Among the clergymen who during the first half of the eighteenth century exerted themselves for the diffusion of biblical knowledge, were Matth.  Bel and D. Krman, who prepared a new edition of the Bible; G. Ambrosius and G. Babyl, authors of theological commentaries, etc.  Those Slovakian writers who in any measure distinguished themselves, have been enumerated under their proper heads in our sketch of the Bohemian literature.[60]

The Bohemian dialect, as we have mentioned repeatedly, is perfectly intelligible to the Slovaks.  But as it is not to them the language of common conversation, it cannot be familiar to their minds.  If, in listening to their preachers in the churches, the people succeed in straining up their minds sufficiently to enable them to follow the course of the sermons and devotional exercises, it still seems rather unnatural, that even their prayer books, destined for private use, should not be written in their vernacular tongue; but that even their addresses to the Most High, which, more than any thing else, should be the free and natural effusions of their inmost feelings, should require such an intellectual exertion and an artificial transposition into a foreign clime.  It is a singular fact, that, whilst every where else Protestantism and the friends of the Bible have advocated and attempted to raise the dialect of the people, in opposition to a privileged idiom of the priesthood, among the Slovaks the vindication of the vernacular tongue has been attempted by the Romanists, and has met with strong opposition from the Protestants.  In the year 1718, Alex Macsay, a catholic clergyman, published sermons at Tyrnau, written in the common Slovakian dialect.  The Jesuits of Tyrnau followed his example, in publishing books of prayers and several other religious works, in a language which is rather a mixture of the dialect of the people and the literary Bohemian language.  During the last ten years of the eighteenth century, a more successful attempt was made to elevate the Slovakian dialect spoken on the frontiers of Moravia, and which approaches the Bohemian language most, to the rank of a literary language.  At the head of this undertaking were the Roman catholic curates Bajza, Fandli, and Bernolak, especially the last.  A society was formed, the members of which bound themselves to buy the books written in Slovakish by Bernolak and his friends.  The Romanists proceeded in the work with great zeal and activity, and were patronized by the cardinal Rudnay, primate of Hungary; who himself published some of his orations held in the Slovakian dialect, and caused a voluminous Slovakish dictionary, a posthumous work of Bernolak’s, to be printed.[61] A version of the Bible in the same dialect, made by the canon G. Palkowicz, who is also the author of the fourth volume of the above dictionary, was printed in the year 1831.