A Pyre of Books in the Jesuit Garden

When, after the order was dissolved, the Jesuits were permitted to burn the less important papers of their household administration and ordered to hand their libraries over to the university library in the Klementinum, they kept back many of the rarest books and manuscripts and divided them among themselves. The rest they burned on a high pyre in the garden of the college here, telling the credulous government commission that these were merely exercises and schoolboy attempts by young members of the order. How things were managed in those days is shown by another fact: in 1773 seven hundred and eighty paintings that hung in the Klementinum corridors were sold, frames included, for one hundred and sixty-six guilders.