Comenius, Johannes Amos

(1592–1670)

   Bishop and Educator.

   Comenius was born in East Moravia and was educated at Prerov, Nassau and Heidelberg. He was ordained priest of the Bohemian Unitas Fratrum, of which Church he later became a Bishop. When all non-Catholic clergy were prevented from exercising their ministries in Bohemia, he moved to Poland where he became Rector of the Leszno Gymnasium. He was the author of Janua Linguarum Reserata and Didactica Magna and he was recognised as one of the foremost educationalists of his day. He spent the year 1641/2 in England where he outlined his plan for a ‘Pansophic’ college. Later he attempted to carry out a similar project in Sweden, Hungary and the Netherlands. He is primarily remembered for his De Rerum Humanarum Emendatione Consultatio. Only the first two volumes were published during his lifetime, but his belief that universal education was the key to founding a universal Church was highly influential in the nineteenth century.

   Johannes Comenius, Selections in Commemorations of the Third Centenary of Opera Didactica Omnia (1957);

   J.E. Sadler, J.A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education (1966);

   M. Spinka, John Amos Comenius, That Incomparable Moravian (1943).