Jan Komenský

Moravian theologian, educator, and philosopher

• Born: March 28, 1592
• Birthplace: Nivnice, Moravia (now in the Czech Republic)
• Died: November 15, 1670
• Place of death: Amsterdam, Holland, United Provinces (now in the Netherlands)

A Humanist reformer and Protestant bishop, Komenský believed in the unity of all knowledge as well as ecumenical unity. His writings in support of compulsory universal education and his pedagogical theories influenced education in Europe and North America for centuries.

Early Life

Jan Komenský (yahn kaw-MEHN-skee) was born in southeastern Moravia near the Hungarian border. Although under the rule of the Habsburg Empire at the time, the area was known for religious tolerance, and a concentration of Protestants had settled there. Komenský’s family members were devout Protestants, attending the Church of the United Brethren, a Protestant sect founded on the principles of the medieval Czech martyr Jan Hus.

By the turn of the century, however, mounting conflict between Catholics and Protestants reached Komenský’s village, and when he was ten years old, a Hungarian Protestant army invaded the region. That same year, Komenský’s parents and two sisters died of pestilence, and he was sent to live with an aunt. Soon after, he began his formal schooling, which he later described as brutal, characterized by rote learning and corporal punishment.

At age sixteen, he advanced to the Latin school run by the United Brethren, where he became enthralled with the study of classical language. As was the custom, he adopted the Latinate version of his name, Comenius. Seeking to continue his religious studies, he enrolled at the Herborn Academy, a Calvinist institution where he studied with the theologian Johann Heinrich Alsted. Comenius completed his religious studies at Heidelberg University under the tutelage of David Pareus, a noted religious scholar and leader who hoped to unite all Protestants under a broad Reformed Church.

In 1614, Comenius returned to Moravia to teach at his former Latin school, and he began writing prolifically, producing a Czech-Latin dictionary and textbook (Janua linguarum reserata, 1631; English translation, 1641) and beginning a Czech language encyclopedia. In 1616, he was ordained, and two years later he moved to his own parish in Fulnek with his new wife, Magdalena Vizovská. Also in 1618, a Protestant rebellion in Prague, known as the Defenestration of Prague , led to an invasion of imperial forces and the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Following the defeat of Czech resistance at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Protestants were driven from their homes. Comenius’s home and library were razed, and he was forced to go into hiding. In 1628, he fled to Poland, never to return to his native land.

Life’s Work

In spite of a life continually disrupted by war, religious persecution, and personal tragedy, Comenius retained his faith in God and his hope for humanity. In the 1620’s, having lost his wife and children to the plague and his home to imperial forces, he embarked on a reexamination of his life that culminated in both a deeper religious conviction and an affirmation of the ability of the individual to improve the human condition through the practice of Christianity. Labyrint svĕta a Ráj srdce (1623; Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart , 1901), a satirical allegory written in 1623, reflects his journey in the figure of a pilgrim who overcomes the folly of the world through introspection.

A progressive thinker, Comenius was able to combine his religious faith, his humanistic convictions, and his educational theories into a comprehensive system that he believed would lead to a better world. Known as pansophy, this system advocated universal education, an idea to which he was first exposed during his studies at Herborn with Alsted.

Comenius sought to make universal education a reality by instituting broad reforms. To facilitate educating children, he proposed abolishing corporal punishment and, instead, incorporating play, presenting material in increments geared to the child’s capacity to learn, teaching Latin in the vernacular, and making lessons relevant to everyday life. His text Orbis sensualium pictus (Visible World: Or, A Picture and Nomenclature of All the Chief Things That Are in the World; better known as Visible World ), which incorporates his pedagogical strategies, is considered the first effective illustrated textbook. Published in 1658, it was translated into English the following year and was in common use throughout Europe and North America for nearly two hundred years.

