e="font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";mso-ansi-language:
EN" lang="EN">In the 16th and especially the 17th century, Trnava was an important center
of the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary (at the time largely
identical with the territory of present-day Slovakia and a strip of western
Hungary). The Archbishop Nicolas Oláh invited the Jesuits to Trnava in 1561 in
order to develop the municipal school system. Subsequently, he had a seminary
opened in 1566 and in 1577 Trnava’s priest Nicolas Telegdi founded a
book-printing house in the town. The first Catholic Bible translation into
Hungarian (based on the Latin Vulgate) was also completed in the town by the
Jesuit György Káldi who was born there in 1573. The 17th century was also
characterized by many anti-Habsburg uprisings in the country – these revolts of
Stephen Bocskay, Gabriel Bethlen, George I Rákóczi, and Imre Thököly negatively
affected Trnava’s life. On 26 December 1704 Francis II Rákóczi's army suffered
decisive defeat against the Imperial Army, led by Sigbert Heister, near Trnava.
The Jesuit Trnava University (1635–1777), the only university of the
Kingdom of Hungary at that time, was founded by Archbishop Péter Pázmány.
Founded to support the Counter-Reformation, Trnava University soon became a
center of Slovak education and literature, since most of the teachers, one half
of the students and the majority of the town’s inhabitants were Slovaks.
Pázmány himself was instrumental in promoting the usage of the Slovak language
instead of the Czech language and had his work "Isteni igazságra vezető
kalauz" (Guide to the Truth of God) and several of his sermons
translated into Slovak. From the late 18th century Trnava became a center of the
literary and artistic Slovak National Revival. The first standard
