The Glagolitic alphabet or Glagolitsa is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It was created by St Cyril (827-869 AD) and St Methodius (826-885 AD) in 855 or around 862–863 in order to translate the Bible and other texts into the Slavic languages. Initially Old Church Slavonic was written with the Glagolitic alphabet, but later it was replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. Only in Croatia was the local variant of Glagolitic alphabet preserved.

The name comes from the Old Slavonic glagol?, which means word (and is also the origin of the name for the letter "G"). Since glagolati also means to speak, the Glagolitsa is poetically referred to as "the marks that speak".

The original Glagolitic alphabet has 41 letters, but the number varies slightly in later versions. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters (Great Moravian below) are probably derived from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, but have been given an ornamental design. It is presumed that the letters sha, shta and tsi were derived from the Hebrew alphabet (the letters Shin and Tsadi) — the phonemes that these letters represent did not exist in Greek but do exist in Hebrew and are quite common in all Slavic languages. The remaining original characters are of unknown origin. Some of them are presumed to stem from the Hebrew and Samaritan scripts, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson.

Rastislav, the Knyaz (Prince) of Great Moravia, wanted to weaken the dependence of his Slavic empire on East Frankish priests, so in 862 he had the Byzantine emperor send two missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, to Great Moravia. Cyril created a new alphabet for that purpose: the Glagolitic.

In 886, an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the Cyrillic script. When the script reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I of Bulgaria to teach and instruct the future clergy of the state into the Slavic languages. After the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 865, religious ceremonies were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire. Fearing growing Byzantine influence and weakening of the state, Boris viewed the introduction of the Slavic alphabet and language in church use as a way to preserve the independence of Bulgaria. As a result of Boris's measures, two academies in Ohrid and Preslav were founded.

At the end of the 9th century, one of these students of Methodius who was settled in Preslav (Bulgaria) created the Cyrillic alphabet, which almost entirely replaced the Glagolitic during the Middle Ages. The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, with (at least 10) letters peculiar to Slavic languages being derived from the Glagolithic.

 

 

 

Some of the students from Bulgaria of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was used in the 10th and 11th century, along with other scripts. Some went to Croatia and Dalmatia. Glagolitic was also used in Russia, although rarely.

Of the two academies in Ohrid and Preslav, the students traveled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to Croatia and Dalmatia, where the squared variant arose and where the Glagolitic remained in use for a long time. Some of the students from Bulgaria of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was used in the 10th and 11th century, along with other scripts. Glagolitic was also used in Russia, although rarely.

Senj (Croatia) is located on the Adriatic coast below the Vratnik mountain pass which separates the Velebit mountain from the mountains of Gorski kotar. The Senj Catholic diocese was established in 1169. Croatian-Hungarian king Bela III gave the town to the Templars in 1184, and in 1271 it became the property of the counts of Krk-the second largest island of the Adriatic, the Frankopans. The Romans used Senia as a stronghold against the Illyrians in the 2nd century BC, and it was a thriving town in their province of Dalmatia. The Avars and the Croats settled Senj in the 7th century (AD). The Eurasian Avars were a nomadic people of Eurasia, supposedly of proto-Mongolian Turkic stock, who migrated from eastern Asia into central and eastern Europe in the 6th century.

The Avar rule persisted over much of the Pannonian plain up to the early 9th century. Avars were driven westward when the Gokturks defeated the Hephthalites in the 550s and the 560s. Finding the country unsuited to their nomadic lifestyle and the Franks stern opponents, they turned their attention to the Pannonian plain, which was then being contested by two Germanic tribes, the Lombards and the Gepids. Siding with the Lombards, they destroyed the Gepids in 567 and established a state in the Danube River area, forced the Lombards into northern Italy, a migration that marked the last Germanic migration in the Migrations Period. The Avar leader from c. 565 to c. 600 was called Bayan. The Avars were finally liquidated during the 810s by the Franks under Charlemagne when he died, transfer of united territory to Louis the Pious, and the Bulgars under Krum whose siege of Constantinople created the second iconoclast period. Their presence in Pannonia is still certain in 871 but then that name is no longer used by chroniclers. The Avars are also likely to have merged with Slavs, who had formed new states in the region: the principality of Nitra, Slovakia in the north (later Great Moravia), and the Balaton Principality in the central parts of Pannonia. The Slavic inhabitation of Pannonia started in the late 5th century after the fall of the Hunnic tribal union.

Nitra is the site of the first known Christian church in central and eastern Europe, which was built in 828 during the time of the Nitrian Principality, and of the first known bishopric in present-day Slovakia. In the early Middle Ages, the city reached its height during the reign of prince Svätopluk, who was the prince of Nitra from the 850s to 871 and then the king of Great Moravia till 894. Svätopluk had the first monastery in Slovakia built on the Zobor Mountain during 880-881. Located beyond the city limits are the Great Moravian settlements of Chrenova, Lupka, Branc, Vrable, and Zlate Moravce. St. Methodius and St. Cyril, creators of the Glagolitic alphabet, an early precursor of the modern Cyrillic alphabet, participated actively in the formation of the Church and the first bishopric in Slovakia, in Nitra.

The Croatian Glagolitic alphabet has a long and interesting history of more than a thousand years. The Croats using the Glagolitic alphabet were the only nation in Europe who was given a special permission by Pope Innocent IV (in 1248) to use their own language and this script in liturgy. This permission had formally been given to the bishop Philip of Senj. Formally given to bishop Philip of Senj, the permission actually extended to all Croatian lands using the Glagolitic liturgy, mostly along the Adriatic coast. The Vatican had several Glagolitic missals published in Rome. It was eventually replaced with the Latin alphabet.

