Healing Water and a Dance Hall in the Refectory

In 1600 Maria Manriquez de Lara, the widowed Lady of Pernštejn, gave the great garden here to the Jesuit order together with the little church of Saint Michael, which was pulled down in 1786. Under Rudolf II his physician Jakub Horčický of Tepenec, called Sinapius, laid out a botanical garden here and made electuaries and tinctures which he sold at the garden gate; he died in the Klementinum in 1622 and left fifty thousand guilders to the Jesuit college. In 1785 one Bertoni bought the garden from the religious fund and turned the former refectory into a dance hall; his son kept a bleachworks and dyeworks here. In 1847 a Protestant congregation rented the premises and held services here until 1850, when there was dancing again — and often brawling. The garden, once very beautiful and blessed with excellent, reputedly healing water, fell into neglect.