Glagolitic alphabet

Glagolitic
A page from the Zograf Kodex with text of the Gospel of Luke
Type	Alphabet
Spoken languages	Old Church Slavic
Creator	Saints Cyril and Methodius
Time period	862/863 to the Middle Ages
ISO 15924	Glag
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.

The Glagolitic alphabet (pronounced /ɡlæɡəˈlɪtɪk/), also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" (also the origin of the Slavic name for the letter G). The verb glagoliti means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the name glagolitsa developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word glagolity, applied to adherents of the liturgy in Slavonic.^[1]

The name Glagolitic is rendered in Belarusian as глаголіца ('hlaholitsa'), Bulgarian as 'Глаголица' (Glagolitza), in Macedonian as Глаголица ('glagolica'), Croatian glagoljica and Serbian glagoljica/глагољица, Czech hlaholice, Polish głagolica, Russian глаголица ('glagólitsa'), Slovene glagolica, Slovak hlaholika, Ukrainian глаголиця ('hlaholytsia').

Origins of the Glagolitic characters

Although popularly attributed to Saints Cyril and Methodius and the introduction of Christianity,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} the origin of the Glagolitic alphabet is obscure. The medieval text Pannonian Life of Constantine records that the Slavs were already literate at the time of Cyril's mission: "during a mission to the Crimea in 860 he [St Cyril] was shown a Gospel and Psalter written in rousskymi pismeny ["Rus letters"] [...] Constantine [St Cyril] is reported not to have seen these before, but to have learnt to read them surprisingly quickly."^[7] Cubberley (1996) suggests that this pre-existing script may have developed from cursive Greek in the Balkan region of Macedonia centuries earlier, only to be formalized and expanded with new letters for non-Greek sounds by Saint Cyril.^[8] However, the nature of the "Rus letters" is debated, and a number of Slavicists retain the view that "Since glagolitic is the work of one man, or one man and his immediate associates, it is pointless to try to trace the gradual development of various letters from other symbols in other alphabets."^[9]

The number of letters in the original Glagolitic alphabet is not known, but may have been close to its presumed Greek model. The 41 letters we know today include letters for non-Greek sounds which may have been added by Saint Cyril, as well as ligatures added in the 12th century under the influence of Cyrillic, as Glagolitic lost its dominance.^[8] In later centuries the number of letters drops dramatically, to less than 30 in modern Croatian and Czech recensions of the Church Slavic language. Twenty-four of the 41 original Glagolitic letters (see table below) probably derive from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, but have been given an ornamental design.

The source of the other consonantal letters is unknown. If they were added by Cyril, it is likely that they were taken from an alphabet used for Christian scripture. It is frequently proposed that the letters sha Ⱎ, tsi Ⱌ, and cherv Ⱍ were taken from the letters shin ש and tsadi צ of the Hebrew alphabet, and that Ⰶ zhivete derives from Coptic janja Ϫ. However, Cubberley (1996) suggests that if a single prototype were presumed, that the most likely source would be Armenian. Other proposals include the Samaritan alphabet, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson.

Glagolitic letters were also used as numbers, similarly to Cyrillic numerals. Unlike Cyrillic numerals, which inherited their numeric value from the corresponding Greek letter (see Greek numerals), Glagolitic letters were assigned values based on their native alphabetic order.

History

The Baška tablet.

The two monks later canonized as Saints Cyril and Methodius, the brothers Constantin and Methodi of Thessaloniki (Solun), were sent to Great Moravia in 862 by the Byzantine emperor at the request of Knyaz (Duke) Rastislav, who wanted to weaken the dependence of his country on East Frankish priests. The glagolitic alphabet, however it originated, was used between 863 and 885 for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) founded by the missionaries, where their followers were educated.

In 886, an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius, mostly students of the original academy. They were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves by the Franks. Many of them (including Naum, Clement, Angelarious, Sava and Gorazd), however, 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 and Divine Liturgy were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire, using the Byzantine rite. 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 Slavic Bulgaria from Greek Constantinople. As a result of Boris's measures, two academies, one in Ohrid and one in Preslav, were founded.

