John Amos Comenius - Life and Work

Life and Work

Comenius originated from Moravia, but history has no accurate record of his birthplace. There are three possible locations: Komňa, Nivnice and Uherský Brod (all three locations are in Uherské Hradiště District, southeastern Moravia, Czech Republic). His ancestors came from the Kingdom of Hungary (from the part that is today Slovakia, which is very close to Moravia both geographically and linguistically, likely from Pobedim near Trenčín) during the 16th century and his original family name was Szeges according to his will found in 1968 by Milada Blekastad, a monographer of Comenius.

He described himself as "Moravus ego natione, lingua Bohemus"; an inhabitant of the Margraviate of Moravia (probably with Slovak roots) who used the Czech language for daily communication. The original family name (Szeges or Segeš) is of Hungarian origin and is relatively common in Western Slovakia both for local Magyars and even Slovaks.

John Comenius was the youngest child and only son of Martin Comenius and his wife Anna. Martin, whose original surname was Szeges, started to use the surname Comenius after leaving Komňa to live in Uherský Brod, where he owned a house. (He was "the man from Komňa" = Comenius.) Both of his parents belonged to the Moravian Brethren, and Comenius later became one of the leaders of that pre-Reformation Protestant denomination. His parents and two of his four sisters died in 1604 and young John went to live with his aunt in Strážnice.

Owing to his impoverished circumstances he was unable to begin his formal education until late. He was 16 when he entered the Latin school in Přerov (he later returned to this school as a teacher 1614–1618). He continued his studies in the Herborn gymnasium (1611–1613) and the University of Heidelberg (1613–1614). 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 it has to be didactic (i.e. morally instructive). In the course of his study he also became acquainted with the educational reforms of Ratichius and with the report of these reforms issued by the universities of Jena and Giessen. Comenius' book Janua linguarum reserata (The Gate of Languages Unlocked, 1631) brought him widespread prominence and fame. However he and the Unity became special targets of the Counter Reformation movement and were forced into exile even as his fame grew across Europe.

Comenius became rector of a school in Přerov. In 1614 he was ordained into the ministry of the Moravian Brethren and four years later became pastor and rector at Fulnek, one of its most flourishing churches. Throughout his life this pastoral activity was his most immediate concern. In consequence of the religious wars he lost all his property and his writings in 1621 and six years later led the Brethren into exile when the Habsburg Counter-Reformation persecuted the Protestants in Bohemia.

Comenius took refuge in Leszno in Poland, where he led the gymnasium and was given charge of the Bohemian and Moravian churches. In 1638 Comenius responded to a request by the government of Sweden and traveled there to draw up a scheme for the management of the schools of that country, and in 1641, he responded to a request by the English parliament and joined a commission there charged with the reform of the system of public education. The disturbed political condition of England interfered with the latter project, and so in 1642 he returned to Sweden to work with Queen Christina (reigned 1632–1654) and the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna (in office 1612–1654) on the task of reorganizing the Swedish schools. The same year he moved to Elbing, Royal Prussia, (now (Elbląg,Poland) and in 1648 went 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 Polish partisans burned his house, his manuscripts, and the school's printing press in 1656. From Leszno he took refuge in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, where he died in 1670. For unclear reasons he was buried in Naarden, where visitors can see his grave in the mausoleum devoted to him.

After his religious duties, Comenius's second great interest was in furthering the Baconian attempt at the organization of all human knowledge. He became one of the leaders in the encyclopædic or pansophic movement of the seventeenth century, and, in fact, was inclined to sacrifice his more practical educational interests and opportunities for these more imposing but somewhat visionary projects. In 1639, Comenius published his Pansophiæ Prodromus, and in the following year his English friend Hartlib published, without his consent, the plan of the pansophic work as outlined by Comenius. The manuscript of Pansophia was destroyed in the burning of his home in Lissa in 1657. The pansophic ideas find partial expression in the series of textbooks he produced from time to time. In these, he attempts to organize the entire field of human knowledge so as to bring it, in outline, within the grasp of every child.

According to Cotton Mather, Comenius was asked by Winthrop to be the President of Harvard University, this being more plausibly John Winthrop the Younger than his father since the junior Winthrop was in England; but Comenius moved to Sweden instead. Comenius also attempted to design a language in which false statements were inexpressible. He also wrote Protestant Hymn songbooks (Gesangbuch). A new Dutch translation of his Janua Linguarum Reserata by C.F.J. Antonides is available.