OBRAZ TALIANSKA AKO CENTRA KATOLÍCKEJ CIRKVI V CESTOPISNÝCH ZÁZNAMOCH Š. NEMECSKAYA

In the Slovak environment in the 19th century, trips to Italy were inspired by the possibility of getting to know the cradle of European culture, history and education, valuable artistic monuments and holy places and aristocratic courts. The records that were written from these trips, and whose authors were priests well versed in the cultural and political history of the visited region and represent a special type of travelogue in the context of the observed period. Instead of a national focus, they primarily pursue confessional aims, which – along with the fact that they do not significantly interfere with the development of travel prose – determine their peripheral status, or that they remain outside the attention of literary historiography. This circumstance was also confirmed by the fact that many of them remained in manuscripts or were published only on the pages of religiously oriented magazines and in calendars. The paper focuses on the research of the image of Italy, which, based on his authentic experience from the trip, is presented in the travelogues published in magazines written by the priest and Catholic author Štefan Nemecskay, a representative of the second generation of Bernolakites.