A page from the 10th-11th century Codex Zographensis found in the Zograf Monastery in 1843.

From there, the students traveled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to Croatia (into Dalmatia), where the squared variant arose and where the Glagolitic remained in use for a long time. In 1248, Pope Innocent IV gave the Croats of southern Dalmatia the unique privilege of using their own language and this script in the Roman Rite liturgy. Formally given to bishop Philip of Senj, the permission to use the Glagolitic liturgy (the Roman Rite conducted in Slavic language instead of Latin, not the Byzantine rite), actually extended to all Croatian lands, mostly along the Adriatic coast. The Holy See had several Glagolitic missals published in Rome. Authorisation for use of this language was extended to some other Slavic regions between 1886 and 1935.^[10] In missals, the Glagolitic script was eventually replaced with the Latin alphabet, but the use of the Slavic language in the Mass continued, until replaced by the modern vernacular languages.

Some of the students 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 Kievan Rus.

In Croatia, from the 12th century onwards, Glagolitic inscriptions appeared mostly in littoral areas: Istra, Primorje, Kvarner and Kvarner islands, notably Krk, Cres and Lošinj; in Dalmatia, on the islands of Zadar, but there were also findings in inner Lika and Krbava, reaching to Kupa river, and even as far as Međimurje and Slovenia. The Hrvoje's Missal (Croatian Hrvojev misal) was written in Split, and it is considered as one of the most beautiful Croatian Glagolitic books.

Until 1992, it was believed that Glagolitsa in Croatia was present only in those areas, and then, in 1992, the discovery of Glagolitic inscriptions in churches along the Orljava river in Slavonia, totally changed the picture (churches in Brodski Drenovac, Lovčić and some others), showing that use of Glagolitic alphabet was spread from Slavonia also.^[11]

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 Glagolitic.

Nowadays, Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavic (Croatian and Czech recensions).

Versions of authorship and name

In a book printed in 1591, Angelo Rocca attributed the Glagolitic letters to Saint Jerome (Sanctus Hieronymus).

The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted. A less common belief, contradicting allochtonic Slovene origin, was that the Glagolitic was created or used in the 4th century by St. Jerome, hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian.

It is also acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters in Bulgaria, on the same model as 'alpha' + 'beta'. (Actually, the word means simply "alphabet", see its a bit later form azbuka for the Cyrillic alphabet). The Slavs of Great Moravia (present-day Slovakia and Moravia), Hungary, Slovenia and Slavonia were called Slověne at that time, which gives rise to the name Slovenish for the alphabet. Some other, more rare, names for this alphabet are Bukvitsa (from common Slavic word 'bukva' meaning 'letter', and a suffix '-itsa') and Illyrian.

Hieronymian version

In the Middle Ages, Glagolitsa was also known as "St. Jerome's script" due to popular mediaeval legend (created by Croatian scribes in 13th century) ascribing its invention to St Jerome (342-429). That claim, however, has been resolutely disproved.

Till end of the 18th century, a strange but widespread opinion dominated that the glagolitic writing system, which was in use in Dalmatia and Istria along with neighboring islands, including the translation of the Holy Scripture, owe their existing to the famous church father St. Jerome. Knowing him as the author of the Latin Vulgate, considering him - by his own words, born on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia (remembering that Dalmatian borders extended well into Istria at that time) - presumed to be an Illyrian, the self-styled Slavic intellectuals in Dalmatia very early began to ascribe to him the invention of glagolitsa, possibly with the intention of more successfully defending both Slavic writing and the Slavic holy service against prosecutions and prohibitions from Rome's hierarchy, thus using the opinion of the famous Latin Father of the Church to protect their church rituals which were inherited from the Greeks Cyril and Methodius. We don't know who was the first to put in motion this unscientifically based tradition about St. Jerome's authorship of the glagolitic script and translation of the Holy Scripture, but in 1248 this version came to the knowledge of Pope Innocent IV. <…> The belief in St. Jerome as an inventor of the glagolitic lasted many centuries, not only at his homeland, i.e. in Dalmatia and Croatia, not only in Rome, due to Slavs living there… but also in the West. In the 14th century, Croatian monks brought the legend to the Czechs, and even the Emperor Charles IV believed them^[12]

