Trauma, Loss, and Lamentation in the Writings of Jan Amos Comenius

• In Event: Fear and Angst in Early Modern East Central Europe

Abstract

The first decade of the Thirty Years War inflicted an incalculable level of material,
intellectual, and emotional damage on the Czech Unity of Brethren. Its local
communities were destroyed, its leaders executed or forced into exile, and its religious
legacy eradicated. This paper will explore how the leader of this persecuted minority,
the philosopher, pedagogue, and theologian Jan Amos Comenius, dealt with these
experiences of loss by giving voice to them and transfiguring them into a crucible that
would test, but ultimately affirm, the faith of the community that survived them.

Author

• Phillip Haberkern, Boston U