COMENIUS (KOMENSKY), GIOVANNI AMOS. - Czech pedagogue, born at Niwnitz in Moravia on 28 March 1592, died at Amsterdam on 15 November 1670.
LIFE. - The information concerning his troubled life is somewhat uncertain. He belonged to the Unitas Fratrum, one of the earliest pietist Protestant sects. He lost his parents early and later lamented the delay with which he was introduced to study; from this came his first reflections and experiences on the education of youth. After passing from the school at Přerov in Bohemia to the Calvinist University of Herborn, he had as his philosophy teacher Johann Heinrich Alsted.
At that time he composed a Latin-Bohemian lexicon and conceived a vast encyclopedia: the *Amphitheatrum universitatis rerum*. In 1614–16, having returned to his homeland, he taught at the school in Přerov, where he made his first fruitful pedagogical experiments and became aware of his vocation as an educator. He maintained a lively correspondence with the most notable pedagogues of his time, particularly Alsted and Johann Valentin Andreae, whose works stimulated in him a lively impulse to reflection. From 1618 to 1621 he pursued various studies at Fulnek in Moravia and there he married. From there, in 1621, he was forced to flee due to Ferdinand II’s persecution of the Unitas Fratrum and went to Bohemia. Europe was then ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War, and he suffered the pain of seeing his library destroyed, his manuscripts scattered, while severe family misfortunes struck him: the death of his wife and two children. In 1624 he married again.
Following an imperial proscription edict, he had to leave Bohemia in 1628 and went to Leszno (Lissa) in Poland, where the sorrows of exile and family misfortunes fostered strange deviations in his spirit: he gave credence to exalted persons who declared themselves prophets and announced the liberation of his homeland. Meanwhile, he did not neglect his pedagogical studies: he sought advice from Wolfgang Ratke and Andreae on didactic questions and studied the works of the leading pedagogues of his time. He conceived at the same time a great work to aid language learning through the intuition of things, and indeed in 1631 published the *Janua linguarum reserata*, while he was developing the ideas that would later inform his pedagogy.
In the preface to this work he acknowledges having been preceded by the Jesuits with a book of similar content and title: *Quia Patres isti tale hoc totius linguae compendium primi tentarunt, quod inventum est grate agno-simus, quod erratum condonamus benigne*. He says he knew this work in various editions, including a German one in eight languages from 1629. The work was by the Irish Jesuit Father William Bathe, published anonymously in its first edition: *Janua linguarum, seu modus maxime accommodatus, quo patet aditus ad omnes linguas intelligendas, industria Patrum Hibernorum Societatis Iesu*... (Salamanca 1611; V. SOMMERVOGEL, CHARLES, I, 1009). Meanwhile, he participated in the pansophic movement and the naturalistic currents that were maturing in Europe. In 1633 he published the *Janua linguarum reseratae vestibulum* and was elected “senior” of his community. Since political events deprived him of his last hopes of returning home, he went to England, where he composed the *Via Lucis*, dominated by the idea—sometimes naively expressed but deeply cherished and felt—of a spiritual brotherhood of men under the inspiration of God, in a mystical Pietist sense. And since his fame as a pedagogue had by then spread widely, he was consulted by France, Holland, Sweden, and even America. From Sweden he received the commission to prepare textbooks to improve school instruction. Indeed, in 1647 he published the *Linguarum methodus novissima* and other Latin teaching texts. Returning to Lissa, he was struck in 1648 by another severe domestic bereavement, the death of his second wife. In the same year, with the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War, he hoped to return home, but exiles belonging to religious sects were not permitted to return, and thus Comenius remained in exile.
Prince Sigismund Rákóczi of Transylvania invited him to Sárospatak, where he was entrusted with the direction of a pansophic school, and it was during this period that he completed the work *Orbis sensualium pictus*, strongly inspired by the new intuitive method.
Later invited to Amsterdam, he spent his final years there and wrote the *Ventilabrum sapientiae*, in which, with modesty equal to the sincere passion that animated his entire life, he highlighted errors and deficiencies in his works. Also from this period is the *Traditio lampadis*, in which he recommends, in view of all that still remained to be done to improve humanity, the continuation of his work. He worked intensively until his last days, publishing for the first time his major work, the *Didactica magna*.
