John Amos Comenius (1592–1670,) Jan Amos Komenský in Czech, was a Moravian teacher, educator, and bishop. He is remembered mainly for his innovations in methods of teaching, especially languages.
Born in Eastern Moravia to parents belonging to the Moravian Brethren, Comenius became Rector of the Moravian school of Prerau (1614–16) and minister at Fulnek. During the bitter Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics in Europe, he suffered personal tragedy and spent most of his adult life in exile.
Comenius settled at Lissa in Poland (1628,) where he worked out his new theory of education, wrote his Didactica Magna, and was appointed Bishop of the Moravian Brethren in 1632. He spoke four languages fluently and was a pioneer of new language-teaching methods.
Comenius favored the learning of Latin to facilitate the study of European culture. Janua Linguarum Reserata (1632; The Gate of Tongues Unlocked) revolutionized Latin teaching and was translated into 16 languages. Comenius also published his Pansophire Prodromus (1639.) In 1641 he was in England by invitation of parliament, planning a Baconian College of all the sciences, but the Civil War drove him to Sweden (1642.)
Comenius returned to Lissa in 1648 and in 1650 went to Saros-Patak in Hungary, where he composed his Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658,) the first foreign-language textbook to use pictures as a visual aid to learning. He finally settled in Amsterdam.
Comenius authored over forty works; he introduced pictorial textbooks, gradual learning of comprehensive concepts, equal opportunities for poor children and women, and practical, universal education.
The Hartford-Connecticut Seminary Foundation’s Matthew Spinka wrote John Amos Comenius: That Incomparable Moravian (1943.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by John Amos Comenius
Let us have but one end in view, the welfare of humanity; and let us put aside all selfishness in consideration of language, nationality, or religion.
—John Amos Comenius
Topics: Prejudice, Welfare
Strife—in philosophy, religion, and politics—has certainly gained so much ground that it is impossible for us to reconcile with one another. But it is possible to find reconciliation … by means of the foundation of all things, which is God. For he does not cease to be the same for all … irrespective of our differences, and his earth bears us all, even if we preferred to see that the ground would cleave asunder beneath our enemies.
The sun sends his rays upon us directly, paying no heed that we look askance at one another. The rose smells sweetly to both the Jew and the Christian—and to the Muslim too. And so God is God of all, and whatever he says, he says in the same manner to all that are ready to listen. If then we look to our own rules, books, and works, which we have made ourselves and which differ in many thousands of ways, we are irreconcilable. But if with due attention and honor we accept God’s ideas regarding our lives … reconciliation is easy.
—John Amos Comenius
Topics: Religion
Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts of grammar that are infinitely prolix, perplexed and obscure.
—John Amos Comenius
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