The epoch of traditional attribution of the script to Jerome ended probably in 1812.^[13] In modern times, only certain marginal authors share this point of view, usually "re-discovering" one of already known mediaeval sources.^[14]

Pre-Glagolitic Slavic writing systems

A hypothetical pre-Glagolitic writing system is typically referred to as cherty i rezy (strokes and incisions)^[15] - but no material evidence of the existence of any pre-Glagolitic Slavic writing system has been found, except for a few brief and vague references in old chronicles and "lives of the saints". All artifacts presented as evidence of pre-glagolitic Slavic inscriptions have later been identified as texts in known scripts and in known non-Slavic languages, or as fakes.^[16] The well-known Chernorizets Hrabar's strokes and incisions are usually considered to be a reference to a kind of property mark or alternatively fortune-telling signs. Some 'Russian letters' found in one version of St. Cyril's life are explainable as misspelled 'Syrian letters' (in Slavic, the roots are very similar: rus- vs. sur- or syr-), etc.

Characteristics

The values of many of the letters are thought to have been displaced under Cyrillic influence, or to have become confused through the early spread to different dialects, so that the original values are not always clear. For instance, the letter yu Ⱓ is thought to have perhaps originally had the sound /u/, but was displaced by the adoption of an ow ligature Ⱆ under the influence of later Cyrillic. Other letters were late creations after a Cyrillic model.

The following table lists each letter in its modern order, showing an image of the letter (round variant), the corresponding modern Cyrillic letter, the approximate sound transcribed with the IPA, the name, and suggestions for its origin. Several letters have no modern counterpart.

