118 Chapter 3 3.1.1 Ján Amos Comenius and Jan Hábl Born in Moravia as Ján Amos Komenský, Comenius arrived after many wanderings through different countries in Europe in the Netherlands, where he died in 1670. As a foreman of the Unitas Fratrum, the Bohemian Brethren, he was highly appreciated by representatives of the Nadere Reformatie (1600–1750; Groenendijk & Sturm, 1992). As a pedagogue, in retrospect, he was appreciated more broadly as a precursor to Reform Pedagogy (Stevens, 2020). His pedagogy not only culminated in a plea for world peace (Comenius Museum, 2021) but was also based on the recognition of the fundamental coherence in created life. This is why Stevens (2020) characterised him as a humanist, stating that modern educators should learn from him to avoid positioning education as a meritocracy and to follow a pedagogy of responsibility that is focused on society (1). For Comenius, every single human being was perceived, in the end, as a homo universalis. In order to fundamentally respect this, education should be pan-sophia. The editors of the Dutch translation of his work Unum Necessarium (Comenius, 1668/1983) observed how these two central concepts blended together in Comenius’ life and work: ‘That man is more than the mind and thinking controlled by senses, was for Comenius a lived fact’ (pp. ix–x) (2). In this book, written just two years before his death, Comenius (1668/1983) stated that ‘all confusions in the world have but one cause, that man cannot distinguish the necessary from the unnecessary’ (p. 21). Thus, to avoid remaining ‘confused and entangled in it’ (Comenius, 1668/1983, p. 21), man needs to listen to the all-wise God. In his allegorical book The Labyrinth of the World (1623), Comenius depicted the world created by God as a beautiful theatre, currently broken down into an obscure labyrinth in which chaos, exclusion, segregation and fragmentation are fundamental features (D.I. Smith, 2017, p. 15). As Comenius (1623) pointed out in that book, fundamental renewal begins within the human heart when it starts to listen in silence to the voice of God. From the heart, it flows outside to transform the world through education. Comenius’ (1623) allegory preceded John Bunyan’s (1678) famous allegory titled The Pilgrim’s Progress. D.I. Smith (2017) noted that Comenius expected much more of his pilgrim than Bunyan did: ‘Unlike John Bunyan’s pilgrim, this one remains in the world, freshly strengthened to face its failings and filled with hope. The transformation of the self is the beginning of the transformation of all things’ (p. 22). As Comenius sees it in his Great Didactic (1657/2019), schools 1 Stevens, the founder of the NIVOZ Foundation, spoke at the opening of a special exhibition on Comenius and reform pedagogy held in 2020–2021 in the museum in Naarden. 2 The translation is mine.
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