His education involved the traditional study of Church Slavonic, Greek and Latin classics together with philosophy and philology in a modern atmosphere of rationalism.

Later, at the Piarist College in Késmárk, Hungary, he made rapid progress, especially in jurisprudence, though preferring the study of languages (Latin, German, French), history, literature, judicial science and philosophy.

The opening statement suggests that the author was aware of the articles on the Serbian literary language published by Jernej Kopitar in the German press.

With his common sense writings he opened the way of enlightenment, literature, and, national education, and the whole Serbian society in the Hungary and Austria of that time followed the slogans he gave.

In 1836, Vidaković published his translation from German of "Djevica iz Marijenburga" (Das Madchen von Marienburg), a drama in five acts by Franz Kratter (1758–1830), dedicated to Marko Karamata, one of the students he was tutoring.

The main character Chatinka, the maid of Marienburg, came originally from Poland, but she had been abducted by Russian troops and now found herself at the summer palace of Peter the Great, the Peterhof, outside of St. Petersburg.

Coming under the influence of Romanticism, Vidaković took an interest in the history of his people whose lands were then occupied by two empires (Habsburg Germans and the Ottoman Turks) and by so doing gave a historical framework to all his subsequent works.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Serbian people, like the rest of the Slavs, Hungarians, Italians, Romanians living under the Habsburg rule, became engaged in a dual struggle for political and cultural independence.

Vuk argued a campaign to free Serbian literature from its thralldom to Russo-Slavonic, based on Church Slavonic, an important idiom that Serbs had been using in their secular and religious works for a century.

Karadžić's program was first derided and then bitterly opposed by Church-led conservatives and others who wished to preserve some bond between the new Serbian literary language and Slavo-Serbian.