The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic 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 there. After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, their disciples were expelled and they moved to the First Bulgarian Empire instead. The Early Cyrillic alphabet, which developed gradually in the Preslav Literary School by Greek alphabet scribes who incorporated some Glagolitic letters, gradually replaced Glagolitic in that region. Glagolitic remained in use alongside Latin in the Kingdom of Croatia and alongside Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire, and later mainly for cryptographic purposes.
Cyril and Methodius 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 and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic subgroup of the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family and remains the liturgical language of many Christian Orthodox churches. Until the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow between 1652 and 1666, Church Slavonic was the mandatory language of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Church Slavonic is the conservative Slavic liturgical language used by the Eastern Orthodox Church in Belarus, 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.
Gršković's fragment of the Acts of the Apostles represents one of the oldest preserved monuments written in Glagolitic script in Old Slavic language, a passage from the Acts of the Apostles. Features of the Serbian vernacular appear in it, and the Serbian recension of Old Church Slavonic later developed under the influence of this.
