The Lutheran church has been at home in Slovakia since the time of the Reformation. German farmers, miners and crafts people, drawn earlier to Slovakia, became adherents of the Lutheran movement and spread it among the Slovaks. Leonhard Stöckel, who stemmed from a German-speaking family in Bardejov in East Slovakia and studied in Wittenberg, 1530-1534, introduced Philipp Melanchthon’s pedagogical ideas upon his return to Bardejov in 1539. He is also considered to be the author of Confessio Pentapolitana (Pentapolitana refers to the five royal cities in Upper Hungary: Bardejov/Bartfeld, Košice/Kaschau, Levoča/Leutschau, Prešov/Eperies and Sabinov/Zeben), the first confessional writing of Lutheran Christians in this region. The first printed book in Slovak language was the translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, printed also in Bardejov, in 1581. By 1570, there were said to be about 2,000 Lutheran congregations in Slovakia.

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