ABSTRACT

Comenius was respected by Slovaks too because he was born on the Moravian-Slovak border, actually the same region as Masaryk. In many poor households a framed print of 'Comenius taking leave of his country' could be seen in the early twentieth century. Comenius felt attracted to the latter both in religion and as a model of society and culture. The young Comenius must have been an attractive personality because he found a family of the nobility who were willing to keep him illegally on their estate, for some time at least. Comenius' religious toleration, a sort of seventeenth- century ecumenism, manifests itself in several places. In Europe Comenius is not forgotten either: the 400th anniversary of his birth was commemorated by an exhibition, 'Comenius, European Reformer and Czech Patriot', in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and by a colloquium in Amsterdam.