His sound judgment taught him, that the surest way of enabling his flock, and the common people in general, to receive the new light in a proper spirit, would be the diffusion of useful knowledge among them.  And as the German, which at the present day is almost exclusively the language of the cities of Stiria, Carniola, and Carinthia, was at that time far less generally understood, he ventured to commit to paper a dialect apparently never before written.  In the second edition of his New Testament, A.D. 1582, he states expressly:  “Thirty-four years ago, there was not a letter, not a register, still less a book, to be found in our language; people regarded the Vindish and Hungarian idioms as too coarse and barbarous to be written or read.”

Truber and his assistants in this great work of reformation and instruction, among whom we mention only Ungnad von Sonnegg and Dalmatin, met every where with opposition and persecution; but their activity and zeal conquered all obstacles, and succeeded in at least partially performing that at which they aimed.  Meantime, Christopher, duke of Wuertemburg, a truly evangelical prince, had opened in his dominions an asylum for all those who had to suffer elsewhere on account of their faith.  The translation of the Scriptures every where into the language of the common people, was regarded by this prince as a holy duty; and this led him to cause even Slavic printing-offices to be established in his dominions, Thither Truber went; and after printing several books for religious instruction, he published the Gospel of Matthew in a Vindish translation, Tuebingen 1555; and two years later the whole New Testament.  As Truber did not understand the Greek original, his translation was made from the Latin, German, and Italian versions.  At the same time a translation for the Dalmatic-Croatians was planned; and several works for their instruction printed and distributed.  Truber, thus an exile from his own country, died in 1586 as curate in the duchy of Wuertemburg, engaged in a translation of Luther’s House-postillae.

Two different systems of orthography had been adopted by Truber and Dalmatin.  For this reason, when in 1580 the whole Vindish Bible was to be printed at Wittemberg, it seemed necessary to fix the orthography according to acknowledged rules.  This led also to grammatical investigations.  In the year 1584, a Vindish grammar was printed at Wittemberg, the author of which, A. Bohorizh of Laibach, was a pupil of Melancthon, and a scholar of that true philosophical spirit, without which no one should undertake to write a grammar, even where he has only to follow a beaten path; much less when he has to open for himself a new one.  Thus the Vindish written language, almost in its birth, acquired a correctness and consistency, to which other languages hardly attain after centuries of experiments, innovations, and literary contests.  According to the judgment of those who are best acquainted with