GLAGOLITIC 



AN ancient alphabet of the Slavic languages, also called 

 in Russian bukvitsa. The ancient Slavonic when re- 

 duced to writing seems to have been originally written 

 with a kind of runic letters, which, when formed into a regular 

 alphabet, were called the Glagolitic, that is the signs which 

 spoke. St. Cyril, who, together with his brother St. Method- 

 ius, translated the Greek liturgy into Slavonic when he con- 

 verted the Bulgarians and Moravians, invented the form of 

 letters derived from the Greek alphabet with which the church 

 Slavonic is usually written. This is known as the Cyrillic al- 

 phabet or Kirillitsa. The Cyrillic form of letters is used in all 

 the liturgical books of the Greek Churches, whether Catholic 

 or schismatic, which use the Slavonic language in their liturgy, 

 and even the present Russian alphabet, the Grazhdanska, is 

 merely a modified form of the Cyrillic with a few letters omit- 

 ted. The order of the letters of the alphabet in the Glagolitic 

 and in the Cyrillic is nearly the same, but the letters bear no 

 resemblance to each other, except possibly in one or two in- 

 stances. Jagic upholds the theory that St. Cyril himself in- 

 vented the Glagolitic, and that his disciple St. Clement trans- 

 formed it into Cyrillic by imitating the Greek uncial letters 

 of his day. There is a tradition, however, that St. Jerome, 

 who was a Dalmatian, was the inventor. Some of the earliest 

 Slavic manuscripts are written in the Glagolitic characters. 

 The Cyrillic alphabet continued to be used for writing the 

 Slavonic in Bulgaria, Russia and Galicia, while the Southern 

 and Western Slavs used the Glagolitic. These Slavs were con- 

 verted to Christianity and to the Roman Rite by Latin mis- 

 sionaries, and gradually the Roman alphabet drove out the use 

 of the Glagolitic, so that the Bohemians, Slovenians, Moravi- 

 ans, and part of the Croatians used Roman letters in writing 

 their languages. In Southern Croatia and in Dalmatia (often 

 treated as synonymous with Illyria in ancient times) the Gla- 



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