Slavic Alphabet Research Articles

On the issue of the formation of the cyrillic alphabet: Some observations

While making an indisputably relevant contribution to scholarship and Slavic culture, the discussions about the primacy of one or the other Slavic alphabet, Glagolitic or Cyrillic, and the presentations of their results or the elaborations on the issue that have ensued over the following decades, were very often burdened with stereotypes, errors and other shortcomings. A particularly peculiar case is the construction of an ideological narrative about inventing the Cyrillic alphabet at the behest of the Bulgarian prince, later Emperor Symeon, and its promotion as the official state and church alphabet at the Council of Preslav (893), which Angel Nikolov demonstrated to be unproven and questionable as a historical event, due to which anything related to it could not be verified. The hypothesis that Constantine the Philosopher (Cyril) followed the common patterns of Byzantine literacy of the time (primarily the practice of the Studite Monastery) to create a Slavic alphabet with two complementary graphical variants, Proto-Glagolitic and Proto-Cyrillic, should be taken seriously into consideration. To meet the need to simplify the complex model, but also to adapt it to the sensitivity of the Western Church, it had to be reduced to the Glagolitic alphabet, although the Cyrillic alphabet was also passively retained. Regardless of the sequence of creating the alphabets and the date when the Cyrillic alphabet was finally created, there are at least two cases where the presence of the Greek alphabet must be assumed. In the analysis and transcription of the Slavic phonological system, Constantine used the Greek alphabet. The created provisional Greek apparatus was the prototype of ?both? Slavic alphabets, and especially of the Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the process of introducing others to the Slavic alphabet and spreading literacy must have been accompanied by deciphering already in the initial stages, where, again, the Greek alphabet was used. Thus, it can be assumed that the creation of the Slavic-Greek and Slavic-Latin abecedaria as interpretative-mnemonic compositions is related to Constantine (863-869).

Reception of the Western European Cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius on the Example of Papal Documents Grande munus, Egregiae virtutis, Slavorum Apostoli: Description and Analysis

The relevance of the given problems is due to the church, state and socio-cultural veneration of the saints Cyril and Methodius as the creators of the Slavic alphabet and translations of the Holy Scriptures and hymnography into the Slavic language, which distinguishes the Slavic world into a separate cultural type, which often interacts with the multicultural paradigm of the modern European paradigm of the civilizational space. A significant place in the article is occupied by the problem of broadcasting the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Catholicism in the coverage of official documents of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, the encyclical as a separate type of papal documents that correspond to the social concept of the Roman Catholic Church. The purpose of the study is to analyze the encyclicals of the popes Leo XIII and John Paul II in different languages, discovering the general and the particular in their structure, which will serve as an incentive for further interpretation of the cult of the Holy brothers in the Roman Catholic world in the context of the formation of ecumenical communication of Christian churches and interfaith dialogue. The objective of the study is to identify the reception of the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Western Christian religious culture. The novelty of this research is an attempt to analyze and interpret the structure and composition of papal encyclicals and the subsequent identification of the reception of the cult of the saints in Western European religious culture due to the absence of such works in Russian science. The methodological basis of the research is, first of all, an interdisciplinary approach, as well as historical, comparative historical, chronological and textological methods. All analyzed documents raise questions of the primacy of the Pope, missionary work, Catholic piety and the establishment of liturgical veneration of Saints Cyril and Methodius. An analysis of the texts shows the significance of these documents in the context of the formation of the Cyril and Methodius tradition in the West and the dialogue between East and West. The results obtained allow us to speak about the significance of the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the context of individual Slavic countries and the entire Christian world as a whole.

До рецепції поглядів П. Й. Шафарика про давність глаголиці на сучасному етапі розвитку палеославістики

До рецепції поглядів П. Й. Шафарика про давність глаголиці на сучасному етапі розвитку палеославістики

Problems of Slavic identity on the pages of the Slovak journal «Konštantínove listy / Constantine’s Letters»

The author provides an overview of articles on the topic of Slavic identity and the development of common Slavic self-consciousness published in the international scientific journal «Konštantínove listy / Constantine’s Letters», published by the Institute for Research of the Cultural Heritage of Constantine and Methodius of the Faculty of Philosophy named after Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra (Slovakia). The main goal of the journal, founded in 2008, is to present the actual results of research on the problems and topics related to the cultural and political history of Great Moravia, as well as the functioning of the Cyril and Methodius tradition in the Slavic world in later times, right up to the present day. Analyzing the results of research published on the pages of the journal, the author comes to the conclusion that most of the authors are looking for and find the initial impulse of common Slavic self-consciousness in Great Moravia. It is the ideological and cultural heritage of the Great Moravian Cyril and Methodius tradition, primarily the Slavic alphabet, literature and Church Slavonic language, that became the basis for the formation of the Slavic world as an ethnic, cultural and historical integrity.

