Axiological aspects of Bohuslav Tablic’s sermon prose

The poet, author, and Protestant priest Bohuslav Tablic (1769 – 1732) only published seven occasional speeches from his sermon writings. As he explained, this was due to the lowered interest of the readers in religious literature as such. Sermons that were published strongly aimed at forming the readers’ values and opinions with respect to general religious issues. Influenced by Enlightenment rationalism, Tablic focused on moral norms in his sermons. He saw the solution to the critical state of his own Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession and the loose morals of its members in a deepening of the confessional awareness of the community. He believed in a strong (supernatural) motivation of religion towards moral purity and sought the benefits of religion in spiritual unity of the society, its effective working, and quality social relations. He saw religion as a significant educational and culture-forming phenomenon. The country’s progress in Tablic’s view was to be based on active participation of morally mature and educated citizens on the religious and public life. In his sermons, like in his other writings, he is a moderate enlightened thinker and author.