John Amos Comenius

John Amos Comenius (; Czech: Jan Amos Komenský; German: Johann Amos Comenius; Polish: Jan Amos Komeński; Latinized: Ioannes Amos Comenius; 28 March 1592 – 15 November 1670) was a Moravian philosopher, pedagogue and theologian who is considered the father of modern education. He served as the last bishop of the Unity of the Brethren (direct predecessor of the Moravian Church) before becoming a religious refugee and one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica Magna. As an educator and theologian, he led schools and advised governments across Protestant Europe through the middle of the seventeenth century.

Comenius introduced a number of educational concepts and innovations including pictorial textbooks written in native languages instead of Latin, teaching based in gradual development from simple to more comprehensive concepts, lifelong learning with a focus on logical thinking over dull memorization, equal opportunity for impoverished children, education for women, and universal and practical instruction. He also believed heavily in the connection between nature, religion, and knowledge, in which he stated that knowledge is born from nature and nature from God.

A proud Moravian, he nevertheless for most of his life – mainly due to the difficult wartime circumstances in the homeland and fear from religious persecution – lived and worked as an exile in various regions of the Holy Roman Empire and other countries: Sweden, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Transylvania, England, the Netherlands and Hungary. He turned down an offer to immigrate to the New England Colonies and take up the presidency of the newly founded Harvard University.

John Amos Comenius was born in 1592 in the Margraviate of Moravia in the Bohemian Crown. His exact birthplace is uncertain and possibilities include Uherský Brod (as on his gravestone in Naarden), Nivnice, and Komňa (the village from which he took his surname, which means "man from Komňa"), all these localities being situated in the Uherské Hradiště District of today's Czech Republic. John was the youngest child and only son of Martin Komenský (died ca. 1602–1604) and his wife Anna Chmelová. His grandfather, whose name was Jan (János) Szeges, was of Hungarian origin. He began to use the surname Komenský after leaving Komňa to live in Uherský Brod. Martin and Anna Komenský belonged to the Bohemian Brethren, a pre-Reformation Protestant denomination, and Comenius later became one of its leaders. His parents and two of his four sisters died in 1604 and John, still a child, went to live with his aunt in Strážnice.

Owing to his impoverished circumstances he was unable to begin his formal education until his later teens. He was 16 when he entered the Latin school in Přerov, returning there later as a teacher 1614–1618. He continued his studies at the Herborn Academy (1611–1613) and at the University of Heidelberg (1613–1614). In 1612 he read the Rosicrucian manifesto Fama Fraternitatis. Comenius was also greatly influenced by the Irish Jesuit William Bathe as well as by his teachers Johann Piscator, Heinrich Gutberleth, and particularly Heinrich Alsted. The Herborn Academy maintained 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 studies, Comenius 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 became rector of a school in Přerov. In 1616 he was ordained into the ministry of the Bohemian Brethren and four years later became pastor and rector at Fulnek, one of the denomination's most flourishing churches. Throughout his life this pastoral activity was his most immediate concern. In consequence of the religious wars, in 1621 he lost all his property, including his writings. In 1627 he led the Brethren into exile when the Habsburg Counter-Reformation persecuted the Protestants in Bohemia. In 1628 he corresponded with Johann Valentin Andreae.

He produced the book Janua linguarum reserata, or The Gate of Languages Unlocked, which brought him to prominence. However, as the Unity became an important target of the Counter Reformation politics, he was forced into exile even as his fame grew across Europe. Comenius took refuge in Leszno (Lissa) in Poland, where he was head of the gymnasium school and was furthermore 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 that country's schools.

For the greater part of the eighteenth century and early part of the nineteenth, there was little recognition of his relationship to the advance in educational thought and practice. However, the importance of the Comenian influence in education has been recognized since the middle of the nineteenth century. The practical educational influence of Comenius was threefold.

He was first a teacher and an organizer of schools, not only among his own people, but later in Sweden, and to a slight extent in Holland. In his Didactica Magna (Great Didactic), he outlined a system of schools that is the exact counterpart of the existing American system of kindergarten, elementary school, secondary school, college, and university.

The second influence was in formulating the general theory of education. In this respect, he is the forerunner of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Fröbel, etc., and is the first to formulate the idea of "education according to nature," which became consequential during the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century. The influence of Comenius on education is comparable with that of his contemporaries, Bacon and Descartes, on science and philosophy. In fact, he was largely influenced by the works of these two men. This comparison is largely due to the fact that he first applied or attempted to apply in a systematic manner the principles of thought and investigation, newly formulated by those philosophers, to the organization of education in all its aspects. The summary of this attempt is given in the Didactica Magna, completed about 1631, though not published until several years later.

The third aspect of influence was on the subject matter and method of education, exerted through a series of textbooks of an entirely new nature. The first-published of these was the Janua Linguarum Reserata (The Gate of Tongues Unlocked), issued in 1631. This was followed by a more elementary text, the Vestibulum, a more advanced one, the Atrium, and others. The Orbis Pictus, published in 1658, became one of the most renowned and widely circulated school books over the next century. It was also the first successful application of illustrations to the work of teaching youth (though not the first illustrated book for children, per se).

