In the seventeenth century, school plays were performed in practically all schools in Slovakia, which was then part of Hungary. The first teacher to stage plays with his pupils was Leonard Stöckel in Bardejov (Bartfeld) in the second half of the sixteenth century. After Stöckel's death, plays continued to be performed in Bardejov, but—thanks to a body of teachers who took Jan Amos Comenius as their model in the field of dramatic art—it was the neighbouring town of Presov (Eperies) which became the centre of Protestant school theatre in Slovakia in the seventeenth century. Comenius was active in the years 1650–4 in nearby Sárospatak, in present-day Hungary, and it was there that he wrote his Schola Ludus and performed it with his pupils.