Despite advances in research into religious orders over the last decades, the Jesuits are still associated (especially in popular consciousness) with their past as exponents of “darkness”. Yet the abolition of the Society of Jesus in 1773 did not mark a critical turning point, nor even a radical change; the Jesuits continued to flourish, and the odium they attracted from other orders was often retrospective in effect. Ignaz Cornova, an unusually interesting man of idiosyncratic temperament, was not the only “atypical” Jesuit, nor was he the only member of the Society of Jesus in the Bohemian provinces who was far from being an ossified upholder of the ways of the past. Besides Josef Stepling, provincial Bohemia could boast other remarkable personalities; and Prague’s Charles Ferdinand University, whose Faculty of Divinity was until 1773 dominated by Jesuits, was at the same time one of the great sources of Enlightenment thought.
The article presents two likely and so far unknown compilers of the third edition of Koniáš’s Key from 1770. Their names have been revealed by a handwritten note in a copy that was originally a part of the library of the private collector Josef Bartsch (1731-1803). Concerning the first figure, the Jesuit Josef Kögler, the treatise describes his career in the Jesuit Order and the posts that he held. In the case of his co-worker Jan Kohout, the text outlines the possible connections that might help identify him precisely. and David Mach.