The Old Church Slavonic Institute (Croatian : Staroslavenski institut) is Croatian public institute founded in 1952 by the state for the purpose of scientific research on the language, literature and paleography of the mediaeval literary heritage of the Croatian vernacular and the Croatian recension of Church Slavonic.
The institute presents the continuation of the Old Church Slavonic Academy that was founded in Krk in 1902 and incorporated into the Croatian Theological Academy in Zagreb as its Old Church Slavonic department in 1928. In 1948 Msgr. Svetozar Ritig succeeded to revive the Old Church Slavonic Academy in Zagreb, the result of which was the renaming of the Academy into Institute.
For the purpose of its research, the Old Church Slavonic Institute has created a specialized library containing prints and microfilms of all relevant Glagolitic manuscripts the originals of which are kept in various institutions in Croatia and around the world. Its work is primarily channeled into the following publications:
The Institute has published numerous facsimiles and transliterations of the Glagolitic codices, fragments and reprinted Glagolitic books. Its active research projects include creating the grammar and the dictionary of Croatian Church Slavonic in the period of 12 - 16th century.
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 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 Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire, and later mainly for cryptographic purposes.
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.
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.
Stjepan Ivšić was a Croatian linguist, Slavicist, and accentologist.
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.
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.
Missale Romanum Glagolitice is a Croatian missal and incunabulum printed in 1483. It is written in Glagolitic script and is the first printed Croatian book. It is the first missal in Europe not published in Latin script. Its editio princeps, unique in the achieved typographic artistry, was published only 28 years after the Gutenberg bible's 42-lines, bears witness of high cultural attainment and maturity of Croatian Glagolites and Croatian mediaeval literature.
Josip Hamm was a Croatian Slavist best known for his research on Old Church Slavonic language and literature.
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.
Stjepan Damjanović is a Croatian linguist, philologist and paleoslavist. He worked as a regular professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb. He is a former President of Matica hrvatska.
Eduard Hercigonja was a Croatian philologist, Croatist and literary historian. University professor and a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he authored several fundamental works on medieval Croatian literature and culture.
Rafael Levaković O.F.M. was a Franciscan prelate who served as Archbishop of Achrida (1647–1650); and Glagolitic writer who set foundations for Slavic liturgy based on the missionary concept of the Roman Catholic Church. Levaković actively worked on religious conversion of the Orthodox Serbs in Croatia.
Svetozar Rittig was a Croatian Catholic priest, historian and politician.
Mihanović’s fragment of the Acts of the Apostles is one of the oldest preserved Glagolitic manuscripts written in Old Church Slavonic.
Gršković's fragment of the Acts of the Apostles represents one of the oldest preserved monuments written in Glagolitic script in Old Slavic language, in which features of the Serbian vernacular appear under the influence of which later developed Serbian recension of Church Slavonic. It is considered, based on some features of the language and the Glagolitic alphabet itself, that it was created at the end of 11th century or at the beginning of the 12th century on the territory of Bosnia or Zeta or Zahumlje.
Dimitri's Psalter is an 11th-century Glagolitic manuscript containing verses from the Psalms.
