John Amos Comenius, Czech Jan Amos Komenský, (born March 28, 1592, Nivnice, Moravia—died Nov. 15, 1670, Amsterdam, Neth.), Czech educational reformer and religious leader. He favoured the learning of Latin to facilitate the study of European culture but emphasized learning about things rather than about grammar per se. His Janua Linguarum Reserata (1631), a textbook that described useful facts about the world in both Latin and Czech, revolutionized Latin teaching and was translated into 16 languages. He also produced one of the first illustrated schoolbooks, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658).
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