Zoborsk letter

The first document (written September 1, 1111) relates to a dispute (regarding the tax collection and church tithe) between the Zoborsky monastery of St. Hippolytus and the royal tax collectors. In this document, King Kalman I confirms the right of the Zoborsky Abbey to own property of citizens in the west and in the center of Slovakia. These possessions Zoborsky Benedictines received from the Hungarian king Istvan I. The document, most likely, was written by a member of the chapter - the grammar Willerm, who taught letters in the monastery, which proves that there was already a school on Zobor in those days. Apparently, the school became the successor to the Great Moravian school, which, after Methodius left Great Moravia, was run by Bishop Viking.

The second document, dated 1113, contains a consolidated list of possessions of Zoborsky Abbey. Given the fact that the document mentions the names of more than 150 villages and various settlements, the document is an extremely valuable topographical source for the geography of Western Slovakia at the beginning of the 12th century. The document also testifies to the organization of religious life by Benedictine monks . The Benedictine monastery of St. Hippolytus at the foot of Mount Zobor was the oldest in Slovakia and ceased to exist even during the reign of King Matthias I (1443-1490) .

Almost all the names of the persons and names of the settlements mentioned in both documents are Slovak, but there are also German and Latinized forms. This suggests that the Nitrian lands in the XII century, i.e. long after the collapse of the Svyatopolk empire, they were an important center of Slovak ethnogenesis. This also indicates the gradual inclusion of non-Slavic ethnic groups in the Slavic environment and the creation of administrative and cultural-religious elements. The documents do not mention Hungarian names and names, which indicates that Nitra, as the former center of the monarchy, in the XII and probably in the middle of the XIII century retained its Slavic character.

According to historians, both Zobor documents were written by the clerks of the Benedictine Abbey on Mount Zobor or in the Nitrian chapter. Paleographic analysis shows that documents were written by natives of the French-German border. The influence of French and German spelling causes frequent cases of distortion of the Slovak names of settlements, rivers, mountains and other geographical objects.

Zoborsk letters were preserved in the original (the first is badly damaged, the second is preserved quite well and is written on parchment). Both letters are kept in the archives of the Nitrian diocese .

In 2011, on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of writing the first Zoborsky letter, the National Bank of Slovakia issued a silver commemorative coin with a face value of 10 euros. The author of the project was Master of Arts Peter Walach, the coin was minted in the Kremnitsky Mint . ^[one]

• Slovak text of the letter of 1111