Clementinum

Behind the main portal of the Clementinum stands an armed young man with a rifle and a banner. This is not a portrait of a military commander. The sculpture is called “The Prague Student,” and it was placed here in memory of people who, before the war, had occupied themselves with lectures, books, and examinations.

The name Clementinum comes from the medieval Church of St. Clement that once stood here. Clement was one of the first bishops of Rome; the church dedicated to him gave its name both to the Dominican monastery and to the Society of Jesus college that replaced it. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Society of Jesus ran Charles University and kept its libraries, printing house, and teaching rooms here. Today, most of the complex is occupied by the National Library of the Czech Republic.

In the summer of sixteen forty-eight, the Thirty Years' War was coming to an end. On July twenty-sixth, Swedish soldiers under General Königsmarck, aided by a traitor, entered the left bank of Prague, occupied the Lesser Town and Prague Castle, and began carrying away the captured valuables. To reach Old Town, they had to cross the river. The Clementinum stood at the Old Town end of the bridge, so the teachers and students found themselves beside the section where it was being decided whether the looting would continue on the other bank.

The students joined a volunteer academic legion. Its captain was the Prague lawyer Jan Jiří Kauffer, who sought to hold Old Town. The most prominent among the Society of Jesus was the Clementinum professor Jiří František Plachý. The Society of Jesus kept him as a teacher and preacher; he was not a soldier. Now Plachý went with the students to the foot of the bridge and appeared at the most dangerous points. A later legend turned him into the commander of the entire legion and attributed to the Swedes a fear of the “long pater.” The documents give him a different role: he was an assistant to the command and the man who rallied the students at the moment when they risked their own lives for the college and the city.

On July thirtieth, Swedish cavalry tried to pass over the bridge. The defenders lowered the portcullis of the Old Town Bridge Tower and repelled the attack. Then the siege continued for more than three months. The Peace of Westphalia was signed on October twenty-fourth, but shooting continued outside Prague for another week. The Swedish troops never occupied Old Town or New Town and withdrew; the soldiers did not reach the Clementinum book depositories.

For their part in the defense, the student detachments received five thousand Rhenish guilders—a sum equal to three months' pay. The emperor ennobled the freeborn students, and awarded Plachý a gold medal.

Two hundred years later, the sculptor Josef Max created for the Clementinum a figure of an unnamed student. It was intended to be unveiled in the anniversary year of eighteen forty-eight, but revolutionary clashes began in Prague, and the monument was removed to await calmer times. It was placed in the first courtyard only in eighteen sixty-three, without a ceremonial unveiling. By then, Max had already died. At the entrance to the present-day library complex, his student remains—with a rifle in one hand and a banner in the other.