TENTO LIST Z KAZATEĽNICE OHLASOVAŤ BUDETE Pastierske a apoštolské listy pre Slovákov z 19. storočia (original) (raw)

2021, TENTO LIST Z KAZATEĽNICE OHLASOVAŤ BUDETE. Pastierske a apoštolské listy pre Slovákov z 19. storočia

This letter you will announce from the pulpit Pastoral and apostolic letters for Slovaks from the 19th century This publication by prof. Peter Zubko presents the pastoral letters of the Hungarian bish-ops and the apostolic letters of the popes from the 19th century and published in Slovak language. This diplomatic digest contains 34 transcribed letters. It is the first publication of its kind. The bishops of Hungary wrote and distributed the pastoral letters in Latin lan-guage. These were addressed to the clergy of the diocese. The pastoral letters addressed directly to believers were written in vernacular languages, in present-day Slovakia in Slo-vak, Hungarian and German. Usually there were three identical parallel language muta-tions. Letters of the high ecclesiastical hierarchy written directly in vernacular were usually written at the beginning of the episcopal ministry. All the others are extraordinary because they contain important topics or significant messages of the time. In the last decade of the 19th century in Hungary, the spiritual and cultural atmosphere was so tense that the bish-ops came together and wrote common pastoral letters. The apostolic letters were published as a part of the episcopal pastoral letters or were issued separately. The themes of the letters present the most important events of the 19th century: the holy or jubilee years (1825, 1850, 1875 and 1900), the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the First Vatican Council, the millennium of the arrival of the Slavic apostles Saints Cyril and Methodius (1863), millennium of the Hungary (1896). Reactions to anti-church and anti-Catholic movements were a frequent topic: the Carbonars (Free-masons), the secularization of the Hungary. In the pastoral letters, it is possible to observe the gradual Hungarianization of Slovaks by the high church authorities. The Slovak lan-guage of pastoral letters is different. In the first half of the 19th century, fidelity prevailed in the Bernolák's codification of the Slovak language, which arose in the Catholic environ-ment. So, it was an attribute of the Catholic Church. In the middle of the 19th century, especially after the revolution (1848/1849), Slovak Catholics also used the Czech language to a certain extent, which was strongly Slovakized. In the second half of the 19th century, the new Štúr's codification of the Slovak language was used by Catholics for the first time in the sacral environment, which is also evident in the wording of the pastoral letters. Slo-vak Catholic periodicals, which shaped the Slovak language culture, played an important and irreplaceable role. These magazines have published several pastoral and pontifical letters. The pastoral letters from the end of the 19th century have a lower language level, because the Slovak language was not taught in Hungary, although their content is literally and catechetically perfect. Research showed that most pastoral letters in the Slovak lan-guage were issued by the Esztergom Archdiocese and the Košice Diocese.