COMENIUS - Jan Amos Komensky (1592 - 1670)
Jan Amos Komensky, Latin name Comenius - a thinker, philosopher, writer and educator. Here in the Czech Republic all school children know him - mostly under the name "the teacher of nations".
After university studies in Herborn and Heidelberg in Germany, Comenius was ordained as a Czech Brethren priest in 1616. Jan Amos Komensky's destiny was decided at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620 when the emperor from Vienna started the recatholization. A wave of migration started.
Komensky could not betray his Protestant belief. He went into hiding to some places in Bohemia, but finally he decided to flee. In 1628 he went away to Polish Lesno. In next years he visited for example England, Netherlands, Sweden, and Hungary. He hoped to return homeland. But his chances were cancelled by Westphalian peace. Komensky's life was not happy and he died in exile in Netherlands, Naarden. His tomb here belongs to the Czech Republic.
Before his death, Komensky assessed his own life in the following words:
"I led a wandering life, I had no homeland. I was constantly propelled from one place to another, never and nowhere did I find a permanent home."
Komensky was a very productive philosopher and writer. He also worked on a new school system, which he wanted to be introduced in the Czech kingdom. He wrote many didactical books:
- Schola ludus (School through play - was the main credo of his project for a new type of school)
- The School of Infancy (a handbook for parents and educators)
- Ianua linguarum reserata (The Gate of Languages Unlocked - which was a textbook for teaching Latin)
- Orbis pictus (World in the pictures - Latin textbook, model for foreign languages textbook)