Did the Slovene Ethnic Identity Exist in the Pre-National Period?

Collective Identities and Amplitudes of the Importance of Ethnicity in the Early Modern Period (Part I)

Abstract

The Slovene nation as a political entity developed in the nineteenth century from an ethnic and linguistic community that was in the Early Modern Period marked mostly by its language. Ethnic identity was not always the main element of collective identities. Its signifi cance varied in the course of history, wherefore we can refer to its amplitudes. Although lesser than that of religion, the importance of ethnicity and language was considerable during sixteenth-century Reformation, whereupon it decreased in the period of Baroque and gradually started to peak in the second half of the eighteenth century.