Letter		Cyrillic	Sound	OCS name	CS name	Meaning	Origin
Ⰰ		А	/ɑ/	Azъ	Az	I	Hebrew aleph א or the sign of the cross[17]
Ⰱ		Б	/b/	Buky	Buky	letters	Unknown[17]
Ⰲ		В	/ʋ/	Vědě	Vedi	to know	Possibly Latin V[17]
Ⰳ		Г	/ɡ/	Glagoli	Glagoli	to do/to speak	Possibly cursive Greek gamma γ[17]
Ⰴ		Д	/d/	Dobro	Dobro	kindness/good	Greek delta Δ[17]
Ⰵ		Є, Е, Э	/ɛ/	Estъ, jestъ, yestъ	Jest	is/exists	Possibly Samaritan he ϡ or Greek sampi ϡ[17]
Ⰶ		Ж	/ʒ/	Živěte	Zhivete	life/live	Unknown,[17] possibly Coptic janja ϫ
Ⰷ		Ѕ	/dz/	Dzělo	Dzelo	very	Unknown[17]
Ⰸ		З	/z/	Zemlja	Zemlja	Earth/ground/soil	Possible a variant of Greek theta θ[17]
Ⰹ, Ⰺ	,	И, Й	/i, j/	Iže	Izhe	which is/the	Possibly Greek iota with dieresis ϊ[17]
Ⰻ		І, Ї	/i, j/	I	I	and (&)	Unknown,[17] Christian symbols circle and triangle
Ⰼ		Ћ, Ђ	/dʑ/	Djervь, ǵervь		tree/wood	Unknown[17]
Ⰽ		К	/k/	Kako	Kako	how	Hebrew qoph ק[17]
Ⰾ		Л	/l, ʎ/	Ljudie	Ljudi	people	Possibly Greek lambda λ[17]
Ⰿ		М	/m/	Myslite	Mislete	thought/think	Greek mu μ[17]
Ⱀ		Н	/n, ɲ/	Našь	Nash	ours	Unknown[17]
Ⱁ		О	/ɔ/	Onъ	On	he	Unknown[17]
Ⱂ		П	/p/	Pokoi	Pokoj	calmness/peace	Possibly a variant of early Greek pi Π[17]
Ⱃ		Р	/r/	Rьci, rьtsi	Rtsi	Speak!/Pronounce!	Possibly Greek rho ρ[17]
Ⱄ		С	/s/	Slovo	Slovo	word/speech	Unknown,[17] Christian symbols circle and triangle
Ⱅ		Т	/t/	Tvrьdo	Tverdo	solid/hard/surely	Perhaps from crossbar of Greek tau τ[17]
Ⱆ		У	/u/	Ukъ	Uk	Knowledgeable/Enlightened	Ligature of onъ and izhitsa[17]
Ⱇ		Ф	/f/	Frьtъ	Fert		Variant of Greek phi φ[17]
Ⱈ		Х	/x/	Xěrъ, Khěrъ	Kher		Unknown, similar to glagoli and Latin h[17]
Ⱉ		Ѡ	/ɔ/	Otъ	Oht, Omega		Ligature of onъ and its mirror image[17]
Ⱋ		Щ	/tʲ, ʃt/	Šta	Shta	what	Ligature of sha over tvrьdo[17]
Ⱌ		Ц	/ts/	Ci, tsi	Tsi		Final form of Hebrew tsade ץ[17]
Ⱍ		Ч	/tʃ/	Črьvъ	Cherv	worm	Unknown, similar to shta[17] perhaps non-final form of Hebrew tsade צ
Ⱎ		Ш	/ʃ/	Ša	Sha		Hebrew shin ש[17]
Ⱏ		Ъ	/ɯ/	Erъ, jerъ, yerъ	Yer		Possibly modification of onъ[17]
ⰟⰉ		Ы	/ɨ/	Ery, jery, yery	Yery		Ligature, see the note under the table
Ⱐ		Ь	/ə/	Erь, jerь, yerь	Yerj		Possibly modification of onъ[17]
Ⱑ		Ѣ	/æ, jɑ/	Jatь, Yatь	Yat		Possibly epigraphic Greek alpha Α[17]
Ⱖ		Ё	*/jo/	Unknown:[17] Hypothetical component of jonsь below; /jo/ was not possible at the time
Ⱓ		Ю	/ju/	Ju, yu	Yu		Unknown[17]
Ⱔ		Ѧ, Я	/ɛ̃/	[Ensь]	Ya, Small yus		Greek epsilon ε, also used to denote nasality[17]
Ⱗ		Ѩ	/jɛ̃/	[Jensь, Yensь]	[Small iotated yus]		Ligature of jestъ and ensь for nasality[17]
Ⱘ		Ѫ	/ɔ̃/	[Onsь]	[Big yus]		Ligature of onъ and ensь for nasality[17]
Ⱙ		Ѭ	/jɔ̃/	[Jonsь, Yonsь]	[Big iotated yus]		Ligature of unknown letter and ensь for nasality[17]
Ⱚ		Ѳ	/θ/	[Thita]	Fita		Greek theta θ[17]
Ⱛ		Ѵ	/ʏ, i/	Ižica, Izhitsa	Izhitsa		Unknown[17]

Note that yery is a digraph of either yerъ or yerь and izhe or i.^[17]

In older texts, ukъ and three out of four yuses also can be written as digraphs, in two separate parts.

The order of izhe and i varies from source to source, as does the order of the various forms of Yus. Correspondence between Glagolitic izhe and i with Cyrillic И and I is unknown – textbooks and dictionaries often mention one of two possible versions and keep silence about the existence of the opposite one.

Known examples

• Kiev Missal - 10th century

Unicode

The Glagolitic alphabet was added to Unicode in version 4.1. The codepoint range is U+2C00 – U+2C5E. See Mapping of Unicode Characters for context.

