Initially competing with the schools run by the Hussite "Bohemian Brethren", the Jesuits obtained an effective monopoly after the Thirty Years' War: this brought savage re-Catholicization and Germanization to the Czech population.

[5] It was the strong Jesuit reaction[6] which led an alumnus of Faculty of Philosophy of Olomouc University, Joseph von Petrasch,[1] to join with another locally based aristocrat, Francesco G. Giannini in obtaining the consent of empress Maria Theresa for the establishment of a learned society in 1746.

[7] Von Petrasch was a noble of Slavonian origin who at one stage had studied law at Leiden and who had also pursued a career as an adjutant to Prince Eugene of Savoy, which had left him with the financial means to support the Societas eruditorum from his private wealth.

[3] The society published the first scientific journal in the Habsburg monarchy, the Olmützer Monathlichen Auszüge Alt- und neuer Gelehrter Sachen (Olomouc's Monthly Excerpts from Old and New Erudition), with each issue having some 80 pages.

Two of them were of particular importance: the philosophical rationalism of Christian Wolff, a practical approach to philosophy which in Moravia was combined with the Catholic reformism of Ludovico Antonio Muratori; and the school of critical historiography stemming from Jean Mabillon.