Trnava
Trnava is a city in western Slovakia, to the northeast of Bratislava, on the Trnávka river. It is the capital of the Trnava Region and the Trnava District. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric. The city has a historic center. Because of the many churches within its city walls, Trnava has often been called "Little Rome", or more recently, the "Slovak Rome".
Names and etymology
The name of the city is derived from the name of the creek Trnava. It comes from the Old Slavic/Slovak word tŕň which characterized the river banks in the region. Many towns in Central and Eastern Europe have a similar etymology including Trnovo in Slovakia as well as Tarnów, Tarnow, Veliko Tarnovo, Târnăveni, Trnava and Trnavac ; and Tyrnavos among others. In Hungarian, the original name had gradually evolved into Tyrna which influenced also later German and Latin forms.When it developed into an important market town, it received the Hungarian name of Nagyszombat, literally "Great Saturday", referring to the weekly market fairs held on Saturdays. However, this name was only used by the royal chamber, as is indicated by the adoption of the Slovak name rather than the Hungarian name by German newcomers after the Mongol invasion.
The varieties of the name in different languages include ; and .
History
Permanent settlements on the city's territory are known from the Neolithic period onwards.Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, an important market settlement arose here at the junction of two important roads – from Bohemia to Hungary and from the Mediterranean to Poland.The first written reference to Trnava dates from 1211. In 1238, Trnava was the first town in Slovakia to be granted a town charter by the king. The former agricultural center gradually became a center of manufacture, trade, and crafts. By the early 13th century, the king of Hungary had invited numerous Germans to settle in Trnava; this settlement increased after the Tatar invasion in 1242. At the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries, a part of Trnava was enclosed by very long city walls. The original Hungarian and Slovak market settlement and the Germans stayed behind this wall.
Trnava was also the place of many important negotiations: Charles I, the king of Hungary, signed here a currency agreement with the Czech King John of Luxemburg in 1327, and King Louis I signed a friendship agreement with Emperor Charles IV there in 1360.
Hussites and Slovak majority
The temporary German majority in Trnava's population yielded in favour of the Slovaks during the campaigns undertaken by the Czech Hussites in the 15th century. In April 1430, the Hussites penetrated close to the town and defeated the Hungarian army in the Battle of Trnava. However, they suffered heavy losses and withdrew to Moravia. On 24 Jun 1432, a small group of Hussites masked as tradesmen entered the town, overcame the guards in the night, and captured the town without a fight. Then, they made Trnava the center of their campaigns in northwestern Kingdom of Hungary from 1432 to 1435.16th-18th centuries
The town, along with the rest of the territory of present-day Slovakia, gained importance after the conquest of most of what is today Hungary by the Ottoman Empire in 1541, when Trnava became the see of the Archbishopric of Esztergom. The cathedrals of the archbishopric were the Saint John the Baptist Cathedral and the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in the town. Many ethnic Hungarians fleeing from the Turks moved to the town after 1541, also from present-day Hungary, which mainly remained under Ottoman rule until being gradually reconquered and the last Ottoman troops on present-day Hungarian territory were defeated in 1699.In the 16th and especially the 17th century, Trnava was an important center of the Counter-Reformation in the Kingdom of Hungary. The Archbishop Nicolaus Olahus invited the Jesuits to Trnava in 1561 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 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 a decisive defeat against the Imperial Army, led by Sigbert Heister, near Trnava.
It was after the establishment of the archbishopric and canonry that Trnava acquired the nickname of "A Little Rome". As the city of Rome was a center of the universal Catholic Church, the town of Trnava had been seen in popular view as the center of Catholicism in the Kingdom of Hungary. As contemporary scholar Matthias Bel had overstated: "You could say it is a town which is appearing as Rome on a small scale, and this, as to temples and also sacred institutions which were infused within it. Truly, that's why the people call it a Little Rome, knowing that small things are compared with big ones".
The Jesuit Trnava University, 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 some of the teachers, half of the students were Slovaks.
Pázmány himself was instrumental in promoting the usage of Slovak instead of Czech and had his work "Isteni igazságra vezető kalauz" 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 codification of Slovak was based on the Slovak dialect used in the region of Trnava.
19th century to Great War
In 1820, the seat of the Hungarian archbishopric was transferred back to Esztergom, and Trnava ceased to be the religious center of the historic Kingdom of Hungary.The importance of the town increased again when Trnava was connected with Bratislava through the horse-drawn railway.
In 1838 Pozsony-Nagyszombati Első Magyar Vasúttársaság was founded in order to connect royal towns with railway system.
In 1840 horse-drawn railway started to operate on the route Bratislava-Svätý Jur, as the first railway line in the Kingdom of Hungary. With connection to Trnava, the planned route was solemnly opened in June 1846 to be later prolonged to Sered in December 1846.
During the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 Richard Guyon's army had been repulsed out of Trnava after clash with an Austrian army under command of on 14 December, in 1848.
In time after Austro-Hungarian Compromise
In 1867 Austro-Hungarian compromise had come into force, becoming a milestone in the politics and administration of the empire. For this period had been determined as a self-governed urban district within Pozsony County, also being the seat of the Trnava rural district.Slovak national foundations, like Matica slovenská were suppressed or banned in Kingdom of Hungary as a result of the Magyarization policy. In that time of national and linguistic oppression of Slovaks, the was founded in Trnava in 1870. Initially being tasked with publishing of catholic literature, the association with its headquarters in Trnava had been working as the foremost Slovak language institution until Dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918.
In the 19th but mainly in the early 20th century, the town grew behind its city walls, and a part of the wall was demolished in the 19th century, but most of it is still well-preserved.
In 1873 a reconstructed railway route from Bratislava to Trnava, trafficking with steam engines, instead of previous horse-drawn, had been handed over to use. First steam train reached at Trnava railway station on May 1, 1873.
The renewed connection launched a modernization of the town, which started with the erection of a big sugar factory, a malt-house, and the Coburgh's factory.
After 1918
After the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, Trnava was one of the most industrialized towns of the country. During World War II, Trnava was occupied on 1 April 1945 by troops of the Soviet 2nd Ukrainian Front.In 1977, by a decision of Pope Paul VI, Trnava became the see of a separate Slovak archbishopric. With the establishment of this archbishopric, Slovakia became independent of Hungary also in terms of church administration for the first time in centuries.
After the establishment of Slovakia, Trnava became the capital of the newly created Trnava Region in 1996.