HIS THOUGHT. - His thought, on account of the encyclopedic multitude of his works, their sometimes naive and not always clear form, and the somewhat visionary tendencies of his spirit, may seem tied to outdated traditions, but in reality it is attentive to contemporary scientific and philosophical currents and strongly dominated by a great idea: the reform of humanity through rational culture, in conformity with human nature.
The human soul has the power to understand everything; it has an insatiable thirst for knowledge that reveals its destiny and its ultimate end. There is a marvelous capacity in man to draw from himself, by the impulse of his nature so richly endowed by God, wisdom, because within man there truly is everything: there is the lamp, the light, and the oil, the wick and all that is necessary; one must help him to kindle the flame. It is the duty of those who govern to order schools toward this end. Education gives nothing from outside to consciousness, but rather aids in kindling the inner light that must enable one to see within oneself and in the great world of nature the wonderful treasures of God’s wisdom.
The scientific naturalism of Bacon, through Comenius’s work, passes into modern pedagogical direction and teaching methods. It is suggestively joined to a profound religious vision of life, of the purpose assigned to it by God, to a hope for pacification and brotherhood among men, finally united in the clear consciousness of their common origin and end. The three major works of Comenius are: the *Janua*, the *Orbis*, and the *Didactica*. All three brought to the school the broad contribution of the modern scientific spirit and inspired naturalistic pedagogy and active schooling. Rousseau and Pestalozzi find in him their great precursor. No less than Pestalozzi, he has confidence in education, a deeply humanitarian spirit, and a cult of human personality. He differs from Rousseau and Pestalozzi in that he recognizes the fall of man due to original sin, but like them he lacks the Catholic concept of grace that elevates fallen nature and aids it in attaining perfection. Thus Comenius mistakenly believes that man possesses within himself the strength and adequate means to rise and attain perfection, even if he generically admits that such strength comes from God as author of nature, not as Redeemer and author of grace.
The first two works, the *Anua* and the *Orbis*, highlight the relationship between word and thought, and warn the educator of the futility of any linguistic teaching based on memory rather than on the development of thought and real intuition. Teaching must therefore be intuitive, and for this reason C. provides in the *Orbis pictus* an early example of an illustrated book for children, in the sense that the learning of words must always be linked to that of things, and in the sense that every connection must begin with the senses, then proceed, according to the law of gradation, to the intellect.
C.’s most extensive work is the *Didactica magna*, *Universale omnes omnia docendi artificium exhibens*, in which, amid prolixity, repetitions, and at times pedestrian exemplification, a lively thought and a vigilant concern to systematize pedagogical principles and educational practice prevail. In this work the principles on which C. bases education are expressed, along with a curriculum that he proposes to rulers as necessary in a well-ordered state.
Education must be universal; all must be educated, because only education can draw nature to the fullness of earthly life, to turn it toward its ultimate end, which is supernatural: the full possession of God. One must not fear, according to the prejudices of the age, to instruct the common people and women. And instruction must embrace everything; the curriculum proposed by C. is vast: “all things to all men,” he is wont to repeat. He therefore advocates the organization of schools into various levels corresponding to the stages of human development, with a method of “cyclical teaching.” For the first time, a school “of the maternal womb” is introduced, which must exist in every home through the mother’s efforts; equally pioneering is his proposal of a national language school, which precedes the Latin school and is to be extended to all. The cycle of studies culminates in the “Academy.” The Latin school must be accessible to young people between the ages of twelve and eighteen who are able and willing to devote themselves to classical studies. Such a school must be in every city, while the Academy, which is to admit young people between eighteen and twenty-four, must be in every state and province.
The “all things to all men” principle implies the cyclical method, in the sense that all the faculties of the spirit are exercised at every level of schooling. In his “all things to all men,” his pansophic, encyclopedic ideal is also revealed, one he shared with his time and which he expresses with ingenuous enthusiasm.
The education of the senses and the intellect must aim at that of the will, as the harmonizing force of all faculties.
In the enumeration of didactic rules, in the frequent and sometimes pedestrian comparisons between human education and the development of natural things, lies the negative and outdated aspect of C.’s pedagogical thought, which seems to want to shape the spirit from without.