John Amos Comenius

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The Moravian theologian and educational reformer John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) is often called the father of modern education.

John Amos Comenius was born on Mar. 28, 1592, in southeastern Moravia. His early education was irregular. After deciding to become a priest of the Bohemian Unity of Brethren (a German Baptist sect), he received his higher education in Germany at Herborn, Nassau, and Heidelberg. In 1614 he returned to Bohemia, where he taught in the schools of the Brethren. He was ordained a priest 2 years later and appointed pastor of a parish in Fulneck in 1618.

The sack of Fulneck by the Catholic forces after the outbreak of the Thirty Years War forced Comenius into hiding in Bohemia. Shortly afterward he wrote the allegory The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. In this classic of Czech literature, man finds true happiness in mystical union with Christ.

Because of persecution, the Brethren were forced to leave Bohemia in 1628. Comenius went to Leszno, Poland, where his position as corector of the Brethren's school led him to become interested in educational reform. Many of the educational ideas expressed in his Didactica magna (1657; The Great Didactic) were developed during this period. Among the reforms that he advocated were gentler discipline; use of the vernacular instead of Latin in the primary schools; and free, universal, compulsory education for both sexes and all social classes. His book Janua linguarum reserata (1631; The Gate of Languages Unlocked) revolutionized the teaching of Latin and helped establish his reputation throughout Europe as an educational reformer.

Elected a bishop of his church in 1632, Comenius expressed his great interest in Christian unity and was conspicuous in the 17th century for his ecumenical beliefs. His development of a universal system of human knowledge among all men and nations, called pansophy, led to his being invited to England. From there he went to Sweden in 1642 and was employed in reforming the nation's school system. In 1650 he established a pansophic school in Hungary as a model for others, but conflicts caused his return to Leszno in 1655. After the sack of the city in 1656, he fled to Amsterdam, where he resided until his death on Nov. 4, 1670.

Further Reading

In English, the best biography of Comenius is Matthew Spinka, John Amos Comenius: That Incomparable Moravian (1943). The earliest biography is S. S. Laurie, John Amos Comenius, Bishop of the Moravians: His Life and Educational Works (1881; new ed. 1892). Otakar Odloziik wrote a brief biographical sketch, Jan Amos Komensky (1942). Two books focus on his educational reforms: Will S. Monroe, Comenius, and the Beginnings of Educational Reform (1900), and John E. Sadler, Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education (1966).

Comenius, Jan Amos (Jan Ámos Komenský; 1592–1670), Czech theologian, educator, and encyclopedic philosopher. Comenius's influence on later centuries is even greater than it was during his lifetime. He was born in Moravia, and would later describe himself as "from Nivnice" as well as "from Uherský Brod." He was taught by the Community of Brethren, acquiring both an excellent knowledge of Latin and powerful protectors. Destined to serve in the clergy of the Brethren, he was sent to complete his education at Herborn and Heidelberg. He returned to Moravia in 1614, was ordained a pastor in 1616, and promoted to head teacher of the school at Fulnek in 1618. In the Bohemian crisis of that year, Comenius sided with the confederate estates and, with the disastrous defeat of their forces two years later, was forced to take shelter while his wife and two sons died of plague and his books were publicly burned in the town square of Fulnek in May 1623. Comenius's early works from this period have only partially survived. Among them is The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart (Labyrint svĕta a ráj srdce), a masterpiece of Czech literature that centered on the gulf between human folly and capacity for good.

In the late 1620s and 1630s, now based at Leszno in Poland and a Senior of the Brethren, Comenius completed the Czech version of the Didactics, his first important vision of a universal educational system, one that drew on the innate interest of the learner through innovative textbooks, games, and interactive learning. His textbooks turned out to be his greatest success. That on the teaching of Latin (the Janua linguarum reserata [Gateway of languages opened]) abandoned memorization of texts in favor of a direct explanation of vocabulary drawing on daily life. This was followed by an even more elementary textbook for the beginner, first published in 1633, the Vestibulum linguarum (Antechamber of languages). These regularly reprinted works earned Comenius his wider reputation. Behind these publications lay a bigger project for a Janua rerum (Gateway of things), an encyclopedia of the physical world intended to unite our understanding of the physical world with that of God. Comenius termed this project pansophia ('pansophy'), and a sketch of his ideas that he sent to a correspondent in England, Samuel Hartlib, was published there in 1637.