See also

• Relationship of Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets
• Glagolitic Mass
• Glagolitic Alphabet Day

References

Literature

• Branko Franolić, Mateo Zagar: A Historical Outline of Literary Croatian & The Glagolitic Heritage of Croatian Culture, Erasmus & CSYPN, London & Zagreb 2008 ISBN 978-953-6132-80-5
• Bauer, Antun: Armeno-kavkasko podrijetlo starohrvatske umjetnosti, glagoljice i glagoljaštva. Tko su i odakle Hrvati, p. 65-69, Znanstveno društvo za proučavanje etnogeneze, Zagreb 1992.
• Franolić, Branko: Croatian Glagolitic Printed Texts Recorded in the British Library General Catalogue. Zagreb - London - New York, Croatian Information Center, 1994. 49 p.
• Fučić, Branko: Glagoljski natpisi. (In: Djela Jugoslavenske Akademije Znanosti i Umjetnosti, knjiga 57.) Zagreb, 1982. 420 p.
• Fullerton, Sharon Golke: Paleographic Methods Used in Dating Cyrillic and Glagolitic Slavic Manuscripts. (In: Slavic Papers No. 1.) Ohio, 1975. 93 p.
• Гошев, Иван: Рилски глаголически листове. София, 1956. 130 p.
• Jachnow, Helmut: Eine neue Hypothese zur Provenienz der glagolitischen Schrift - Überlegungen zum 1100. Todesjahr des Methodios von Saloniki. In: R. Rathmayr (Hrsg.): Slavistische Linguistik 1985, München 1986, 69-93.
• Jagić, Vatroslav: Glagolitica. Würdigung neuentdeckter Fragmente, Wien, 1890.
• Ягичъ, И. В.: Глаголическое письмо. In: Энциклопедiя славянской филологiи, вып. 3, Спб., 1911.
• Japundžić, Marko: Postanak glagoljskog pisma. Tromjesečnik Hrvatska, srpanj 1994, p. 62-73.
• Japundžić, Marko: Tragom hrvatskog glagolizma. Zagreb 1995, 173 p.
• Japundžić, Marko: Hrvatska glagoljica. Hrvatska uzdanica, Zagreb 1998, 100 p.
• Japundžić, Marko: Gdje, kada i kako je nastala glagoljica i ćirilica. Staroiransko podrijetlo Hrvata p. 429-444, Naklada Z. Tomičić, Zagreb 1999.
• Kiparsky, Valentin: Tschernochvostoffs Theorie über den Ursprung des glagolitischen Alphabets In: M. Hellmann u.a. (Hrsg.): Cyrillo-Methodiana. Zur Frühgeschichte des Christentums bei den Slaven, Köln 1964, 393-400.
• Miklas, Heinz (Hrsg.): Glagolitica: zum Ursprung der slavischen Schriftkultur, Wien, 2000.
• Steller, Lea-Katharina: A glagolita írás In: B.Virághalmy, Lea: Paleográfiai kalandozások. Szentendre, 1995. ISBN 9634509223
• Vais, Joseph: Abecedarivm Palaeoslovenicvm in usum glagolitarum. Veglae [Krk], 1917. XXXVI, 74 p.
• Vajs, Josef: Rukovet hlaholske paleografie. Uvedení do knizního písma hlaholskeho. V Praze, 1932. 178 p, LIV. tab.
• Žubrinić, Darko: Biti pismen - biti svoj. Crtice iz povijesti glagoljice. Hrvatsko književno društvo Sv. Jeronima, Zagreb 1994, 297 p.

External links

• Croatian Glagolitic Script
• Croatian Glagolitic Script
• Glagolitic alphabet. Alternative encoding. - Proposals.
• The Glagolitic alphabet at omniglot.com
• The Budapest Glagolitic Fragments - links to a Unicode Glagolitic font, Dilyana
• Glagolitic Fonts
• Usage of numbers
• Ancient Scripts: Glagolitic