Collections in the Jesuit Archbishop’s Secondary Grammar School in Kalocsa (Hungary)

Abstract

In this paper, the author introduces the collections of the secondary grammar school in Kalocsa. The author researches: (1) the subjects that the formal collections were created to facilitate teaching, (2) what their purpose was, (3) the manner in which these collections were accumulated, and (4) how they were used. The annually published school yearbooks provided the main sources of this research. As a method, we applied historic document analysis. The value of teaching natural sciences was amplified in the course of the 19th century, primarily in its second half, as a result of industrial modernisation. Thus, a number of natural scientific subjects were taught on an obligatory basis (natural history, geography, physics, chemistry). Studying these subjects was facilitated by the collections, which were also established in this grammar school – besides the collections of humanities such as the historical one. The mineralogical collection constituted the most outstanding one in the Kalocsa secondary grammar school, but its animal and plant collection also burgeoned. Behind these outstanding collections stood one or other Jesuit teachers, who were driven, besides the aim of teaching, by the desire of scientific understanding. Among the Jesuits in Hungary, just as in other countries, the interest in natural sciences escalated. The collections grew during the study tours announced for students, in the course of the curators’ acquisition excursions, and also as a result of donations, purchases and exchanges. Following the state appropriation, the material of the Kalocsa caches was dispersed.