect inhabitants and financially assist them. The outflow of s the countryside leaving the city, as well as the escape of rich burghers and nobility, cau revenues for tradesmen, while the prices of foodstuffs and medicines shot upward. For this November of 1713, Emperor Charles VI exempted Prague residents from paying all taxes for t relief and support had to be provided by the city’s districts. No one was allowed into the without presenting certification that they came from a place that was not stricken with in they had not travelled on roads where the plague was present. Safety measures were carried out by pharmacists, who won permission from the academic sena from entering their pharmacies; filled prescriptions were given through a half-opened door handed over medicines using tongs. War, strikes, revolution… Much more often than epidemics of the plague, the university’s activities were limited by revolutions and strikes. The absolute longest interruption, for all of the 1520s, was when University was shut down during the Hussite Wars. The university’s activities were resumed the first master’s degree was only granted in 1440. The university was also closed in 1741, when it found itself at the center of public event beginning phases of the war over the inheritance of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown. An ac established at the university at the time to defend the rights of Empress Maria Theresa; t joined battle on the Prague ramparts. Some colleges at the time served as military quarter the army’s insufficiency, Prague fell. On 14 December 1741, the academic magistrate at the new ruler, Karl Albert, a ‘Most Humble Request for Permission to Renew Studies at Prague’s ruler, however, did not grant permission, and studies did not resume. Only members of the were actively engaged; they cared for the injured. Students could only return to their lec spring of 1743. In the 20th century, the university had to limit or completely interrupt its activities se during World War I, during the student strikes in 1968 and 1989, and especially after 1939 University in Prague was closed for six years (the German university in Prague in 1939 joi of Reich universities and was closed down after the defeat of the Nazi regime). The editors would like to thank Marek Ďurčanský, Ph.D., and Petr Svobodný, Ph.D., of the I History and Archive of Charles University.