This publication resulted in an eight-month visit to London in 1641–1642. There, he outlined the reform of society through a process of learning that he described by means of the metaphor of light in Via lucis (The way of light). But, unable to pursue his studies in the midst of the Civil War, he left for the Netherlands and eventually settled in Elblag, then part of the newly acquired Swedish empire, and refined his method of language instruction. It was during this period that he began to write his most ambitious work, De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica (General discourse on the emendation of human affairs, or Consultatio).

The decade from 1648 to 1658 was a sequence of personal defeats and catastrophes for Comenius that he interpreted in an increasingly millennial light. It was accompanied by a stream of writings. The pictorial version of his language-teaching method, the Orbis sensualium pictus (The world in pictures)—written in Sárospatak but only finally published in Nuremberg in 1658—was one of his most enduring and successful legacies.

Comenius eventually retired to Amsterdam and spent the last fourteen years of his life under the protection of the de Geer family. His productivity in these last years was remarkable. He published a compendium of his educational writings and set about rewriting the Consultatio, the first two volumes of which were printed in his lifetime. In the preface, Comenius addressed himself to the Republic of Letters of his day, seeking a profound reform of the organization of human affairs through a right philosophy, religion, and method that would produce harmony and enlightenment rather than division and chaos. The remainder of the work remained in manuscript and was only rediscovered in 1935, a remarkable testimony to the complex, universalist tendencies of Renaissance thought that had survived the Reformation.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

The volume of work on Comenius is huge and comeniology is now an accepted term of art. What follows is a very arbitrary selection of his non-Czech language works. The standard critical edition is Johannis Amos Comenii opera omnia published by the Czechoslovak [now Czech] Academy of Sciences, Prague, 1969–. English editions of Comenius's main works are of varying quality; those that follow are listed by year of publication.

Comenius, Jan Amos. The Analytic Didactic of Comenius. Edited by Vladimír Jelinek. Chicago, 1953.

——. Comenius's Pampaedia or Universal Education. Edited by A. M. O. Dobbie. Dover, U.K., 1986. See also his translations of Panaugia (Part II) (1987), Panglottia (Part V) (1989), Panegersia (Part I) (1990), and Pannuthesia (Part VII) (1991) (all published in Warwickshire, U.K.) and Panorthosia (Part VI) (published in Sheffield, U.K., 1993).

——. The Great Didactic. Edited by M. W. Keatinge. London, 1896.

——. Orbis Pictus. London, 1968. (A facsimile of the first English edition of 1659.) ——. A Reformation of Schooles, Designed in Two Excellent Treatises [ . . . ]. Menston, U.K., 1969.

——. The Way of Light. Edited by E. T. Compagnac. Liverpool and London, 1938.

Secondary Sources

Blekastad, Milada. Comenius: Versuch eines Umrisses von Leben, Werk, und Schicksal des Jan Amos Komenský. Oslo and Prague, 1969.

Kyralová, M., and J. Přívratská, eds. Symposium Comenianum 1986: J. A. Comenius's Contribution to World Science and Culture. Prague, 1989.

Murphy, Daniel. Comenius: A Critical Reassessment of His Life and Work. Dublin, 1995.

Peskova, J., J. Cach, and M. Svatos, eds. Homage to J. A. Comenius. Prague, 1991.

Sadler, J. E. J. A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education. London, 1996.

The academic journals Acta Comeniana (Prague) and Studia Comeniana (Uherský Brod) are devoted to research on Comenius and provide summaries of Czech research in German and English.

—MARK GREENGRASS

John Amos Comenius (1592–1670)

John Amos Comenius (Czech: Jan Amos Komenský; Slovak: Ján Amos Komenský; German: Johann Amos Comenius; Polish: Jan Amos Komeński; Hungarian: Comenius Ámos János; Latinized: Iohannes Amos Comenius) (28 March 1592 – 15 November 1670) was a Moravian teacher, scientist, educator, and writer. He was a Unity of the Brethren/Moravian Protestant bishop, a religious refugee, and one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica Magna. Comenius became known as the teacher of nations. He is often considered the father of modern education.

Contents 1 Life and work 2 Legacy 3 See also 4 Work 4.1 Latin 4.2 Czech 5 Publications 6 References 7 External links

Life and work

The birthplace of Comenius is not known. There are three possible locations: Komňa, Nivnice, or Uherský Brod in Moravia (all three locations are in Uherské Hradiště District, Czech Republic). His ancestors came from Hungary during the 16th Century and his original family name was Szeges (his first name was János Szeges) according to his will found in 1968 by Milada Blekastad, a monographer of Comenius.^{[citation needed]}

• Komňa is a small village where his ancestors from the Szeges family lived and where he takes his name from. (Czech: Komňa → Komenský; Comenius is a Latinised form).
• Nivnice is a small village where he spent his childhood.
• Uherský Brod is a town where he moved during his childhood. There is a museum devoted to him there.

