“My life here was not my native country, but a pilgrimage; my home was ever changing, and I found nowhere an abiding resting place. But now I see my heavenly country near at hand, to whose gates my Saviour has gone before me to prepare the way. After years of wandering and straying from the direction of my journey, delayed by a thousand extraneous diversions, I am at last within the bounds of the promised land.”
The rest and peace and glory which he so hopefully anticipated came to him at Amsterdam on the 15th of November, in the year 1670. His remains were conveyed to Naärden, a small town on the Zuyder Zee, twelve miles east of Amsterdam, where they were interred in the French Reformed Church, on the 22d of November. The figure 8 was the only epitaph placed on his tomb. More than a century afterward the church was transformed into a military barracks, and for many years the date of his death, the church in which he was buried, and the grave inclosing his remains were unknown. But in 1871 Mr. de Röper, a lawyer residing in Naärden, found among his father’s papers the church register, the sexton’s account book, and other documents relating to the old French Reformed Church. After the figure 8, in the church register, was this entry: “John Amos Comenius, the famous author of the Janua Linguarum; interred the 22d of November, 1670.” A diligent search was instituted, and the grave was found. An aged woman residing in Naärden recalled the location of the French Reformed Church as the present site of the barracks. By permission of the commanding officer, an examination was made and the tombstone marked 8 was found. The remains were subsequently removed to a little park in Naärden, where there was erected to his memory, in 1892, by friends of education in Europe and America, a handsome monument. This consists of a pyramid of rough stones with two white marble slabs containing gold-furrowed inscriptions in Latin, Dutch, and Czech (Bohemian): “A grateful posterity to the memory of John Amos Comenius, born at Nivnitz on the 28th of March, 1592; died at Amsterdam on the 15th of November, 1670; buried at Naärden on the 22d of November, 1670. He fought a good fight.” A room in the town hall at Naärden has been set aside as a permanent Comenius museum, where will be found a collection of his portraits, sets of the different editions of his writings, and the old stone slab containing the figure 8.
The present work being an educational rather than a personal life of Comenius, no reference has thus far been made to his family life. It may be noted briefly that he married, in 1624, Elizabeth Cyrrill, with whom he had five children, a son (Daniel) and four daughters. Elizabeth died in 1648 and he married again on the 17th of May, 1649, Elizabeth Gainsowa, with whom he appears to have had no children. A third marriage is mentioned by some of his biographers, but the statement lacks corroboration. One daughter, Elizabeth, married Peter Figulus Jablonsky, who was bishop of the Church from November, 1662, until his death, January the 12th, 1670. Their son Daniel Ernst Jablonsky was consecrated a bishop of the Polish branch of the Moravian Church at Lissa March the 10th, 1699. He served the Church until his death, May the 25th, 1741.
An account of the life of Comenius would be incomplete without some reference to his alleged call to the presidency of Harvard College. This rests upon an unconfirmed statement by Cotton Mather. In his Magnalia[23] he says: “Mr. Henry Dunster continued the Praesident of Harvard-College until his unhappy Entanglement in the Snares of Anabaptism fill’d the Overseers with uneasie Fears, lest the Students by his means should come to be Ensnared: Which Uneasiness was at length so signified unto him, that on October 24, 1654, he presented unto the Overseers, an Instrument under his Hands, wherein he Resigned his Presidentship and they accepted his Resignation. That brave Old Man Johannes Amos Commenius, the Fame of whose Worth has been Trumpetted as far as more than Three Languages (whereof every one is Endebted unto his Janua) could carry it, was agreed withall, by our Mr. Winthrop in his Travels through the Low Countries to come over into New England and Illuminate this College and Country in the Quality of a President. But the Solicitations of the Swedish Ambassador, diverting him another way, that Incomparable Moravian became not an American.”
The following evidence makes improbable this call:—
1. Some years ago the writer asked Professor Paul H. Hanus to ascertain for him if the records of Harvard College corroborated Mather’s statement. After examining the proceedings of the overseers and all other records of the college during its early history, he reported that he could not find the slightest corroboration of Mather’s statement, and that he seriously doubted its accuracy.
2. The historians of the college—Peirce, Quincy, and Eliot—do not allude to the matter. And President Josiah Quincy,[24] in his complete and standard history of the institution, refers to the “loose and exaggerated terms in which Mather and Johnson, and other writers of that period, speak of the early donations to the college, and the obscurity, and not to say confusion, in which they appear in the first records of the seminary.”
3. Careful examination has been made of the numerous lives of Comenius printed in the German language, as well as those printed in the Czech; and, although less noteworthy distinctions are recorded, there is no mention of a call to Harvard College or America.
4. In the Journals of Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts, there are no allusions to Comenius. Governor Winthrop died in 1649; and it was not until 1653 that President Dunster fell “into the briers of Antpædo-baptism,” when he bore “public testimony in the church at Cambridge against the administration of baptism to any infant whatsoever.” And the historians of the college report that up to this time (1653) Dunster’s administration had been singularly satisfactory, so that there could have been no thought of providing his successor before the death of Governor Winthrop. Mather is either in error or he does not refer to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts. He may refer to Governor Winthrop of Connecticut, the eldest son of the Massachusetts governor, although evidence is wanting to show that the Connecticut governor had anything to do with the management of Harvard College. Young Winthrop was in England from August the 3d, 1641, until the early part of 1643. It will be recalled that Comenius spent the winter of 1641–1642 in London, and the fact that both knew Hartlib most intimately would suggest that they must have met. In a letter which Hartlib wrote to Winthrop after the latter’s return to America, he says, “Mr. Comenius is continually diverted by particular controversies of Socinians and others from his main Pansophical Worke.”[25]
5. Mather is clearly in error in regard to the date of the call of Comenius to Sweden. The negotiations were begun in 1641 and were completed in August of the next year, so that the “solicitations of the Swedish Ambassador diverting him another way” took place more than twelve years before the beginning of the troubles at Cambridge which led to the resignation of Dunster.