Although the Reformation in both Europe and Slovenia was primarily of a religious nature, its long-term impact on Slovenes is much more visible in their collective ethnic than religious identity. While the sovereign Counter-Reformation abolished Protestantism in the Inner Austrian lands between 1598 and 1628, the Catholic Revival used certain achievements of the movement in its own pursuits. For the further development of Slovenes as an ethnic community, especially four Reformation creations are important: 1) the linguistic norm, 2) the concept of the Slovene church, 3) the myth of the chosen ethnicity and 4) a topos about the great extent of the “Slavic”/Slovene language. In accordance with the ethnosymbolist paradigm, the discussion therefore estimates that in the second half of the 16th century Slovenes developed from an ethnic category into an ethnic network. The Slovene language, which was sporadically written from the end of the first millennium onwards, was finally consolidated as a literary language in 1550 with the first two books published by Primož Trubar. The Protestant literary work reached its peak in 1584, when a translation of the Bible by Jurij Dalmatin and a grammar by Adam Bohorič were published. The concept of the “Slovene church”, which is supposed to unite the entire Slovene-speaking Christian community, was also conceived by Trubar. He presented his idea for the first time in 1555 and completed it in his Cerkovna ordninga (“the Church Order”) from 1564. Although the conceptual programme was not established in the church administration, it significantly influenced the mindset of both Protestant and later Catholic writers in the 17th and 18th centuries. The emergence of the Slovene myth of the chosen ethnicity, which is based on a sentence from the Letter of Paul to the Romans: “and every tongue will praise God” (Romans 14:11), also dates back to the Reformation and as a maxim connects the key literary creations of this period. In addition, Protestant writers relied on the humanistic tradition of emphasizing the great extent of the “Slavic” language, which in fact served to increase the importance of Slovene. This topos was first introduced to Slovene grammars by Bohorič and represents a somewhat later entry of Slovenes into the “(inter)national competition for national honor”, which emerged in Europe during the humanism.
Vloga reformacije v slovenski etnogenezi: Etnična kolektivna identiteta na premici zgodovine dolgega trajanja ▪︎ The Role of the Reformation in Slovene Ethnogenesis: Collective Ethnic Identity in Long-Term History