The educational writings of Comenius comprise more than forty titles. These texts were all based on the same fundamental ideas: (1) learning foreign languages through the vernacular; (2) obtaining ideas through objects rather than words; (3) starting with objects most familiar to the child to introduce him to both the new language and the more remote world of objects; (4) giving the child a comprehensive knowledge of his environment, physical and social, as well as instruction in religious, moral, and classical subjects; (5) making this acquisition of a compendium of knowledge a pleasure rather than a task; and (6) making instruction universal "to all men and from all points of view".

John Amos Comenius was a bishop of the Unity of the Brethren church that had its roots in the teaching of Czech reformer Jan Hus. One of his most famous theological works is the Labyrinth of the World and Paradise of the Heart. The book represents his thinking about the world being full of various useless things and complex labyrinths, and that the true peace of mind and soul can be found only in one's heart where Christ the Saviour should dwell and rule. This teaching is also repeated in one of his last works, Unum Necessarium (Only One is Needed), where he shows various labyrinths and problems in the world and provides simple solutions to various situations. In this book he also admits that his former believing in prophecies and revelations of those days was his personal labyrinth where he got lost many times. He was greatly influenced by Boehme.

In his Synopsis physicae ad lumen divinum reformatae, Comenius gives a physical theory of his own, said to be taken from the Book of Genesis. He was also famous for his prophecies and the support he gave to visionaries. In his Lux in tenebris he published the visions of Christopher Kotterus, Mikuláš Drabík (lat. Nicolaus Drabicius) and Kristina Poniatowska. Attempting to interpret the Book of Revelation, he promised the millennium in 1672 and guaranteed miraculous assistance to those who would undertake the destruction of the Pope and the house of Austria, even venturing to prophesy that Oliver Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, and George I Rákóczi, prince of Transylvania, would perform the task. He also wrote to Louis XIV of France, informing him that the empire of the world should be his reward if he would overthrow the enemies of God.But, paradoxically he is quoted as having said:

"We are all citizens of the world, we are all of one blood. To hate a man because he was born in another country, because he speaks a different language, or because he takes a different view on this subject or that, is a great folly...let us put aside all selfishness in the consideration of language, nationality, or religion."

One of his daughters, Elisabeth, married Peter Figulus from Jablonné nad Orlicí. Their son, Daniel Ernst Jablonski (1660–1741), Comenius's grandson, later went to Berlin in 1693; there he became the highest official pastor at the court of King Frederick I of Prussia (reigned 1701–1713). There he became acquainted with Count Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf (1700–1760). Zinzendorf was among the foremost successors to Comenius as a bishop (1737–1760) in the renewed Moravian Brethren's Church. His direct descendent, Jan Ferdinand Kallik (1939-____) was born in Prague and educated in South Africa. He now lives in California. All four of his children, Lynette, Peter, Alison, and Pamela are teachers.

The Comenius Medal, a UNESCO award honouring outstanding achievements in the fields of education research and innovation, commemorates Comenius. Peter Drucker hailed Comenius as the inventor of textbooks and primers.

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

The Czech Republic celebrates 28 March, the birthday of Comenius, as Teachers' Day. The University of Jan Amos Komenský was founded in Prague in 2001, offering bachelor's, master's and graduate degree programmes. 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). Comenius is pictured on the 200 Czech koruna banknote.

Asteroid 1861 Komenský, discovered by Luboš Kohoutek, is named in his honor.

In Leszno, Poland, a local college is named after him. There is also square of his name nearby post Unity's of the Brethren church.

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

In Sárospatak, Hungary, a teacher's college is named after him, which belongs to the University of Miskolc. Comenius' name has been given to primary schools in several German cities, including Bonn, Grafing, and Deggendorf. In Skopje, North Macedonia the Czechoslovak government built a school after a catastrophic 1963 earthquake and named it after Comenius (Jan Amos Komenski in Macedonian). In 1919 Comenius University was founded by an act of parliament in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, now in Slovakia. It was the first university with courses in Slovak.

The Comenius tower in Luxembourg was completed in 2008 as an addition to the headquarters of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The building houses many of the institution's translation services.

The 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.

In 1892, educators in many places celebrated the 300th anniversary of Comenius. Comenius Hall was built as the principal classroom and faculty office building on Moravian College's campus in Pennsylvania, and the Comenian Society for the study and publication of his works was formed. The education department at Salem College in North Carolina has an annual Comenius Symposium dedicated in his honor; the subjects usually deal with modern issues in education. The Comenius Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity which uses film and documentary production to further faith, learning, and love. Many of his musical creations have been preserved within the Moravian music foundation in North Carolina.

Linguae Bohemicae thesaurus, hoc est lexicon plenissimum, grammatica accurata, idiotismorum elegantiae et emphases adagiaque ("Treasure of the Czech language"), 1612–1656

Problemata miscellanea ("Different Problems"), 1612, non-existent, perished in fire while being prepared for printing.

Grammaticae facilioris praecepta, 1614–1616

Centrum securitatis ("The Center of Safety"), 1625

Moraviae nova et post omnes priores accuratissima delineatio autore J. A. Comenio ("Map of Moravia"), 1618–1627

Retuňk proti Antikristu a svodům jeho ("Utterance against the Antichrist and his temptations"), 1617

O starožitnostech Moravy ("About Moravian Antiquities"), 1618–1621

Spis o rodu Žerotínů (Script about the Zierotin family), 1618–1621

Listové do nebe ("Letters to Heaven"), 1619

Manuálník aneb jádro celé biblí svaté ("Manual or Core of the Whole Holy Bible"), 1620–1623