The first European book using pictures and text as a pedagogical methodology was written by Jan Amos Comnianus (Komenský in Czech, 1592-1670). With this book, he sought to champion for world peace through education by combining visualisation and texts.
The title of the book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, means the visible world. By the time of publication in 1658, ten years after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Comenius initiated a new order of universal world knowledge.
Pictures and texts aimed at employing sensual, pictorial observation to arrive at an understanding of concepts and thus to an extensive system of knowledge.
Around the same time, the concept of theatrum mundi (the world as stage) resurfaced as a metaphor for viewing the world. Both the concepts of Comenius and the theatrum mundi reflect globalisation.
Printing, discoveries of new territories, inventions and above all, secularisation of world politics led to new visions and curiosity. The devastating consequences of the Thirty Years’ War, the visions and writings of contemporaries and his own background as a Moravian Brethren inspired his writings.
The concept is closely related to the present use of the internet and the globalisation of knowledge. It is striking that globalisation is not restricted to the modern world, but is as old as mankind. Globalisation is not just a consequence of the liberal world economy, but a natural process that pervades and fundamentally alters all areas of human coexistence.
The concept of theatrum mundi can also be taken more literally. What is the historical perspective on the interrelation between world, picture and theatre under the conditions of globalisation?
The theatricalisation of society began with Greek theatres. Still, it was particularly during the last days of the Roman Republic and the early emperors of the Principate that the theatre became institutionalised as a political medium. Theatre and politics have been inseparable ever since.
(Sources: B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism’ London 1985) and www.theatrummundi.com).