This is the first step in a project for the close reading of the Pansophia, the third part of the
17th century Czech thinker Johannes Amos Comenius's major work in his later years, entitled
De rerum humanarum emandatione concultatio catholica.
This paper deals with Comenius's own definition of Pansophia, the historical background
of the term Pansophia through recent research on the history of early modern European
thought, and the history of Comenius' conception of Consultatio catholica and its writing and
publication.
The claim of this paper is the following three points.　It is questionable that the usage of
the term Pansophia dates back to ancient Greece, which was argued in some researches.　It is
also unclear that the term was coined by the Italian Neoplatonist philosopher Francesco Patrizi,
which was claimed by the British intellectual historian Frances Yates.　On the other hand, it
should be paid more attention in Japanese academic circle that the French humanist Petrus
Ramus gave considerable impacts on 17th century encyclopedism and pansophic thought, as
clarified in recent studies in Europe.