Background

Comenius was born on March 28, 1592, in Moravia, Crown of Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). The youngest of five children, Comenius was born into a moderately prosperous family who were devout members of the Bohemian Brethren. His father, Martin Komenský, is said to have been a miller. His mother's name was Anna Chmelová. After the death of his parents and two sisters in 1604, presumably from the plague, Comeius lived with relatives.

Education

Comenius received only a poor education until he entered the Latin school of Přerov, kept by the Brethren, in 1608. Three years later, thanks to the patronage of Count Charles of Žerotin, he matriculated at the Reformed University of Herborn, where he came under the influence of Johann Heinrich Alsted. Significant aspects of Comenius’ thought closely resemble Alsted’s concerns. Comenius completed his studies at Heidelberg in 1613 and 1614.

Career

After completing his studies at Heidelberg, Comenius returned to his native land, where he first taught school; but in 1618, two years after his ordination as a priest of the Bohemian Brethren, he became pastor at Fulnek, His first published work, a Latin grammar, dates from these years.

The Thirty Years' War and the battle of the White Mountain in November 1620 had a decisive effect on Comenius’s life, since much of his work was directed toward the ultimately unsuccessful effort to have his people’s native land and worship restored to them. For the next eight years, Comenius led an insecure existence, until the final expulsion of the Brethren from the imperial lands brought him to Leszno, Poland, which he had previously visited to negotiate rights of settlement. He finished Labyrint Swěta a Lusthauz Srdce in 1623, and Centrum securitatis in 1625, published in 1631 and 1633, respectively (both in Czech).

Form 1628 to 1641 Comenius lived at Leszno as bishop of his flock and rector of the local Gymnasium. He also found time to work on the reformation of knowledge and pedagogy, writing, among other things, his first major work, the Didatica magna. Written in Czech, it was not published until 1657, when it appeared in Latin as part of the Opera didactica omnia, which contained most of the works he had written since 1627.

In 1633 Comenius suddenly gained European fame with the publication of his Janua linguarum reserata; an English version, The Gate of Tongues Unlocked and Opened, appeared in the same year. The Janua presented a simple introduction to Latin according to a new method based on principles derived from Wolfgang Ratke and from the primers produced by the Spanish Jesuits of Salamanca. The reform of language learning, by making it speedier and easier for all, was characteristic of that general reformation of mankind and the world which all chiliasts sought to bring about in the eleventh hour before the return of Christ to rule on earth.

In England, Comenius gained contact with Samuel Hartlib, to whom he sent the manuscript of his “Christian pansophy,” under the title Conatuum Comenianorum praeludia, and then again at London in 1639 as Pansophiae prodromus. In 1642 Hartilib published an English translation with the title A Reformation of Schools. These publications raised such high expectations in certain circles in England that Hartlib found it possible to invite Comenius to London. In September 1641 Comenius arrived in London, where the met his supporters. He was invited to remain permanently in England, and there were plans for the establishment of a pansophic college. But the Irish Rebellion soon put an end to all these optimistic plans, although Comenius stayed until June 1642. While in London he wrote the Via lucis, which circulated in manuscript in England but was not published until 1668 at Amsterdam.

In Sweden, Comenius was to meet difficulty again. The chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, wanted him to work on useful books for the schools; Comenius, at the urging of his English friends, proposed to work on pansophy. He worked on both, retiring to Elbing, Prussia (then under Swedish rule), between 1642 and 1648. His Pansophiae diatyposis was published at Danzig, in 1643, and Linguarum methodus nouissima, at Lesszno, in 1648; in 1651 the Pansophiae came out in English as A Pattern of Universal Knowledge; and his Natural Philosophy Reformed by Divine Light: Or lumen divinuem reformatate synopsis (Leipzig, 1633), appeared in the same year. In 1648, having returned to Leszno, Comenius became the twentieth presiding bishop of the Bohemian Brethren (later reconstituted as the Moravian Brethren).

In 1650 Comenius received a call from Prince Sigismund Rákóczy of Transylvania, the younger brother of George II Gakoczy, to come to Sarospatak to give advice on school reform and pansophy. He introduced many reforms into the pansophic school there; but in spite of much hard work, he met with little success, and in 1654 he returned to Leszno. In the meantime, Comenius had prepared one of his best-known and most characteristic works, the Orbis sensualium pictus (1658), with Latin and German text. Significantly, it opened with an epigraph on Adam’s giving of names. The first school book consistently to use pictures of things in the learning of languages, it illustrated a principle that was fundamental to Comenius: Words must go with things and cannot properly be learned apart from them.

Soon after Comenius’s return to Leszno, war broke out between Poland and Sweden, and in 1656 Leszno was completely destroyed by Polish troops. Comenius lost all his books and manuscripts and was again forced into exile. He was invited to settle at Amsterdam, where he spent the remaining years of his life at the house of Lawrence de Geer, the son of his former patron. During these years he completed the great work that had occupied him for at least twenty years, De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica, a seven-part work summing up his lifelong and all-embracing deliberations on the improvement of human things. Although some parts of the work were published as late as 1702, it was presumed lost until late 1934, when it was found in the Francke Stiftung in Halle. It was first published in its entirety in 1966.

Achievements

• In his own country Comenius occupies a place of eminence both as a national hero and as a literary artist. He is remembered mainly for his innovations in methods of teaching, especially languages.
  
  All his work found both its beginning and its end in theology. His beliefs and aspirations were shared by many of his contemporaries, but his system was certainly the most comprehensive of the many that were offered in the seventeenth century.

Works

More photos

• book

  • John Comenius: The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart

    (The study of Protestant spirituality in the early modern ...)

    1631
  • Erste Liebe

    (German Edition)

  • The Works Of John Amos Comenius Arranged In Chronological Order Of Composition
  • The University Of Traveling Students And The College Of Light
  • The Orbis Pictus 1685

Religion

As a religious leader Comenius helped keep alive the faith of his church in its darkest hour, and he provided the inspiration that led to its subsequent revival as the Moravian Church under Nikolaus, Graf von Zinzendorf, in the 18th century. He was no sectarian but a champion of the church universal. He was also, for all of his internationalism, a Czech patriot at a time when the Czechs had been nearly crushed.

Views

All Comenius’ efforts were directed toward the speedy and efficient reformation of all things pertaining to the life of man in the spheres of religion, society, and knowledge. His program was a “way of light” designed to ensure the highest possible enlightenment of man before the imminent return of Christ to reign on earth during the millennium. The universal aims were piety, virtue, and wisdom; to be wise was to excel in all three.

Connections

Somewhere between 1620 and 1624, Comenius' first wife, Magdalena, and their two children died, and he remarried in 1624. One of his daughters, Elisabeth, married Peter Figulus from Jablonné nad Orlicí.

Father:

Martin Komenský

Mother:

Anna Chmelová

late spouse:

Magdalena Comenius

Daughter:

Elisabeth Comenius

References

• John Amos Comenius: A Visionary Reformer of Schools John Amos Comenius, a seventeenth-century theologian and reformer, had so great an influence on Western schooling that he has been called the father of modern education. To this day he remains one of the most influential and fascinating thinkers in the history of education.
  2017
• John Amos Comenius: Bishop of the Moravians, His Life and Educational Works
• The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius
  1896
• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 3
  1971