Abstract
The article calls attention to a neglected source for the over-all “look and feel” of the Glagolitic alphabet as it was first created by Constantine the Philosopher circa 863 ad. This source is the variant forms of the Greek and other alphabets (including Hebrew and Arabic) that consist of so-called Brillenbuchstabe (otherwise charactères à lunettes or ring-letters). These variant alphabets were employed chiefly for esoteric purposes, including astrological and magical ones. Because of their limited use, they have largely been overlooked in standard handbooks of Greek and Oriental paleography. An interest in such subjects as astrology and magic comports poorly with routine assumptions about the inner lives of Medieval Saints such as Constantine. Relying on the extant primary sources for Constantine’s life, however, the article shows that his education, interests and mystical inclinations make a familiarity with some of these esoteric alphabets virtually certain. Thus it is historically plausible that such alphabets were among the inspirations for the general style, that is, the “look and feel”, of the letters of Constantine’s original glagolitic alphabet. (This article supplements the author’s earlier study from 2014, “A New Reconstruction of the Original Glagolitic Alphabet”.)
Highlights
“Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Suriel, Asuel, Raguel, Saraphyel”. It was this illustration, reproduced online in a blog about Coptic magic in April 2019, that first called my attention to ring-letters and made me wonder whether Constantine might have been inspired by them as he created the characters of his Glagolitic alphabet [www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg. de/index.php/2019/04/26/jesus-and-the-unicorn-easter-and-the-harrowing-ofhell-in-coptic-magic/]
Granstrem did point to two passages in our best source for the life and works of Constantine (Vita Constantini, IV.1–2 and XIII.2–10) which suggest that Constantine might well have known about such alphabets and their use in esoteric contexts [Granstrem 1955, 304–305]
11 The sources that we cited above for names of these alphabets such as “writing of the angels” (Scriptura Malachim) and “celestial writing” (Scriptura Coelestis) come from the 15th and 16th centuries, but the idea behind such names for ring-letter alphabets — like the ring-letter alphabets themselves — is very much older, going back as far as Constantine’s time and even earlier. This is the idea that the small circles in ring-characters represent stars, and the lines that join these circles trace out letters and words that can be read in the starry sky, inscribing — for those with eyes to see — a Wisdom that is beyond any purely human language, and Names of far more power than any human. This evidence convinces me that Constantine the Philosopher was quite well acquainted with Byzantine esoteric philosophy, and would have known about esoteric alphabets of ring-letters
Summary
It was this illustration, reproduced online in a blog about Coptic magic in April 2019, that first called my attention to ring-letters and made me wonder whether Constantine might have been inspired by them as he created the characters of his Glagolitic alphabet [www.coptic-magic.phil.uni-wuerzburg. Granstrem did point to two passages in our best source for the life and works of Constantine (Vita Constantini, IV.1–2 and XIII.2–10) which suggest that Constantine might well have known about such alphabets and their use in esoteric contexts [Granstrem 1955, 304–305].
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