Portrait of Comenius by Rembrandt

He attended the Latinschool in Přerov, Moravia, where he returned 1614-18 as a teacher of the school. He continued his studies in Herborn (1611-13) and Heidelberg (1613-14). Comenius was greatly influenced by the Irish Jesuit William Bathe as well as his teachers Johann Piscator, Heinrich Gutberleth, and particularly Heinrich Alsted. The Herborn school held the principle that every theory has to be functional in practical use, therefore has to be didactic, ie morally instructive. Comenius had a few wrinkles on his mentors' thoughts later published in Janua linguarum reserata (1631) which may have made him and the Moravian Church especial targets of the Counter Reformation. Alternately, the work may have resulted from the pogroms which drove him and his church out of its homeland into exile, but in any event, the work led him to widespread prominence and fame while suffering exile.

Comenius became a pastor at age 24 and led the Brethren into exile when the Protestants were persecuted under the Counter Reformation. He lived and worked in many different countries in Europe, including Sweden, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Transylvania, the Holy Roman Empire, England, the Netherlands, and Royal Hungary. Comenius took refuge in Leszno in Poland, where he led the gymnasium, then moved to Sweden to work with Queen Christina and the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna. From 1642-1648 he went to Elbing (Elbląg) in Polish Royal Prussia, then to England with the aid of Samuel Hartlib, who came originally from Elbing. In 1650 Zsuzsanna Lorántffy, widow of George I Rákóczi prince of Transylvania invited him to Sárospatak. Comenius remained there until 1654 as professor in the first Hungarian Protestant college; he wrote some of his most important works there. Comenius returned to Leszno. During the Northern Wars in 1655, he declared his support for the Protestant Swedish side, for which his house, his manuscripts, and the school's printing press were burned down by Polish partisans in 1656. From there he took refuge in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where he died in 1670. For unclear reasons he was buried in Naarden, where his grave can be visited in the mausoleum devoted to him.

Comenius on relief at school building in Dolany, Czech Republic.

Comenius on a stone in Berlin, Germany

One of his daughters, Elisabeth, married Peter Figulus from Jablonné nad Orlicí. Their son, Daniel Ernst Jablonski, Comenius's grandson, later went to Berlin, where he became the highest official pastor at the court of King Frederick I of Prussia. There he became acquainted with Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf. Zinzendorf was among the first successors to Comenius as bishop in the renewed Moravian Brethren's Church.

Comenius, his life and teachings, have become better known since the fall of the Iron Curtain. His book, Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart, is actually a reflection on his life experiences. Other works include Janua Linguarum Reserata (a new Dutch translation by CFJ Antonides is available) and Orbis Sensualium Pictus (World in Pictures) (1657), probably the most renowned and most widely circulated of school textbooks,^[1] and the Protestant Hymn songbooks (Gesangbuch).

According to Cotton Mather, Comenius was asked to be the President of Harvard University, but moved to Sweden instead.^[2]

He also attempted to design a language in which false statements were inexpressible.^[3]

Legacy

Comenius on a Czechoslovak 20 koruna banknote

During the 19th century Czech National Revival, Comenius became idealised as a symbol of the Czech nation. This image persists to the present day.

In Sárospatak, Hungary, a teacher's college is named after him (the college now belongs to the University of Miskolc.)

28 March, the birthday of Comenius, is celebrated as Teachers' Day in Slovakia and in the Czech Republic.

The Comenius Medal, one of UNESCO’s most prestigious awards honouring outstanding achievements in the fields of education research and innovation, is named after him.

In 1892 Comenius Hall, the principal classroom and faculty office building on Moravian College's campus, was built. In 1892 the three-hundredth anniversary of Comenius was very widely celebrated by educators, and at that time the Comenian Society for the study and publication of his works was formed.^[4]

In 1919 the Comenius University was founded in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, (now in Slovakia). It was the first university with courses in the Slovak language.

"Comenius" a European Union school partnership program has been named after the teacher of nations.

The education department at Salem College has an annual Comenius Symposium dedicated in his honor; the subjects usually deal with modern issues in education.

Gate to Languages, a project of lifelong education, taking place in the Czech Republic from October 2005 to June 2007 and aimed at language education of teachers, was named after his book Janua linguarum reserata (Gate to Languages Unlocked).

A primary school in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia is named after Comenius (Jan Amos Komenski in Macedonian). The school was built by the Czechoslovak government after the catastrophic earthquake in 1963 that levelled most of Skopje.

