Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Evangelical Church in Domanjševci
Primož Trubar Evangelical Church in Ljubljana
Evangelical Church in Bodonci

The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia is the largest Protestant church in Slovenia and with around 20,000 members - less than one percent of the total population - the fourth largest religious community in Slovenia. Most of the Evangelicals of Slovenia live in the extreme northeast in Prekmurje .

The church is led by a bishop . Since December 1st, 2019 this has been Leon Nowak, pastor in Murska Sobota . Previously, this was the pastor of the Ljubljana parish , Geza Filo , who had taken over the office from long-time Bishop Geza Erniša .

history

In the Duchy of Carniola , the Evangelical Church began in the 16th century, when the Slovenian reformer Primož Trubar was the first to translate Martin Luther's catechism and parts of the New Testament into Slovenian . Shortly thereafter, Jurij Dalmatin translated the entire Bible , which was then used in the Protestant churches.

In the 1530s Primož Trubar preached at the Catholic Ljubljana Cathedral of St. Nikolai , where he increasingly expressed Protestant ideas in his sermons in the Slovenian language. Another Protestant preacher at this church was Paul Wiener , who preached in German. These sermons contrasted with the loyal orientation of the Diocese of Laibach, which was loyal to the Pope. In 1540 Trubar had to move to Trieste . In 1547 he was excommunicated by Bishop Urban Textor and had to flee to Nuremberg , from where he moved to Rothenburg ob der Tauber . There he translated the catechism into Slovene, which was published in Tübingen in 1550. Paul Wiener, on the other hand, was forced to go into exile in Transylvania .

Also Jurij Dalmatin , the Protestant theology in after completing his studies Tübingen as a Protestant pastor in Vigaun , Sankt Kanzian in Oberkrain worked and Ljubljana, his books had in Germany Print leave. He is said to have stayed at Auersperg Castle in Lower Carniola under the protection of Herbard VIII von Auersperg to translate the Bible into Slovene . To find a printing company, he went to Graz and Klagenfurt in October 1580. The Bible translation was published in Wittenberg in 1584 . In the following years, his Slovenian Bibles were hidden in barrels and brought to Carniola.

The Reformation spread quickly in what was then the Slovenian-speaking area. It found supporters especially among the nobility and bourgeoisie. B. in Cilli about 99% of the city population became Protestant .

Since the Archduke of Austria did not tolerate any Protestant churches in the cities, the Protestant estates built a magnificent church in Scharfenau near Sachsenfeld , the construction of which lasted from 1582 to 1589. In the course of the Counter-Reformation , the future emperor, the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand , left this church on 19/20. Blow it up on January 1st, 1600 and build a Capuchin monastery in Cilli instead . In a report from 1600, the church in Scharfenau was razed to the ground and could no longer be found; Nevertheless, the memory of the Protestants remained alive into the 20th century.

Protestantism was completely suppressed by the Counter Reformation . Officials of the Evangelical Church, including Primož Trubar, fled to Protestant areas in Germany. Only in Hungary , to which the Slovene-speaking regions of Prekmurje belonged, were two Protestant communities able to survive, Surd and Nemescsó (Tschobing). Due to the tolerance patent of 1781, some new Slovenian-speaking Protestant congregations were able to emerge in Hungary ( István Küzmics , Mihály Bakos ).

In the 19th century, German-speaking immigrants founded new Protestant communities in Laibach , Cilli and Marburg an der Drau . After the Second World War , Protestant community life was initially no longer possible in these cities. Only in the 1950s did the Yugoslav authorities allow the Protestant churches in Ljubljana and Maribor to reopen. Today most of the members of these communities are immigrants from Prekmurje and their descendants.

Today's Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia was reorganized on the basis of a statute from 1977 and is a member of the Lutheran World Federation and the ecumenical conference of European churches .

organization

The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession in Slovenia include thirteen parishes :

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lutheran World Federation: 2010 World Lutheran Membership Details; Lutheran World Information 1/2011 ( Memento of September 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 199 kB); Lutheran World Information 1/2011, p. 10.
  2. ^ Slovenia: Leon Nowak new bishop of the Lutheran Church - Gustav-Adolf-Werk eV. Accessed December 8, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Geza filo Novi evangeličanski Skof, Ernisa po 18 LETIH odhaja . RTV Slovenija, June 28, 2013.
  4. ↑ Joseph Wastler: The Protestant Church in Scharfenau Sachsenfeld. In: Messages from the Historical Association for Styria. Vol. 38, 1890, pp. 123–143 (digitized version with reconstruction drawing after p. 134) .
  5. ↑ K. Rozman: Govce Mejnik protestantstva ; Utrip Savinjske doline za Občino Žalec, November 26, 2008 (Slovenian)

Web links