The current Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History of the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS is based primarily on the results of several stages of the work of what was originally only an editorial group at various academic institutions, but it also builds on the work of the Comeniology Department, which once formed the basis of the Cabinet of Pedagogical Sciences and later the Pedagogical Institute of the J. A. Comenius of the former Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences.

The idea of establishing a team for publishing the works of J. A. Comenius at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences was conceived in connection with the approaching 300th anniversary of the publication of the Opera didactica omnia (All Didactic Writings - published in 1657 in Amsterdam). The original proposal assumed that the newly established team would continue the interrupted publication of All the Writings of J. A. Comenius (8 volumes, Brno 1910-1929, a revised reissue of vol. 4 was published in 1938). In 1956, however, the then government of the Czechoslovak Republic finally decided to publish the entire works of Comenius in the original languages with a Czech translation. To ensure this, a government commission headed by Academician Z. Nejedlý. In 1958, the Presidium of the then Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences set up an editorial board headed by the chairman, Prof. Jaromír Bělič, and the scientific secretary, Prof. J. Nejedlý. Antonín Škarka, composed of leading Czechoslovak Comenius scholars and representatives of the fields in which the work of J. A. Comenius intervenes. At the suggestion of this editorial board, the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences established the Secretariat of the Editorial Board for the publication of the Works of J. A. Comenius, attached economically and administratively to the Institute for the Czech Language of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. This small department, in cooperation with the Editorial Board, was responsible for the successful completion of the preparatory work that was necessary before the actual publication could begin, and became the basis of the Cabinet for the publication of the Works of J. A. Comenius of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, established on 1 January 1969 (it was also loosely attached to the Institute for the Czech Language). By that time, the first volumes of the critical edition of J. A. Comenius Opera omnia - The Works of J. A. Comenius were ready for publication. The experience gained in their preparation led to modifications of the original plan: first of all, translations of foreign-language writings into Czech were abandoned; in addition to the economies of scale of the edition, the decision to publish in Czech the rather extensive Selected Writings of J. A. Comenius, whose publication was being prepared in the Comenius Department of the Pedagogical Institute of the J. A. Comenius Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences (8 volumes with a separate index, Prague 1958-1978), probably led to this step.

The Cabinet for the Edition of the Works of J. A. Komenský concentrated all the editorial work and to a large extent the entire scientific preparation of the edition, when, in addition to the founding personalities Jaromír Bělič, Antonín Škarka, another Bohemian (and Germanist) Stanislav Králík and the classical philologist Julie Nováková, younger workers began to be recruited and trained here. However, the promisingly developing workplace was not allowed to last long. As a result of the personnel changes that resulted from the "normalisation" political vetting in 1970, the independent existence of the Cabinet was terminated and its staff (with the exception of its external head, Prof. Jaromír Bělič) were transferred to the J. A. Comenius Institute of Pedagogy of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, where they were incorporated into the Department of Comenius and History of School and Pedagogy. Here, the strictly philological focus of the editorial (and to some extent also interpretive) work caused some embarrassment, but they nevertheless managed to maintain the trend established during their time at the Institute for the Czech Language and gradually gained some respect for it in the new environment.

At the J. A. Comenius Institute of Education, the group underwent a number of personnel changes, which meant alternately gains and losses; a number of additional volumes of the edition were prepared and published there; and it was possible to build up a handbook library and domestic and foreign relations with institutions dealing with some areas of Comenius studies. It was also here that, during the 1980s, decisions were made about the activities with which the Academy of Sciences intended to participate in the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the birth of J. A. Comenius in 1992. In this context, the idea of translating the complete General Consultation on the Correction of Human Affairs (De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica) into English was born; the members of the current Comenius Department made a significant contribution to the creation of this first ever complete translation of the General Consultation into the vernacular language, since, in addition to their contribution to the translation, they also provided the editing of the entire translation and the commentaries.

As of 1 May 1990, the majority of the Comenius Department was delimited from the J. A. Komenský Institute of Education of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences to the Philosophical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague (since 31 December 1992 AV ČR, i.e. Academy of Sciences od the Czech Republic), where it now forms the Department of Comenius Studies and Early Modern Intellectual History (formerly the Department for Editing and Study of the Works of J. A. Komenský); the core of the transferred team came from the editorial group. The whole group was then part of the collective that was awarded the 1991 Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Prize for the results of Comenius research.

The main task of the new department remained the preparation of the critical edition of The Works of J. A. Comenius, and the group also took over the publication of the international Comeniology journal Acta Comeniana (after the dissolution of the J. A. Comenius Institute of Education, the entire preparation of the publication and the editing of the journal remained entirely in the Comeniology Department of the Institute of Philosophy of the CAS). With the full support of the new parent department and the management of the Academy, the group successfully passed the jubilee year of 1992, when its members participated in a number of domestic and foreign conferences held on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of J. A. Comenius' birth, collaborated in the preparation of permanent exhibitions and displays in museums and libraries, and carried out many other professional and organizational works. Like all the other members of the collective of translators of the Consulatio catholica into Czech the members of the group were awarded the Government Jubilee Medal of Comenius, but this translation was also awarded the annual premium of the Translators' Association.

Although in the following years the department did not escape further changes in personnel, mainly due to the departure of some members to other departments, and although not all of these departures could be compensated for by the recruitment of new staff, due to austerity measures throughout the Academy, the period after the 1992 jubilee year can be described as a time of some stabilisation of the group, but also of the expansion of its research and editorial themes beyond the boundaries set by the work of Johannes Amos Comenius to the broadly conceived intellectual history of the early modern period, which includes topics in the history of philosophy, knowledge, literature and language. For more details on the current projects and the scientific profile of the department, see Scientific Focus and Grants and Projects.