Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform

by W. S. Monroe

The Janua

We are now to see how Comenius proposed to reform these evils. “I planned a book,” he says, “in which all things, the properties of things, and the actions and passions of things should be presented, and to each should be assigned its proper work, believing that in one and the same book the whole connected series of things might be surveyed historically, and the whole fabric of things and words reduced to one continuous context. On mentioning my purpose to some friends, one of them directed my attention to the Jesuit father’s Janua linguarum, and gave me a copy. I leaped for joy; but on examination, I found that it did not fulfil my plan.”

The Janua referred to by Comenius was that written by William Bateus, an Irish Jesuit, who was spiritual father at Salamanca, Spain. His Janua appeared in Spain prior to 1605. It contained twelve hundred short Latin sentences with accompanying Spanish translations. The sentences were made up of common Latin root-words, and no word was repeated. In 1615 an English-Latin edition appeared; and subsequently editions in French, German, and Italian. The object of Bateus in the publication of his Janua was to promote the spread of Christianity by enabling the heathen the more easily to learn to read the Latin.

It will thus appear that the plan of the Janua linguarum reserata of Comenius, the book that was destined to make his name known throughout the world, was not wholly original with the Moravian reformer. The name and to some extent the plan of the book had been suggested by the publication of the Jesuit.

The first edition of Comenius’ Janua appeared in 1631.[36] In the numerous subsequent editions the author made important changes and additions. In subject-matter, the Janua comprehends the elements of all the sciences and arts. There are a hundred chapter headings with a thousand Latin sentences and their German equivalents arranged in parallel columns. The subjects treated cover a wide range—from the origin of the world to the mind and its faculties. The first chapter is an introduction, in which the reader is saluted, and informed that learning consists in this: to know distinctions and names of things. He is assured that he will find explained in this little book the whole world and the Latin language. If he should learn four pages of it by rote, he would find his eyes opened to all the liberal arts.

The second chapter treats of the creation of the world, the third of the elements, and the fourth of the firmament. In chapters five to thirteen inclusive, fire, meteors, water, earth, stones, metals, trees, fruits, herbs, and shrubs are treated. Animals occupy the next five chapters; and man—his body, external members, internal members, qualities and accidents of the body, ulcers and wounds, external and internal senses, the intellect, affections, and the will—the eleven following chapters. Nineteen chapters are given to the mechanic arts. Twenty-one chapters deal with the house and its parts, marriage, the family, civic and state economy. Twelve chapters are assigned to grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, and the other branches of knowledge, describing briefly what they are; and ethics gets twelve chapters, a chapter being devoted to each of the twelve virtues. In the four succeeding chapters, games, death, burial, and the providence of God and the angels are treated. Chapter ninety-nine treats of the end of the world; and in the one-hundredth chapter Comenius gives some farewell advice, and takes leave of his reader.

Each chapter of the Janua is to be read ten times. In the first reading there is to be an accurate translation into the vernacular; at the second reading the whole is to be written out, Latin and vernacular, and the teacher is to begin conversation in the Latin tongue. At the third reading the teacher is to read the Latin aloud, and the pupils are to translate into the vernacular without seeing the printed page. At the fourth reading the grammar is to be written out and the words parsed. Special attention is to be given to the derivation of words at the fifth reading; the synonyms to be explained at the sixth; and the grammatical rules applied at the seventh. At the eighth reading the pupils are to learn the text by heart. The ninth reading is to be devoted to a logical analysis of the subject-matter; and the tenth and last reading is to be conducted by the pupils themselves. They are to challenge one another to repeat portions of the text.

In this ingenious manner Comenius applies his long-cherished pansophic theories to language teaching, the Janua being an application of ideas formulated in the Great didactic. It is, however, more than an application of pansophic notions—it is an attempt to realize his oft-enunciated educational maxim that words and things should never be divorced, that knowledge of the language should go hand in hand with the knowledge of the things explained.

The success of the Janua was most unexpected, and no one was more surprised at its sudden popularity than Comenius himself. “That happened,” he writes, “which I could not have imagined, namely, that this childish book was received with universal approbation by the learned world. This was shown me by the number of men who wished me hearty success with my new discovery; and by the number of translations into foreign languages. For, not only was the book translated into twelve European languages, since I myself have seen these translations (Latin, Greek, Bohemian, Polish, German, Swedish, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hungarian), but also into the Asiatic languages—Arabic, Turkish, and Persian—and even into the Mongolian, which is understood by all the East Indies.”