THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
Fchool at Prerau. He was, in ItiKi, ordained in the church of the United Brethren, becoming pastor at Fulnek, 161S. The misfortunes which, during the Thirty Years' War, came upon the Evangelicals in Bohemia and ^loravia visited him. In 1621 the Spaniards burned Fulnek, and the plague robbed Comenius of wife and chOd. From 1624, when the Evangelical ministers were driven from their pulpits, until 1627, when all Evangelicals were banished, he traveled among his scattered comrades and lived in the mountain castles of the nobility, ministering to his brethren in the faith. He then accompanied some of them to Poland, where others had preceded them, and in the border city Lissa, under the protection of Count Leszczynski, there sprang up a flourishing Protestant population whose gj^mnasium under Comenius grew into great fame. His text-books, practical works, and reform of educational methods brought him into contact with other states. In 1641 he went to England and Sweden, and in 1650 to Transylvania. From 1632 he had been senior bishop, and from 1648 the only bishop of the Brethren's Church. Returning to Lissa shortly before the Swedish-Polish War, he and the Protestants were banished by the Poles in revenge for the \actory of Charles X. He fled to Amsterdam, where he lived in high honor and busied himself in literary labor, in the care of his scattered brethreUj and in the training of youth.
He was a man of varied talents. To his church he gave in 1626 the Psalter in ancient verse-form and in 1659 a new edition of the hymnal; he was also its foremost preacher; his two books " The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart" (1623) and "One Thing Necessary" (in the latter of which the man of seventy-seven years gives the harvest of a rich and tireless life) will live among the classics of Christian teaching. He was no less great in his activity as bishop. But the different forms of government, and the current confessionalism with its emphasis on " central dogmas," seemed to him only to confuse the common man. Peaceful by nature, he tried to combine excellences and develop good qualities wherever he found them. His claim to world-fame rests upon his work as pedagogue. Here he owed much to his church and its catechetical system. The "Door to Language Opened," translated within a few years into fifteen languages, and the " World Portrayed" (Eng. transl., by C. Hoole, reprint, Syracuse, N. Y., 1 887) were the most famous of his works. In this labor also it was his religious nature which controlled him. Here he developed what later made the names of Rousseau and Pestalozzi famous. The child should grow into knowledge by assimilation, should not be forced but should be assisted to know, to think, and to speak. But the object should ever be to understand all that is worth knowing of Cod, the world, and oneself. The end of his pedagogical labor is " universal knowledge," the striving for universal education, the founding of scientific academies, the translation of the Bible into all languages, the creation of a universal language, and the establishment of congresses of religion. Wlien he had been almost forgotten Herder redisco\ered him by bringing to light one
of the most beautiful of his works. In 1890, at the third centenary of his birth, the Comenius Society was founded to perpetuate his name and labor.
(P Kleinert.)
Bibliography: The important literature is found in the Comenius-Studien, 6 parts, Znaim, 1892-93, and in the publications of the Comenius-Gesellschaft, Berhn, 1892 sqq. Consult: H. F. von Criegern, J. A. Comenius ah Theolog, Leipsic, 1881; J. Beeger and E. Zoubek, Comenius nach seinem Leben und Schriften, ib. 1883; L. W Seyffarth, Comenius nach seinem Leben und padagogischer Bedeutung. ib. 1883; R. H. Q<iick, in Essays on Educational Reformers, privately printed, 1887; J. Kvacsala, J. A. Comenius; sein Leben und seine Schriften, Leipsic, 1892; S. S. Laurie, J. A. Comenius, . his Life and Educational Works, Cambridge, 1885, Syracuse, 1893. Consult also J. A. Comenius, The Great Didactic, now for the First Time Englished, with Introduction by M. W Keat^ inge, London, 1896 (gives a bibliography).
COMES. See Pericope.
COMGALL, SAINT, OF BANGOR: Founder of a famous Irish monastery at Bangor on the southern shore of Belfast Lough. He flourished in the latter half of the sixth century and was a friend and associate of Columba, Brendan, and other monastic founders. He established many mona:;teries, that at Bangor in 554 or 558, and is said at one time to have had 3,000 monks under him there and in affiliated houses. A so-called rule of Comgall is extant, consisting of thirty-six quatrains written in Irish; it is of great age and may possibly have formed the basis of Columban's discipline at Luxeuil and Bobbio, and of that at St. Gall. The " Antiphonary of Bangor," a book of anthems compiled for the congregation at Bangor, written, it is supposed, soon after 680, preserved at Milan, contains an alphabetical hymn in Comgall's honor. Bibliography: ASB, May, ii. 577-587; Lanigan, Eccl. Hist., ii. 61-69; W. Reeves, Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor, and Dromore, pp. 93 et passim, Dublin, 1847; J. O'Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints, v. 152-185, Dublin, n.d.; J. Healy, Insula sanctorum, pp. 364 sqq., Dublin, 1890; The Antiphonary of Bangor, ed. F. E. Warren for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2 vols., London, 1893-95.
COMMANDMENTS OF THE CHURCH (prcecepta or mandata ecclesia'): The title of a section of the catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of the Middle Ages was not familiar with it. The Council of Trent (session vi., canon xxii.; session xxii., passim) uses the phrase for regulations which the Church sets forth authoritatively for the guidance of the faithful, especially in the province of devout morality; such commandments complement the commands of God {prcecepta Dei), as learned from the Bible. The Jesuit Petrus Canisius (q.v.) made the doctrine of these commandments a part of the catechism. He prepared a brief summary of those devotional precepts of the Church which he regarded as the most important for the life of the people, five in number, and since his time it has been usual in the Roman Church to speak of Ten Commandments of God and five chief commandments of the Church." The latter commandments, as Canisius selected them, are as follows: (1) Thou shalt observe the appointed feasts of the Church. (2) Thou shalt hear mass and the sermon every Sunday. (3) Thou shalt observe the fasting seasons. (4) Thou shalt