From STANISLAS KONARSKI, by William John Rose, 1929

... Causes and effects never can be separated, ad the analysis of their workings belongs to the most difficult tasks of the historian. Men counted it a Divine Providence that Poland escaped the horrors of the Wars of Religion¹ ;  . . .  The fact that an asylum could safely be given to so distinguished a figure as the Czech educational apostle, John Amos Komensky (Comenius), showed that even outsiders were not unwelcome. All the same there was no one after John Zamoyski to question the sentiment prevailing in favour of Skarga's view that only the unity of the faith could guarantee the nation. In keeping with this there was introduced right after that preacher's death, a general censorship on all printed books. The closing of non-Catholic churches was ordered from time to time, and in 1658 the Unitarians [called also Socinians] were expelled in a body from the land.]² Worse still, the further publication of the great John Dlugosz's history, only half of which had appeared up to 1616, was forbidden ; and the still greater Copernicus' philosophy of the universe was abandoned in favour of mediaeval conceptions derived from Ptolemy . . . The nation went the way of Italy and Spain, of the France which was to revoke the Edict of Nantes, — blind just as France was to all the losses incurred thereby.

One end was achieved, viz. the virtual recovery of the whole people to one creed (even the Armenians were brought into the Union)³ . . .  Yet the effect on the land was not what men foresaw. A complete folding of hands resulted . . .

. . . in 1652, there occurred the first instance of breaking-up the Seym on the protest of a single member⁴ ;
(pages 34-5)

    1.   Poland had not so much 'escaped' the religious wars as rather had seen no occasion to any such wars, the tolerance there in the early 1600's having been probably the geatest of all the countries in Europe (with the possible exception of Transylvania) ; of which the mentioned asylum gotten there by Comenius can be one of the proofs.
    Yet the Swedish invasion ('deluge') in the 1650's had more in it of the character of war of religion than any other. That was at least in part occasioned by the progressively more acute religious persecution in Poland, especially from 1632 on (the year, by the way, when one Krzysztof Nicki left Poland for Germany, his notable descendant having been Graf von Nietzky — better known as Friedrich Nietzsche).
    2. "The great number ... were of those who were afterwards called Socinians, from Faustus Socinus, who distinguished himself by his writings among those of them who settled in Poland, where they had many churches, and continued in a flourishing style till the year 1658, when they were, with great cruelty and injustice, banished from that country. This event, however, like others of a similar nature, contributed to the spreading of their doctrine in other countries." (Joseph Priestley, History of the Corruptions of Christianity, 1792).
    3.   I have not yet seen but one Armenian writer happy with that "the Armenians were brought into the Union". In brief : a high number of the Armenians had also, much earlier, found refuge in Poland and had lived there for centuries. The religious persecutions in the 17th century befell the Armenian Church just as any Christian denominations other than the Roman ; which, by the way, was a point some of the Armenian writers had not quite noticed. (In other words, whatever persecution may have been levelled against the Armenian Church, it did in no way single out that Church, nor, especially, the Armenians as a national group).
    4.   The liberum veto, or, unanimity requirement in the Polish Diet (Seym) had been almost unanimously blamed as a (or the) cause of the disorder the 17th century etc. Noting that the first reported instance of 'breaking-up' the Seym occurred in 1652, one wonders, was it a cause of the decline — or was the decline of the religious liberties one of the factors to the Seym etc. having been progressively more corrupted.
    It seems that the unanimity requirement may have been not unique to Poland. In one of his letters I have read Thomas Jefferson mentions, with approval, such an institution being present, he said, in Holland at some time or other. But this is as much as I for one know : Are there any real historians out there, to find out about such matters as a unanimity requirements in other countries than Poland ? if any — and how did they work in other countries ?).
    (Notes by me, WPT).

* * *

Another epoch-making step was   .   .   .   the introduction of the famous Orbis Pictus Sensualium — the picture-book method of learning Latin created by the Czech John Amos Comenius — . . . and along with it the Janua Linguae. The first was written in Hungary but published in Nuremberg in 1657, and of both works Polish editions existed almost from the start. Used by the few Protestant schools in the land, though abhorred by the Jesuits, they were now given a far wider field of usefulness as a result of Konarski's decision ; and three editions of the Orbis Pictus appeared in twelve years (1755-67). In 1770 the fourth edition appeared — . . . thanks to the generous patronage of Adam Czartoryski ; 'who held it to be right and proper that such a work should become better known in the land.'
(p. 107 )

* * *

If now one should ask to whom else Konarski was debtor for his views on education, the number of names given would be legion, embracing every age, and men of different tongues and creeds. He laid all who had gone before under contribution. [ . . . ] There remains his fellow Slav, Comenius, a century his senior, whose helps to learning Latin and with it the mother-tongue Konarski set in the forefront of all his library. The question arises whether it was only the Orbis Pictus and the Janua that served him, or did he get behind the text-books to their author�s philosophy of teaching as well.

The appearances are all against such a direct tradition of pedagogical thought. Comenius not only belonged to a different age and a different speech, but he belonged to another church, at a time when the tension between the Catholic and Protestant camps was very unhappy indeed. This accounts in part for the fact that he virtually wielded no influence in a wider way on education in Poland, the land of his adoption ; and any chances he had were wrecked by his espousing the cause of the Swedish invaders. But the truth is that all Comenius� thought on education was buried so deep in massive collected works, that few men had the courage to follow him. Poland alone may claim to be an exception to the accepted view set forth by Boyd that what Comenius did and taught was forgotten till Froebel rediscovered it two hundred years later.⁵⁷

For it does seem likely that a man of Konarski�s calibre would want to know more about the man whose work was published in Warsaw after a long pause during his first term there as a professor (1722). It is to his credit that he saw the superior worth of Comenius� methods, and did not for a moment hesitate to adopt them, even though the man was not a Catholic : just as Comenius himself had used without stint the rich stores of suggestion he found in Campanella. Nevertheless as Danysz observes, the Piarist editions of the Janua do not reveal an understanding of the deeper philosophy of the book as does the edition of 1675. The Order appears to have seen in it once more only a fine way to learn and teach Latin.⁵⁸

It is significant that in many vital matters the minds and purpose of the two reformers meet. What the Czech during a generation dreamed of but never could accomplish, viz. the founding of his ideal school, that the Pole was privileged to realize, and here he brought to pass many things Comenius himself would have prescribed. The putting of the mother-tongue in a place of supremacy as opposed to Latin, both for social and educational ends ; the importance attached to religion as the coping-stone of the sciences ; the view that �the teacher is the servant and not the master,� which involved that teaching should be adapted to the needs of the youth and not vice-versa — all this Konarski could take from his fellow Slav. On the other hand, the Piarist did not share his predecessor�s dislike of the �heather� classics, nor did he even try to realize the type of democracy in the school advocated by Comenius — rather the reverse. In general Konarski interested himself little in the metaphysical foundations of pedagogy, and was rather concerned to take the boy as he found him and make a citizen of him, than to experiment on diverse ways of getting a better boy.

Both men desired that the ends of education should be practical, that they be hitched to everyday life in the community. For this reason both of them in theory laid stress on the training of the faculties as the end of education rather than on the acquiring of knowledge as such. Yet in actual practice that training was got by the effort to acquire knowledge ; and the ideal of growth as an end in itself, worthy of all praise as it is, was subordinated to that of power or capacity for useful service in the cause of justice and light.  
(pp. 206-215)

⁵⁷ Cf. Boyd, History of Western Education, London, 1921, p. 266.
⁵⁸ Cf. Danysz, Studia z Dziejów Wychowania, Cracow, 1921, p. 318 sqq..