Hungary was a multiethnic and multilingual state throughout the whole of the middle ages. The cementing element was Latin, which entered administration and literature via churches, monasteries and church schools. This had a negative impact in that it halted the development of national languages and thereby the process of national awareness. It was many centuries before the national culture and literature started to be revived in the northern part of the Hungarian state where the Slovaks lived. Written documents from the first centuries of the second millennium generally only consist of official papers and church or religious works in Latin. There was clearly folk art (its remains have been preserved in contemporary Slovak folk art), oral epics spread over lords' estates and castles by igrices (the local form of troubadour), and later, mainly after the establishment of a Czech university (in 1348), where Slovak students studied without interruption, so-called vagrant poetry, that is, poems by vagabond students, but none of this has been preserved.
           Over time the structure of society changed. Feudal relations were established, towns were founded and expanded. Their foundation in Slovakia was mainly connected with the entry of German colonists, who worked as miners in ore mines. They also established monasteries (Benedictine) and these became sources of education, particularly theological, in Latin. The development of society and its culture was hampered by the invasion of the Tartars (Mongols) in the Danube area (from 1241 to 1288). They mainly ravaged the northern lands of Hungary where the Slovaks lived. The Tartar and later Turkish invasions became a favourite literary theme in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. The constant battles for the Hungarian throne also hampered progress. The biggest feudal lord intervening in these disputes for power was Matúš Čák (around 1260 - 1321). His seat was in Trenčín and his estate extended over almost the whole territory of Slovakia, essentially over a large part of the former Great Moravia. This is one reason why they regarded him almost as an heir of the Great Moravian Empire during the national revival in Slovakia (19^th century) and gave him a Slovak origin which did not correspond to historical fact. He figured in romantic historical prose of the 19^th and also 20^th century in this guise. Alongside the Great Moravian Svätopluk, he became a national hero.
           In the 12^th to 14^th centuries, Slovaks became a separate ethnic group and the Slovak language acquired basic traits which it carried into the future. As for literature, the 11th century Legend of Sts. Svorad and Benedict, written in Latin, is known from this period of decline. Svorad was a monk-hermit in a monastery on the Zobor hill above Nitra. Benedict was his pupil, who died a martyr's death. Both were, according to everyone, of Slovak origin. At the turn of the 11^th and 12^th centuries another work conceived in Latin appeared, the so-called Anonymous Chronicle. Its author was probably a notary of the Hungarian King Bela III and it is also known under the name Gesta Hungarorum. It is evidently prejudiced against the original Slav population of Hungary and proudly elevates the Magyar ethnic group, which is destined to rule its ethnically heterogeneous lands. Certain "historical events" described by Anonymous are legendary fiction (Svätopluk allegedly "sold" his territory to the Magyars for a white horse and so on) and these later became a substantial source of not only Hungarian national awareness, but also Hungarian chauvinism.