Primož Trubar

Primož Trubar (born in Rašica, Slovenia, 1508; died in Derendingen, now part of Tübingen, Germany, 1586) was a Slovene Protestant reformer in the Lutheran tradition. He founded the Protestant Church in the Duchy of Carniola and served as its first superintendent. He is best remembered as the author of the first book printed in the Slovene language, and he is credited with creating the basis of the Slovene literary language and its spelling. He worked in the age of the Reformation, when the Habsburgs ruled the Slovene lands and later pushed back against Protestantism.

Born in a village in Lower Carniola, he studied in Rijeka, Salzburg and Trieste, where he came into contact with humanist writers, among them Erasmus of Rotterdam. He enrolled at the University of Vienna but did not finish his degree. Back in Slovene territory, he became a preacher in Ljubljana, where he lived until 1565. There he noticed that most residents spoke Slovene as their first language, and he chose the city's speech as the foundation of his written language, adding touches of his own rural dialect. His Protestant leanings led to his expulsion from Ljubljana in 1547, and he spent his later years working from exile.

In 1550, while preaching in Rothenburg, he saw two books in Slovene published in Schwäbisch Hall: a catechism and an alphabet book. Altogether he is credited with about twenty-two books in Slovene and two in German, and he was the first to translate parts of the Bible into his language, starting with the Gospel of Matthew in 1555 and completing the New Testament around 1577. From 1561 to 1565 he oversaw the South Slavic Bible Institute. His eschatological convictions also drove him to write books aimed at converting Muslims in Turkey.

His legacy is still visible. A street in Ljubljana bears his name, his portrait appears on the Slovene one-euro coin, and 8 June is marked in Slovenia as Primož Trubar Day.