Juraj Sklenár


Juraj Sklenár was a Slovak historian, pedagogue and Catholic priest.

Life

He was born in Tiba, a manor-house near Levoča. Sklenár entered the Jesuits as a novice in 1764 and become a doctor of philosophy. He worked in Levoča, Trnava, Prešov and Košice. After the abolition of the Jesuit order, he worked as a professor of rhetoric and deputy director at main royal grammar school in Pressburg. A part of Sklenár's works are Latin odes and occasional speeches related to his pedagogic position. In the 1770s, he already become more known among scientists. In the Geographic Lexicon of the Kingdom of Hungary he is mentioned as the pride of Pressburg. Sklenár, together with Juraj Papánek, Juraj Fándly and Samuel Timon created the first scientific works about the earliest history of Slovaks. Slovak enlightenment historians already paid attention to Great Moravia and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius, but did not adopt yet a deciding position. In 1784, Sklenár published his most important work Vetustissimus magnae Moraviae situs et primus in eam Hungarorum ingressus et incursus, geographice, historice, critice descriptus. He tried to separate the history of Great Moravia from the Slovak history and proposed the location of its center to Sremska Mitrovica. According to Richard Marsina, regardless of this mistake, Sklenár belonged among most qualified and most critical historians of Bernolák's generations.

Works