 | Glagolitic alphabet: Encyclopedia II - Glagolitic alphabet - History
Glagolitic alphabet - History
Middle Bronze Age 19-15th c. BC
- Proto-Canaanite 14th c. BC
- Ugaritic 13th c. BC
- Phoenician 11th c. BC
- Samaritan 6th c. BC
- Aramaic 9th c. BC
- Brāhmī 6th c. BC
- Hebrew 3rd c. BC
- Syriac 2nd c. BC
- Avestan 3th c.
- Arabic 4th c.
- Greek 8th c. BC
- Old Italic 8th c. BC
- Latin 7th c. BC
- Runes 2nd c.
- Gothic 4th c.
- Armenian 405
- Glagolitic 862
- Cyrillic 10th c.
- Iberian
- South Arabian 9th c. BC
Rastislav, the Knyaz (Prince) of Great Moravia, wanted to weaken the dependence of his Slavic empire on East Frankish priests, so in 862 he had the Byzantine emperor send two missionaries, Saints Cyril and Methodius, to Great Moravia. Cyril created a new alphabet for that purpose - the Glagolitic. The alphabet was then used in Great Moravia between 863 (when Cyril and Methodius arrived there) and 885 for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) founded by Cyril, where followers of Cyril and Methodius were educated (also by Methodius himself).
In 886, an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius (mostly of the students of the original academy). They were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves. Three of them, 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 were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire. 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 Bulgaria. As a result of Boris's measures, two academies in Ohrid and Preslav were founded.
From there, the students traveled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to Croatia and 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 the unique privilege of using their own language and this script in liturgy. Formally given to bishop Philip of Senj, the permission actually extended to all Croatian lands using the Glagolitic liturgy, mostly along the Adriatic coast. The Vatican had several Glagolitic missals published in Rome. It was eventually replaced with the Latin alphabet.
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 Russia, although rarely.
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 Glagolithic.
Nowadays, Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavonic and, sometimes, vernacular in the service-books of the Catholic Eparchy of Križevci in Croatia.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
