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Born March 28, 1592, orphaned early, educated at the universities of Herborn and Heidelberg, Comenius began working as a pastor and parochial school principal in 1618, the year the Thirty Years war began. After the defeat of the Protestant armies in the Battle of White Mountain— one of the most disastrous events in Czech history—he barely escaped with his life while his house was burned down by enemy soldiers. Later, his young wife and two small children died of the plague. For seven years he lived the life of a fugitive in his own land, hiding in deserted huts, in caves, even in hollow trees. Early in 1628 he joined one of the small groups of Protestants who fled their native Moravia to await better times in neighboring Poland. He never saw his homeland again.

For 42 years of his long and sorrowful life he roamed the countries of Europe as a homeless refugee. He was always poor. His second wife died, too, leaving him with four children to care for. The political allies of the Czech nation either died or were killed in the war. The beloved fatherland lay in total desolation. The scattered, impoverished church whose bishop he had become was in danger of disintegrating after years of exile. The Polish city of Leszno, his home for a number of years, was burned to the ground by the enemy. His treasured library and numerous manuscripts— some of them results of decades of work— were totally destroyed in the fire, leaving Comenius, an old man of 64, with virtually nothing but the clothes on his back. Homeless and penniless, he made it to Amsterdam, Holland, where friends took him in and cared for him until his death in 1670.

Such was the life of this great man. And yet, under these adverse circumstances, he never failed to serve his Lord and his fellow men. During his years as a fugitive, he wrote not only a number of small tracts and homilies, but also one of his most famous works, The Labyrinth of the World. He pictures in it a pilgrim who seeks peace and happiness in a deceptive world and finds them at last in union with Christ. The book was a great source of comfort to other fugitives, and many of them, fleeing their homeland, took it along as one of their few prized possessions. In exile, Comenius ministered faithfully to the needs of his scattered congregation, supporting it with the proceeds from his writings. Strangely enough, these came mostly from his books on education—a field which he himself considered secondary to his pastoral ministry.

How did Comenius become an authority on education? He was a minister, and later a bishop, of a church commonly known as Unitas Fratrum (The Unity of Brethren), which attained great theological, literary and cultural achievements immediately preceding the Thirty Years War. While small in numbers, it spurred the whole Czech nation to great cultural advancement. Not only religious freedom and political independence, but also a rich cultural life perished in the Battle of White Mountain. The exiled Brethren rightfully saw themselves as guardians of Czech spiritual treasures. Hoping that one day they would return home, they were trying to prepare for the great task of rebuilding the land and the society devastated by war, and they knew that education would play a vital part in it. Comenius had this task in mind when he began to write a comprehensive book on education, Didactica Magna. He wrote it originally in Czech and kept postponing its publication until the expected return; but as the years passed and the situation did not change, he rewrote it in Latin so the rest of Europe could read it.

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