Comenius, JOHN AMOS (properly KOMENSKI), a distinguished educational reformer of the 17th century, was born 28th March 1592, in Moravia, either at Comna or at Nivnitz. His parents belonged to the Moravian Brethren. He studied at Herborn (1612), and then at Heidelberg, became rector of the Moravian school of Prerau (1614-16), and minister at Fulnek, but lost all his property and library in 1621, when that town was taken by the Imperialists. He became a wanderer, and settled at Lissa, Poland. Here he worked out his new theory and method of education, wrote his Didactica Magna, and was chosen bishop of the Moravian Brethren in 1632. In 1631 he published his Janua Linguarum Reserata, which was translated into many European, and even into some oriental languages. There is a trilingual edition, with woodcuts, in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. In this work he points out a method of learning languages new at that time, which has been called the intuitive or perceptive system, in which the pupils were taught by a series of lessons on subjects easily understood or appreciable by the senses—such as natural history, the sciences, different trades and professions, &c. The Vestibulum, an introduction to the same, appeared in 1633. Comenius also published about the same time the Ratio Disciplinæ Ordinisque
Ecclesiæ in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum (1632; republished 1702); and his Pansophiæ Prodromus (1639), an attempt at a complete statement of the circle of knowledge. In 1641 Comenius was invited to England by parliament, through the philanthropist Hartlieb, to assist in reforming the system of public instruction; but as the breaking out of the Civil War prevented the execution of this design, he went to Sweden (1642). There he was patronised by Oxenstiern, who gave him a commission to draw up a plan for the organisation of schools in Sweden; and this he completed at Elbing, four years afterwards. He also put to press (1643) a treatise on Pansophia. He returned to his Polish home at Lissa in 1648, and elaborated his work there. He next went (1650) to Saros-Patak, Hungary, for a similar purpose. Here he composed his celebrated Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or The Visible World (Nurem. 1658), the first picture-book for children, which has been often reprinted and imitated. Finally, he settled in Amsterdam, where he published several other works. He died at Naarden on the 15th November 1671. Bacon's speculations appear to have stirred the imagination of Comenius to the conception of universal and systematised learning, to which he gave the name of Pansophia or Encyclopædia. His educational and pansophic works were published at Amsterdam (4 vols. 1657), and dedicated to that city in recognition of his hospitable treatment there. In education he was a realist; he was also fervently evangelical, and his whole system was intended to lead up to knowledge, virtue, and piety. Late in life a mystical tendency was apparent in his works. Whatever may be thought of his educational system, he first fully developed method, made important reforms in the teaching of languages, and introduced into schools the study of Nature.
See Laurie's Comenius, his Life and Work (1881), a German Life by Kvačsala (1892), Keatinge's translation of The Great Didactic (1896), and Monroe's Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform (1900).