The Comenius Foundation is a non-governmental organisation in Poland, dedicated to the provision of equal opportunities to children under 10 years of age.

The great Italian film director Roberto Rossellini took Comenius, and especially his theory of "direct vision," as his model in the development of his didactic theories, which Rossellini hoped would usher the world into a utopian future.^[5]

There is also a Comenius Foundation in the US, a non-profit charity that uses film and documentary production to further faith, learning, and love.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Comenius

• Jan Amos Comenius Medal, established by UNESCO and the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic in 1992
• Moravian College
• Comenius Hall
• History of philosophy in Poland

Work

Latin

• Orbis Pictus ("The Visible World in Pictures")
• Linguae Bohemicae thesaurus, hoc est lexicon plenissimum, grammatica accurata, idiotismorum elegantiae et emphases adagiaque ("Thesaurus of the Czech language"), 1612-1656
• Problemata miscellanea ("Different Problems"), 1612
• Sylloge quaestionum controversarum, 1613
• Grammaticae facilioris praecepta, 1614-1616
• Theatrum universitatis rerum, 1616-1627
• Centrum securitatis ("The Center of Safety"), 1625
• Moraviae nova et post omnes priores accuratissima delineatio autore J. A. Comenio ("Map of Moravia"), 1618-1627
• Didactica magna ("The Great Didactic"), 1633-1638
• Schola pansophica ("School of Pansophy"), 1650-1651
• Primitiae laborum scholasticorum, 1650-1651
• Opera didactica omnia ("Writing on All Learning"), 1657
• De bono unitatis et ordinis ("On Good Unity and Order"), 1660
• De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica ("General Consultation on an Improvement of All Things Human"), 1666
• Spicilegium Didacticum, 1680

Czech

• O andělích ("About Angels"), 1615
• Retuňk proti Antikristu a svodům jeho (), 1617
• O starožitnostech Moravy ("About Moravian Antiquities"), 1618-1621
• Spis o rodu Žerotínů (Script about House of Žerotín), 1618-1621
• Listové do nebe ("Letters to Heaven"), 1619
• Manuálník aneb jádro celé biblí svaté ("Manual or Core of the Whole Saint Bible"), 1620-1623
• Přemyšlování o dokonalosti kŕesťanské ("Thinking About Christian Perfection"), 1622
• Nedobytedlný hrad jméno Hospodinovo ("Unconqerable Fortress (is) Name of the God"), 1622
• Truchlivý, díl první ("The Mournful", volume I), 1623
• O poezí české ("About Czech Poetry"), 1623-1626
• Truchlivý, díl druhý ("The Mournful", volume II), 1624
• O sirobě ("About Poor People"), 1624
• Pres boží ("Press of God"), 1624
• Vidění a zjevení Kryštofa Kottera, souseda a jircháŕe sprotavského ("Seeing and Revelation of Kryštof Kotter, Neibourgh of Mine and Tanner from Sprotava"), 1625
• Překlad některých žalmů ("Translation of Some Psalms"), 1626
• Didaktika česká ("Czech Didactic"), 1628-1630
• Škola hrou (Schola Ludus, School by Play) 1630
• Labyrint světa a ráj srdce ("Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart") 1631
• Brána jazyků otevřená (The Gate of Languages Unlocked) 1631

Publications

• Keatinge, The Great Didactic of Comenius (London, 1896)
• Laurie, John Amos Comenius (1881; sixth edition, 1898)
• Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers (London, 1890)
• Müller, Comenius, ein Systematiker in der Pädagogik (Dresden, 1887)
• Löscher, Comenius, der Pädagogik und Bischof (Leipzig, 1889)
• Monroe, Comenius and the Beginning of Educational Reform (New York, 1900)

References

1. ^ New International Encyclopedia
2. ^ Johann Amos Comenius, Charles William Bardeen, and Charles Hoole, The orbis pictus of John Amos Comenius. ISBN 1437297528, page ii, quoting Cotton Mather, Magnalia, vol. II, p. 14.
3. ^ Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach. ISBN 0140289208 pages 635
4. ^ New International Encyclopedia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
5. ^ Rossellini, Roberto. Utopia autopsia 10¹⁰. Rome: Armando, 1974. 195-6.

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Amos Comenius

• Comenius' biography
• Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia, Central Europe
• J.A. Comenius Museum in Uherský Brod
• Comenius Museum & Mausoleum, Naarden, NL
• The Comenius Foundation, Poland
• Comenius Foundation. US
• Article by the psychologist Jean Piaget on the importance of Comenius (PDF)
• THE GREAT DIDACTIC (Didactica Magna) online

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