Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 13 



mian, as it was erroneously termed, which was in fact but a mere refaccia- 

 mento of the Cyrillian. " 



" But though the Slavonian language was so late reduced to writing, 

 there is no reason for ascribing to it a lower degree of antiquity, than to 

 any other of the mother tongues, as they are called, of the European 

 nations. From external sources, no light has been thrown on its origin, 

 which, like that of other modes of human speech, extends beyond the verge 

 of history. Procopius, who first mentions the Slavi under the name of 

 l!,K\ajii]voi could give no further account of their language, than that it 

 was very barbarous — are^vMQ ftapftapog, — By this we are not to under- 

 stand, as Dobrowsky remarks, that the Slavonic speech was not as regularly 

 formed, as expressive and as harmonious as the Greek, but that it was 

 unintelligible to the writer and his countrymen. The Slavonian language 

 has three terms equivalent to the Greek /3ap/3apoc : these are Czud, Wlach, 

 Niem. Czud or Tschud are foreign people, but particularly those supposed 

 to be of Finnish extraction j Wlach, which is the Slavonian way of writing 

 the word Welsch, means, as does that term among the Germans, Gauls, 

 and Italians ; Niem applies especially to the Teutonic nations. Those 

 who speak dialects intelligible to the Slavi, people of the same word or 

 Slowo, are termed by them Slovane. Under this general appellation, 

 since the middle of the sixth century, are included all the Slavonic tribes, 

 the Serbes, the Chrovates, the Leches, and the Tscheches or Bohemians." 



The Russian Nestor, continues Dobrowsky, the Bohemian Dalimil, 

 Pulkava, and others, are determined to reckon the Slavonian idiom among 

 the seventy-two principal tongues which some suppose to have originated 

 at the confusion of languages. Pope John VIII., however, when he 

 understood that the Pannonian and Moravian Archbishop Methodius read 

 the mass in a barbarous, that is, a Slavonian language, at first, in the year 

 879, forbade this practice, but afterwards approved of the invention of the 

 Slavonian alphabet, and appointed the service to be read in the Slavonic 

 speech. " No harm," says this pontiff, in his brief to Duke Svvatopulk, 

 " can arise to religion, either* from the practice of singing masses and read- 

 ing the sacred gospels of the New and Old Testament, well translated and 

 interpreted in the Slavonic language, or by porforuiing the other hourly 

 offices in it J since he who made the eight j)rincipal languages, namely, the 

 Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, created also all the others to his own 

 honour and glory." Dobrowsky, though a Jesuit, animadverts on the un- 

 philosophical expression " to create languages." It is curious to observe 

 this quaint apology which the holy pontiff adopted, for sanctioning, when 



• " Nee sanb fidei vel doctrinae aliquid obstat, sivD missas in eildem Slavonic^ 

 Jirigu/1 canerc, sive Sacrum Evangcliura vel lectioncs divinas Novi ct Vetcris Tes- 

 tament! bene translatas et interprctatas legcre aut alia hoiarum officia omnia 

 pHallerc, quoniam qui fecit tres linguas pniici|)alcs, Ilcbra'am scilicet, Griccam, et 

 Latinara, ipse creavit et alias omncs ad laudcm et gloriain suam." 