While the Thirty Years’ War continued in his homeland, Comenius’s reputation as both a religious leader and as an innovative educator spread across Europe, extending to the newly established North American colonies. In 1632, he was elected a bishop of the Unity Church by an international synod. Believing that Christianity is more a matter of practice than of orthodoxy, he attempted to unify Protestant sects with differing views on Christian doctrine. In 1641, he was invited to England to assist in instituting educational reform; he planned to found a pansophic college dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon, an English philosopher whom Comenius considered a role model. The proposed college would bring together, in pursuit of common goals, people of different religions. Although his plans were interrupted by the outbreak of civil war in England, he is credited with laying the groundwork for the English Royal Society , an independent organization devoted to promoting study of mathematics and the natural sciences, subjects that were in the seventeenth century considered less important than classical studies.

In 1642, Comenius received three extraordinary offers: Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts invited him to assume the presidency of Harvard University; Cardinal de Richelieu , chief minister of King Louis XIII of France, requested his assistance in establishing a pansophic college in Paris; and a wealthy industrialist offered to finance extensive educational reform in Sweden. Believing that Sweden would support the interests of Czech exiles, Comenius accepted the latter offer and spent the next six years in Sweden, where he designed programs of instruction and continued to work toward attaining his ecumenical ideals.

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War, but the victorious Catholics refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Moravian Church; consequently, Comenius was never able to return to his homeland, moving from Sweden to Poland to Transylvania and, finally, to Amsterdam. In the years before his death in 1670, he became immersed in mysticism but maintained his hope in the potential for humankind to improve the world.

Significance

Comenius is known as the father of modern education. His influence can be seen in the work of twentieth century thinkers such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, in contemporary liberal arts curricula, and in student-centered learning practices. His belief in the integration of knowledge is reflected in the proliferation of interdisciplinary studies in the late twentieth century.

In his homeland, whose history is one of foreign domination and oppression, Comenius is revered as a model of hope and courage. Echoes of his belief that humanity can achieve a far better world through individual responsibility can be heard in the writings and speeches of Václav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, and in the novels of Czech writers Milan Kundera, Ivan Klíma, and Joseph Škvorecký. In Prague, he is commemorated with a museum and a statue by František Bílek, and his likeness appears on the twenty-crown note in Czech currency.

Internationally, Comenius is well remembered. He continues to draw scholarly interest, and in 1992, the 400th anniversary of his birthday was celebrated with symposia in Prague, Moravia, and Amsterdam, and with an exhibition at Oxford University in England.

Bibliography

Komenský, Jan Ámos. The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius. Translated by M. W. Keatinge. 2d ed. London: A. & C. Black, 1910. Comenius began composing this work in Czech in the 1630’s. In it he sets out his theories of child development and pedagogical strategies. Biographical introduction by the translator.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. Translated by Howard Louthan and Andrew Sterk. New York: Paulist Press, 1998. A modern translation of Comenius’s satirical allegory and his only work of fiction, which draws on his early life and educational experiences.

Mitchell, Linda. C. Grammar Wars: Language as Cultural Battlefield in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century England. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001. An impressively researched expansion of the author’s dissertation that examines Comenius as a radical thinker whose ideas were controversial and underappreciated by mainstream grammarians in seventeenth century England. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Murphy, Daniel. Comenius: A Critical Reassessment of His Life and Work. Portland, Oreg.: Irish Academic Press, 1995. This study focuses on the role of Moravian Christianity in shaping Comenius’s educational and pedagogical theories. It includes a biographical portrait, a chapter on cultural and historical influences, and a highly developed discussion of his theories and contributions. Index and bibliography.

Peprnik, Jaroslav. “Jan Amos Comenius.” In Fifty Major Thinkers on Education: From Confucius to Dewey, edited by Joy A. Palmer. New York: Routledge, 2001. Peprnik, a professor at University Olomouc in the Czech Republic, provides insight into Comenius’s importance to the Czech and the Slovak peoples.

Spinka, Matthew. John Amos Comenius: That Incomparable Moravian. 1943. Reprint. New York: Russell & Russell, 1967. A comprehensive biography with background information on conflicts between Protestants and Catholics leading to the Thirty Years’ War. Bibliography and index.

Wolfe, Jennifer. Learning from the Past: Historical Voices in Early Childhood Education. Mayerthorpe, Alta.: Piney Branch Press, 2000. An entry-level college text that features a chapter on Comenius’s contributions to education, including sample pages from his text Orbis sensualium pictus. Illustrations, bibliography, index.