Christian Unity (the book) - The Maranatha Community

harmoniously ordered society of peace and justice. He saw education as thegreat means to achieve this.Komensky is chiefly remembered as a pioneer of an enlightened view ofeducation. He believed in pre-school education and the home as the sphere offirst learning. He was intensely interested in the teaching of languages: themother tongue and Latin, even a universal language for all Europe. His IanuaLinguam Reserta (‘Open Gate of Languages’) in 1631 was well receivedthroughout Europe by Catholic as well as Protestant educators. It broke newground in language learning. Children were not to chant things by rote butlearn by things meaningful to them. School plays were to be produced in Latin.By 1669 Jesuits were using his books in their schools.There grew up a Comenian party in London who invited Komensky to visit.Komensky believed England was the country best suited to receive andpropagate ‘pansophic’ ideas. All learning must be related and universallyaccepted. He arrived in London in September 1641, when the Long Parliamentwas in session discussing church and political reform.While in England, Komensky wrote on church reconciliation and the reform ofeducation. Parliament was ready to set Komensky up with a College wherescholars would research his ideas, and Komensky might have settled inEngland, but his wife would not leave Leszno. It was not a propitious time forKomensky to be in London. The Comenian group itself was split intorevolutionary and royalist factions.England was in turmoil over the Grand Remonstrance (1641) led by John Pymin dissatisfaction with Charles I’s rule. Komensky dedicated his Via Lucis toEngland and later, in 1668, to the Royal Society, which had been inspired byhis ideas. Via Lucis dealt with the universal struggle of good and evil and goodwas to triumph through universal education. Most pagan books were to bediscarded but there were to be universal books enlightening our understandingof the universe, the Scriptures and our consciences, all these to be approvedby a central College of Light.Komensky saw man’s preparation for eternity beginning in the womb.Education went on all the way through life. There was to be a department ofthe College called the School of Old Age. Old age was to be a time of rest,contemplation and study. Yet Komensky was practical as well as idealistic. Hewrote about the correct ordering of schools and the governors; each schoolPage 94