presentation of the edition
MONUMENTA LINGUAE SLOVACAE, VOL. X.
On Monday, 23 June 2025, a ceremonial presentation of the tenth volume of Monumenta Linguae Slovacae: Bystrická agenda 1585 took place at the State Scientific Library in Banská Bystrica. The volume’s chief editor is Dr. Peter Benka from the Department of Slovak History.
The event was organized by the Kuzmány Circle in Banská Bystrica. The book was officially launched by the association’s chairman, Dušan Čupka. The programme was moderated by Michal Zajden. The project Pamiatky slovenského jazyka predspisovného obdobia was introduced by Martin Homza. The content of the book and the broader context of the source were presented by its author, Peter Benka. The Slovak linguistic dimension of the Bystrická agenda was explained by Pavol Žigo. The successful event concluded with a lively discussion.
public Lecture
“Touch History” (“DOTKNI SA HISTÓRIE”)
On 21 May 2025, a lecture by Professor Martin Homza took place at the Bratislava City Library.
As part of the lecture series “Touch History”, Professor Homza spoke about alchemy, cartography, and the so-called “keys of the land” and their relationship to Slovak in the early modern period.
Professorial Lecture:
“Proto-science” in Slovak in the 16th–18th Centuries
On 24 September 2024, a professorial lecture by Professor Martin Homza, Dr., was delivered in the Aula of Comenius University on the topic “Proto-science” in Slovak in the 16th–18th centuries, not only in Slovakia. The lecture focused on the current state of research, preliminary findings, and future perspectives. Among other things, Professor Homza presented several years of activities carried out within the project Slovacika.sk and its research team. The lecture was subsequently published in the journal Štandard under the title A Few Words on the Language of Predecessors.
LECTURE
Monumenta Linguae Slovacae – Critical Editing of Slovak Manuscripts up to 1800
During her research stay in Warsaw at the Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Laboratory for the History of the Polish Language in the 17th and 18th Centuries, Dr. Ivana Lukáč Labancová gave a lecture in which she presented to Polish colleagues the background, methodology, and results of the APVV project, as well as the individual volumes of the Monumenta Linguae Slovacae edition. The lecture took place on 22 May 2024 as part of a lecture series under the auspices of the Polish Society of Friends of the Polish Language (Towarzystwo Miłośników Języka Polskiego), at the invitation of Professor Magdalena Majdak.
PRESENTATION OF THE EDITION
MONUMENTA LINGUAE SLOVACAE, VOL. VIII.
On 6 September 2023 at 6:00 p.m., a launch event for the eighth volume of the Monumenta Linguae Slovacae edition was held. The volume is dedicated to the Slovak letters of Anna Mária Horvát-Stančičová de Gradec from the eighteenth century. The presentation took place at the Dardanely Château and Summer Pavilion in Markušovce. The book was introduced by its authors and editors, Vladimír Olejník, Martin Homza, and Radka Palenčárová. The event was organized by the Spiš Museum in Spišská Nová Ves.
Lecture Series
REČI O REČI
Since November 2021, the project researchers — Mgr. Peter Benka, PhD., and Mgr. Ivana Lukáč Labancová, PhD. — have been organizing a lecture series entitled Reči o reči (“Talks on Language”), which reflects their scholarly interest in vernacular languages in the context of the cultural and social history of the early modern period.
The aim of the lecture series is to introduce students of history, as well as the wider public, to the topic of language from linguistic, sociolinguistic, literary, philosophical, ethnological, anthropological, and historical perspectives.
In 2021, we organized two online lectures within the series. The first was given by Associate Professor Helena Tužinská, PhD., from the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, on the topic How Do We Pay for “Talking”?, in which she offered an anthropological perspective on the origins and development of language. The second lecture focused on the historical and sociolinguistic perspectives on language and was led by the organizers of the series, Dr. Peter Benka, Dr. Stanislava Kuzmová, and Mgr. Ivana Labancová.
The following two lectures focused on linguistic aspects of language and were delivered by two renowned linguists. Associate Professor Gabriela Múcsková, PhD., Director of the Ľudovít Štúr Institute of Linguistics of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, spoke about the presence of Germanisms in Slovak dialects. Dr. hab. Magdalena Majdak, Professor and Head of the Laboratory for the History of the Polish Language in the 17th and 18th Centuries at the Institute of the Polish Language of the Polish Academy of Sciences, presented a lecture on keywords in Baroque Polish and on digital databases of the Polish language.
The fifth lecture was given by Dr. Cristian Gaspar of Central European University in Vienna, who introduced students to the multilingual environment of seventeenth-century Transylvania.
In the sixth lecture, Dr. Pavlína Rychterová from the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna clarified the dynamics of multilingualism and its development within elite circles during the Hussite Reformation.
The seventh topic in our lecture series addressed the ways in which Hungarian aristocrats were taught languages in the early modern period. The lecture was given by Dr. Anna Fundárková from the Historical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. It took place on 17 April 2025.
The eighth lecture in the Reči o reči (“Talks on Language”) series was delivered by Professor Katalin Szende of Central European University in Vienna. Her research focuses on medieval towns in Central Europe, with particular attention to society, literacy, everyday life, and urban topography. The lecture took place on 8 April 2025 and this time addressed multilingual practices in urban communication in the Kingdom of Hungary and beyond.
