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Part One
Introduction
For centuries, the story of the Slovak people has played out on a stage at the center of trade, conflict, and transition in central Europe. Since the early sixth century when the first Slavs settled in the Danube Basin east of present-day Vienna, Slovak territory has been at the juncture of commerce between north and south, on the fringes of attack from invading armies, and at the shaky dividing line between Eastern Orthodox and Western Roman religions. Consequently, the need to preserve a sense of Slovak heritage amid a diverse influence from outside peoples and cultures has been a primary factor in shaping Slovak identity. Since one cannot speak of a sovereign Slovak nation for most of modern times, the geographic boundaries for this study of Lutheran hymnody are defined by Slovak-speaking regions, which were under the rule of Hungary from 907 A.D. until 1920.1 See Map 1.
An important factor in maintaining Slovak culture over the centuries has been the music of Slovak Christians, especially Lutherans, whose hymnody developed from a mixture of multiple influences. The Lutheran singing tradition among Slovaks, touched by the commingling of Latin, German, Bohemian, and Moravian influences and born amid the inescapable impact of political instability and unrest, has had a consistent and abiding presence in Lutheran worship.
Catholic Tradition Among Western Slavs (800-1500)
The first Christian missionaries, most likely from Rome, reached settlements in the Danube Basin in the early medieval era, but their work was short-lived. In the early ninth century, Frankish missionaries sent by Charlemagne followed and continued to rally for the church among Slavic peoples. Of all the efforts of several missionaries over the next two centuries, not western Europeans, but two brothers from Macedonia had the most enduring influence. Saint Cyril, eventually canonized as Constantine (c. 826-869), and his brother Saint Methodius (d. 885) had developed a Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic, and spoke a language loosely related to the Slavic language of the central Danube lands.2 As part of their work in Great Moravia in the Danube Basin, they created a liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, most likely based on the Illyrian Liturgy of Saint Peter.3 Under the rules of Nitra's princes Rastislav (d. 870) and Svätopluk (d. 894), the Great...