The “Informatorium Školy Matěrské” gave invaluable aid in the rearing of young children in the so-called “Mother School.”
Komenský might have been numbered among the educational reformers of our own country for Cotton Mather writes of his visit to the famous educator whom he invited to become president of the then newly organized Harvard College in the American Colonies. For some reason Komenský did not accept though his wanderings, after his exile from Bohemia were many and varied. His life’s pilgrimage ended in 1670 at Amsterdam where he had lived during the last fourteen years of so busy and useful a life of service to education that he has been entitled, without challenge, the “teacher of nations.”
After Komenský, there were no great writers in the Czech language until the close of the eighteenth century. It must be remembered that every effort was made to suppress not only the language of the Czechs but to prevent the publication of any work in that tongue. The Jesuit, Antonín Koniáš (d. 1760) boasted that he alone had destroyed some 60,000 Czech books. He published a “Key to Heretical Errors of Doctrine” which comprised the names of objectionable religious books to be consigned to the flames on sight.
Those who owned Czech Bibles or other books in the language of their fathers, were punished for having them in their possession. Hence they took the greatest precautions in secreting such volumes as, despite