During the Middle Ages, people from both Central Europe and Northern Europe (Germany, Latvia etc) celebrated the feast of Saint Vitus with the so-called Saint Vitus Dance. Saint Vitus' Day (Vitus Diena) is celebrated on June 15 according to the Gregorian calendar, and on June 28 according to the Julian calendar. St. Vitus is the patron saint of Bohemia.. Vitus is the patron saint of the towns of Forio in Campania, Italy and the town of Winschoten in the Netherlands. Various places in Austria and Bavaria are named Sankt Veit in his honor. In the eighth century it is said that relics of St. Vitus were brought to the monastery of St-Denis by Abbot Fulrad. They were later presented to Abbot Warin of Corvey in Germany, who solemnly transferred them to this abbey in 836. From Corvey the veneration of St. Vitus spread throughout Westphalia and in the districts of eastern and northern Germany. Latvian culture, along with Lithuanian, is the oldest surviving Indo-European culture. The legacy of Latvian mythology is also seen in contemporary Christian holidays.

The H- in many languages (Hungarians, Hongrois, Hungarus etc.) is a later addition. It was taken over from the word "Huns", which was a similar semi-nomadic tribe living some 400 years earlier in present-day Hungary and having a similar way of life (or according to the older theories the people from which the Magyars arose). Magyar is today simply the Hungarian word for Hungarian. Finno-Ugric is a group of related languages, which does not mean that the peoples currently speaking those languages are equally related. Same holds true, for example, for Indo-European languages. The Ugric Hungarian language is about as distantly related to Finnic languages like Finnish and Estonian as, e.g., European German is related to Hindi and Nepali.

The first Croatian printed book in Glagolitic letters appeared as early as 1483, only 28 years after Gutenberg's Bible, 6 years after the first printed book in Paris and Venice, one yeare before Stockholm, 58 years before Berlin and 70 years before Moscow. The Croatian Glagolitic Script was the fifth to appear in the history of European printing, very soon after the Latin, Gothic, Greek and Hebrew scripts.

The first incunabulum printed in the Croatian language and in the Latin Script was the Lectionary of Bernardin of Split, published in Venice in 1495. There is no doubt that it was created on the basis of earlier Glagolitic lectionaries. The Croats participated in preparation of as many as 150 incunabula in Croatia and western Europe in the period between 1474 and 1500; the earliest period of printing. The Croats possess an extensive collection of more than 800 legal documents, statutes etc., written in the vernacular between 1100 and the end of 16th century - more than any other Slav nation. The New York Missal, 1400-1410 written in the region of Zadar or Lika-Krbava, now in the possession of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

Romanians and Slovaks have lived together and blended with Magyars since early medieval times. Turks who occupied the central part of present-day Hungary from c. 1541 to c. 1699 and especially the various nations (Germans, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats and others), that settled depopulated territories after the departure of the Turks in the 18th century all added their important contribution in composing the modern Hungarian nation. A Jewish and Gypsy minority has been living in Hungary since the Middle Ages.

The Ostrog Bible was one of the earliest East Slavonic translations of the Bible and the first complete printed edition of the Bible in Old Church Slavonic, published in Ostrog, in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, by the Russian printer Ivan Fyodorov in 1581 with the assistance of the Ukrainian Prince Konstantin Ostrogski. The Ostrog Bibles were imprinted on two dates: 12 July 1580, and 12 August 1581. The Ostrog Bible is unique among Church Slavonic Bibles in that the Old Testament was translated not from the Masoretic text, but from the Septuagint. This translation, comprising 76 books of the Old and New Testaments, was based on the Gennadius Bible and a manuscript of the Codex Alexandrinus. Some parts were based on Francysk Skaryna's translations. The second version differs from the 1580 original in composition, ornamentation, and correction of misprints. The first church (of the Holy Trinity) was built in the central square of Karlovac in 1580, but all of the city buildings burned down in the fire of 1594.

The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted.The books that have come down to us from Moravia were are all written in Glagolitic alphabet. A less common belief was that the Glagolitic was created by St. Jerome, hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian. In Croatia, along the Dalmatian coast and the nearby islands, the language of Cyril and Methodius, two brothers, became the language of the church and has remained so down to our day. Cyril and Methodius were born in Salonica, Constantinople. Salonica was a port and outlet for the central and western part of the Balkan Peninsula, which was also inhabited by Slavs, and the center of a rich neighborhood. The Slavs penetrated early into the city so that alongside Greek the Slavonic language was heard on every hand. Cyril and Methodius not only lived among Slavs. There is good reason to believe that they belonged to a Slav, or at least partly Slav family. Old Church Slavonic or Church Slavonic is a literary language which developed from the language used by St Cyril and St Methodius, 9th century missionaries from Byzantium

It is also acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters, on the same model as 'alpha' + 'beta'. The Slavs of Great Moravia (present-day Slovakia and Moravia), Hungary, Slovenia and Slavonia were called Slovene at that time, which gives rise to the name Slovenish for the alphabet. Some other, more rare, names for this alphabet are Bukvitsa and Illyrian.

Nowadays, Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavonic and, sometimes, vernacular in the service-books of the Catholic Eparchy of Križevci in Croatia.

 

 

 

The Glagolitic Mass; Its eight movements are:

  • 1. Úvod [Introduction]
  • 2. Gospodi pomiluj [Kyrie]
  • 3. Slava [Gloria]
  • 4. Veruju [Credo]
  • 5. Svet [Sanctus]
  • 6. Agnece Božij [Agnus Dei]
  • 7. Varhany sólo (Postludium) [Organ solo]
  • 8. Intrada [Exodus]