The Cyrillic script, Slavonic script or simply Slavic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages.
The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. The brothers decided to translate liturgical books into the contemporary Slavic language understandable to the general population, and Cyril decided to invent a new script, Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of the Slavic tribes from around Thessalonica. After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, the Glagolitic alphabet ceased to be used in Moravia for political or religious needs.
Cyril and Methodius (815–885) were brothers, Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic is the first Slavic literary language.
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Church Slavonic language, and was historically used for its ancestor, Old Church Slavonic. It was also used for other languages, but between the 18th and 20th centuries was mostly replaced by the modern Cyrillic script, which is used for some Slavic languages, and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.
Church Slavonic, also known as Church Slavic, New Church Slavonic, New Church Slavic or just Slavonic, is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. The language appears also in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.
Vatroslav Jagić was a Croatian scholar of Slavic studies in the second half of the 19th century.
The oldest translation of the Bible into a Slavic language, Old Church Slavonic, has close connections with the activity of the two apostles to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, in Great Moravia in 864–865. The oldest manuscripts use either the so-called Cyrillic or the Glagolitic alphabets. Cyrillic reflects the Greek majuscule writing style of the 9th century with the addition of new characters for Slavic sounds not used in the Greek of that time. Glagolitic writing differs from any other writing system; it went out of use as late as the 20th century.
The Codex Zographensis is an illuminated Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript. It is composed of 304 parchment folios; the first 288 are written in Glagolitic containing Gospels and organised as Tetraevangelium, and the rest written in Cyrillic containing a 13th-century synaxarium. It is dated back to the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century.
The Codex Marianus is an Old Church Slavonic fourfold Gospel Book written in Glagolitic script, dated to the beginning of the 11th century, which is, one of the oldest manuscript witnesses to the Old Church Slavonic language, one of the two fourfold gospels being part of the Old Church Slavonic canon.
SS. Cyril and Methodius in Lemont - historic church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, located in Lemont, Illinois.
The Codex Suprasliensis is a 10th-century Cyrillic literary monument, the largest extant Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript and the oldest Slavic literary work located in Poland. As of September 20, 2007, it is on UNESCO's Memory of the World list.
The Kiev Missal is a seven-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript containing parts of the Roman-rite liturgy. It is usually held to be the oldest and the most archaic Old Church Slavonic manuscript, and is dated at no later than the latter half of the 10th century. Seven parchment folios have been preserved in small format of easily portable book to be of use to missionaries on the move.
Codex Assemanius is a rounded Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon evangeliary consisting of 158 illuminated parchment folios, dated to early 11th century. The manuscript is created in the Ohrid Literary School of the First Bulgarian Empire.
The Psalterium Sinaiticum is a 209-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon manuscript, the earliest Slavic psalter, dated to the 11th century. The manuscript was found in Saint Catherine's Monastery in Egypt, after which it was named and where it remains to this day.
The Euchologium Sinaiticum is a 109-folio Old Church Slavonic euchologion in Glagolitic script. It contains parts of the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, and is dated to the 11th century. It is named after Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, where it was found in the 19th century.
Sava's book is a 129-folio Cyrillic Old Church Slavonic canon evangeliary, written in the 11th century.
As the 9th-century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius undertook their mission to evangelize to the Slavs of Great Moravia, two writing systems were developed: Glagolitic and Cyrillic. Both scripts were based on the Greek alphabet and share commonalities, but the exact nature of relationship between the Glagolitic alphabet and the Early Cyrillic alphabet, their order of development, and influence on each other has been a matter of great study, controversy, and dispute in Slavic studies.
Reims Gospel is an illuminated manuscript of Slavonic (Slavic) origin which became part of the Reims Cathedral treasury. Henry III of France and several of his successors including Louis XIV took their oath on it. In the time of Charles IV, who gave it to the just-founded Emmaus monastery in Prague, the text was believed to have been written by the hand of St. Procopius.
British Library, Add MS 17212 is a double palimpsest, with three successive writings: a Syriac translation of St. Chrysostom's Homilies of the 9th/10th century covers a Latin grammatical treatise from the 6th century, written in cursive, which in turn covers the Annales of Roman historian Granius Licinianus. It is a rare example of a double palimpsest. The manuscript has survived in incomplete condition.
