Religious Orders’ Studia as an Alternative or Competitor to University Education? The Education of Religious in Early Modern Europe

The 8th international conference in the series Monastica History will be held at the Premonstratensian Monastery in Nová Říše from 11 to 13 September 2025. It is dedicated to the education of members of religious orders in early modern Europe, with a possible look at or comparison with mo-dern times (19th and 20th centuries). Studia filosophica et theolo-gia, studia ordinis or studia privata are the most common terms used by scholars to describe the education that religious orders offered their members as part of their preparation for a career as a priest. These studia were associated with selected religious houses, and the teachers were recruited only from members of the order whose members were offered this form of preparation.

The papers should not only deal with the functioning of these ‘studies’ in the various religious houses, but also with the training that was given to the members of the order at universities and in diocesan seminaries. They should provide answers to the following questions:

1. How did the studia of religious orders function in organisational terms? What rules and regulations were there for education? (Comparison of ideal and reality on the basis of official documents and narrative sources; typology of the houses in which education took place; completion of studies and the right to award academic degrees).
2. What was the content of the courses? How did it differ in the individual religious orders, at public uni-versities and in diocesan seminaries? (Structure of the disciplines of the courses; the libraries of the reli-gious houses that pursued higher studies; the teaching and study texts used, including handwritten lecture notes; theses ad gradum and their graphic layout).
3. Who did the religious orders choose as teachers for their higher studies? Who of the religious taught at the universities and in the seminaries? (The usual career of professors of religious orders, evaluation of their scientific activity and literary work).
4. What specific philosophical and theological schools of thought were developed in the (private) studies of the individual orders? Were other disciplines also taught?
5. What role did study play in the orders? What was the relationship between religious studies and the edu-cation received before entering the order? (the importance of studies in the formation of the order; the in-fluence of the results of studies on the further career of the order).

Call for Papers EN     Call for Papers DE

Contributions should not exceed 20 minutes.

Conference languages: German and English

Proposals and applications with a working title and a short summary (10 to 15 lines) should be sent by April 30, 2025, to the email addresses: marek.brcak@ruk.cuni.cz or valentova@hiu.cas.cz.

We look forward to your participation. 

On behalf of the organizers

• Marek Brčák (Institute of History of Charles University and Archive of Charles University in Prague)
• Kateřina Bobková-Valentová and Tomáš Černušák (Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)