ABSTRACT
Though he was accepted as a novice in 1843, it was not until the year 1845 that Mendel began the course of four years’ theological study at Brünn Theological College. During the first year he had to attend, inter alia, lectures on ecclesiastical history, ecclesiastical archaeology, and Hebrew; during the second year, to study ecclesiastical law, exegesis, and Greek; during the third year, dogmatics and moral theology; and during the fourth year, pastoral divinity, catechetics, and the methodology of elementary school education. He also, at one period or another during these four years, attended lectures upon Chaldaic, Syriac, and Arabic; and during the fourth year of his academic course, which was the storm-tossed year 1848, he attended lectures on agriculture delivered by Professor Franz Diebl at Brünn Philosophical Institute. It would seem that the agitations of the year 1848 had very little disturbing effect upon the tranquil life behind the monastery walls. All the same we can guess that the peasant’s son, whose parents were still subject to the corvée, must have been whole-heartedly on the side of the oppressed, and that he must have been delighted when forced labour was abolished at the instigation of Hans Kudlich, who sprang from his own part of the country.
