Jan Amos Comenius Issue 13 | 1987 Purchase this issue

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Comenius’ map of Moravia remained a standard for over 100 years and went through at least 20 editions.

1620, the same year as the Pilgrims left England on the Mayflower, the Battle of White Mountain took place near Prague. This Bohemian Revolt was crushed by Emporer Ferdinand and the Protestants cause was defeated.

When Comenius led his exiled band from their homeland to Poland in January, 1628, they stopped at the border and Comenius led them in prayer that God would preserve a “hidden seed” of his Bretheren, a prayer fulfilled in May of 1722 when Count Zinzendorf gave Moravian Brethren refuge in his estate in Herrnhut. (see Christian History, Vol. I, No. 1)

At the end of his life, Comenius was the last surviving bishop of the Unity of the Brethren Church. So he consecrated his son-in-law Peter Jablonsky and one other thereby providing for episcopal succession.

Comenius wrote 154 books in his lifetime.

The noted allegory by Comenius, The Labyrinth of the World has often been compared to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. The Labyrinth was written in 1623, while Comenius was in hiding, and this was five years before John Bunyan was born.

As the exiles crossed the mountains into Poland they lifted up their voices in song to God. One of the verses:

Naught have we taken with us,

All to destruction is hurled,

We have only our Kralitz Bibles

and our Labyrinth of the World.

The American Puritan Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi Americana said that Comenius was invited to become the first president of Harvard College.

Comenius was one of the first to promote continuing education with his insistence that education should extend from the cradle to the grave.

Comenius wrote the first picture book for children Orbis Pictus Sensualium.

Comenius spent ...