The Psalterium Sinaiticum (scholarly abbreviations: Psa or Ps. sin.) 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 major part of the psalter (177 folios) was discovered in 1850 by the Russian archimandrite Porphyrius Uspensky (Sin. slav. 38/O), and additional 32 folios with the exact continuation (Ps. 138-150 and the 14 canticles) turned up in 1968 (Sin. slav. 2/N).
It was published by L. Geitler (Psalterium. Glagolski spomenik manastria Siani brda; Zagreb 1883), S.N. Severjanov (Sinajskaja psaltyr'. Glagoličeskij pamjatnik XI veka. Prigotovil k pečati Sergej Sever'janov; Saint Petersburg 1922, transcribed to Cyrillic; reprinted in Graz in 1954) and by Moshe Altbauer in 1971, in a facsimile reproduction (Sinajski psaltir, glagolski rakopis od XI. vek od manastirot Sv. Katerina na Sinaj, MANU, Skopje 1971). The manuscript is also extensively discussed with facsimile reproductions in Ioannis C. Tarnanidis: The Slavonic Manuscripts Discovered in 1975 at. St. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai (Thessaloniki 1988).
Paleographic and linguistic analysis shows that the writing of some letters is very inconsistent. Therefore, it is assumed that several scribes worked on the manuscript. Especially inconsistent is the writing of yers and nasal vowels, and very obvious is the tendency of the vocalization of jers and the omission of epenthetic l.
The Glagolitic script is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been 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. As the words of that language could not be easily written by using either the Greek or Latin alphabets, Cyril decided to invent a new script, Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of the Slavic tribes from the Byzantine theme of Thessalonica.
Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic was the first Slavic literary language.
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons. They were commonly used for learning to read. Many Psalters were richly illuminated, and they include some of the most spectacular surviving examples of medieval book art.
The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is a writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. The modern Cyrillic script 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.
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.
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.
Irmologion is a liturgical book of the Eastern Orthodox Church and those Eastern Catholic Churches which follow the Byzantine Rite. It contains irmoi organised in sequences of odes and such a sequence was called canon. These canons of nine, eight, four or three odes are supposed to be chanted during the morning service (Orthros). The book Irmologion derives from heirmos which means 'link'. The irmos is a melodic model which preceded the composition of the odes. According to the etymology, the book 'collects' the irmoi.
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 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.
The Glagolita Clozianus is a 14-folio Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic canon miscellany, written in the eleventh 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.
Law code of Vinodol or Vinodol statute is one of the oldest law texts written in the Chakavian dialect of Croatian and is among the oldest Slavic codes. It was written in the Glagolitic alphabet. It was originally compiled in 1288 by a commission of 42 members in Novi Vinodolski, a town on the Adriatic Sea coast in Croatia, located south of Crikvenica, Selce and Bribir and north of Senj. However, the code itself is preserved in a 16th-century copy.
Reims Gospel is an illuminated manuscript of Slavonic (Slavic) origin which became part of the Reims Cathedral treasury. According to a refuted legend, 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.
The Munich Serbian Psalter is a 14th-century illuminated psalter written in Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension. With its 229 leaves illustrated with 148 miniatures, it is regarded as the most extensively illuminated Serbian manuscript book. It was written after 1370 in Moravian Serbia, either for its ruler Prince Lazar, or more likely, for his successor Stefan Lazarević. The book was rebound in 1630 by Serbian Patriarch Pajsije. It was taken to Bavaria in the late 17th century, and has been kept in the Bavarian State Library in Munich since the beginning of the 19th century.
Dimitri's Psalter is an 11th-century Glagolitic manuscript containing verses from the Psalms.