THE ALPHABET "DREVLESLOVENSKAYA BUKVITSA" AS A REPRESENTANT OF FOLK LINGUISTICS

Summary. The purpose of the article is to prove that the alphabet Drevleslovenskaya Bukvitsa" is a modern falsification. The object of the analysis is the alphabet "Drevleslovenskaya Bukvitsa", the subject of the research is the problem of falsifications in modern folk linguistics. The work uses historical and descriptive methods and comparative analysis. The result of the study is to draw attention to the problems of studying and disseminating non-scientific hypotheses in the field of linguistics. The material of the article can be used in the process of teaching students as a way to combat unscientific knowledge.Conclusions. The totality of non-professional linguistic concepts is usually called folk linguistics. The main directions in the field of folk linguistics are: hypotheses about the etymology and origin of words; comparison of related and unrelated languages based on apparent similarity; reading ancient undeciphered texts using modern language; creating "ancient" texts. We refer to the latter direction as "Drevleslovenskaya Bukvitsa", which, although not actually a text, is interpreted as "the authentic ancient alphabet of the Slavs". Professional scientific study of the "Drevleslovenskaya Bukvitsa" was not carried out, as any specialist can easily determine its fake. However, the main problem is that this "alphabet" is actively published and distributed among the population, which wants to know the "truth" about the antiquity of the Russian / Slavic language, which is "carefully hidden" by linguists. We carried out a comparative analysis of the "Drevleslovenskaya Bukvitsa" and the Cyrillic alphabet and came to the conclusion that the "Bloomer" cannot be the most ancient Slavic alphabet, since, first, it does not have any special graphic differences from the Cyrillic alphabet, and second, it uses letters that did not have phonetic correspondences with ancient Slavic phonetics.

ТРАДИЦИИ «ПОЧИТАНИЯ КНИЖНОГО» КАК ЦЕННОСТНЫЙ ОРИЕНТИР СОВРЕМЕННОГО ФИЛОЛОГИЧЕСКОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

A thousand-year tradition of «honouring the bookish» is one of the most important components of the educational system and social enlightenment, which is moved, among other things, by intellectual and spiritual reflection of the educators Cyril and Methodius. However, despite the fact that the national holiday of Slavic Alphabet and Culture has been present for twenty years, in modern conditions of weakening the historical memory and the significance of Christianity, there is a serious lack of information about the lives and activities of Konstantin the Philosopher, Methodius and their followers in the spiritual life of Slavdom and establishment of Russian mentality. That is why the great educational endeavor of the brothers of Thessaloniki, appropriately valued only in modern times, requires support from educational systems. Elaborating the details of historical and cultural preconditions to the appearance of the first Slavic ABC books, Bible translations and their existence in the Slavic world is extremely important to the future teachers of the Russian language and literature, and especially in the conditions of wide spread misinformation and decreasing amount of academic hours for studying the disciplines of historical and linguistic sciences, which, in one way or another, touch upon the problems of the origin of the ancient literary and scriptory language of the Slavic and its establishment under the influence of Russian literary language. Such position presupposes the need of providing a number of scientific and educational events in association with Memorial Day of Slavic Teachers and other dates, dedicated to language and book-learning. These events aid to redeeming the lost educational opportunities in bachelors’ philological training, as they help to build up beneficial cultural, educational and spiritual space, which is based on the traditions of «honouring the bookish», dating back to the Slavic enlighteners. A seventeen-year experience of holding such events helps not only to generalize existing study material, but also to introduce a system of extracurricular communication among educators, students and schoolchildren, contributing to integration of educational and disciplinary processes with scientific research work.

Współczesne wizualizacje dziedzictwa Cyryla i Metodego w przestrzeni słowiańskiej

<p>Artykuł poświęcony jest omówieniu dziedzictwa Cyryla i Metodego w Słowiańszczyźnie. Uwaga autorki koncentruje się na współczesnym odzwierciedleniu obrazów obu braci i ich dziedzictwa w krajach, które kultywują pamięć o nich. Przedstawianie Apostołów Słowiańskich ma swoją tradycję w malarstwie, ikonach i pomnikach. Odniesienia do sztuki ukazane zostały w kontekście historycznym niektórych krajów słowiańskich należących do Kościoła zachodniego i do Kościoła prawosławnego. W opracowaniu wskazuje się na szczególną rolę w rozprzestrzenianiu tradycji cyrylometodejskiej w sztuce Bułgarii. Kraj ten, poprzez kult Braci Sołuńskich w średniowieczu, przyjął ich do swej tradycji pod deskrypcją terytorialną Apostołowie Bułgarscy, a dziś znajduje się w pozycji depozytariusza ich spuścizny. Współcześnie Bułgarzy wyrażają pamięć o Cyrylu i Metodym poprzez wznoszenie pomników alfabetu cyrylickiego, które odsłaniane są także poza światem słowiańskim, co w efekcie służy podkreślaniu znaczenia pisma słowiańskiego.</p>

Pre-institutional education in Serbs

This paper deals with the early literacy and identifies basic specificities of pre-institutional education in ancient Slavs. Moral education plays a central role among components of educational process, namely, moral virtues are handed down from generation to generation, while intellectual education boils down to learning speech, and later to understanding of quantities, through measuring, counting and calculation. The intensity of social factors influencing the upbringing of the Slavs varies. Dominant roles are played by family, religion, as well as culture, customs and tradition. In addition, there are geographical factors, especially those relating to the climate, natural specificities and geographical territory where the Slavs settled. Conversion to Christianity represents one of the most significant civilising events in the history of the Slavic peoples. It is pronouncedly processual in nature. Little is known about the first phase of Christianization of the Slavs; however, cultural heritage of Christianity is significant, especially in terms of the appearance of the first Slavic alphabet. Historical sources do not present sufficient evidence that the Slavs had their own script prior to conversion to Christianity. They probably used the tally and other mnemotechnic or magic signs before they became familiar with scripts of better developed civilizations. The serious task of the creation of the first Slavic alphabet fell upon brothers Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitsa, later Cyrillic. The educational work of Cyril and Methodius had an enormous importance for the future cultural development of the Slavic peoples. Cyril and Methodius' disciples, most notably, Clement and Naum taught reading and writing in their school, in addition to providing elementary knowledge and upbringing. They taught by example, as well as through oral and written word. Thanks to the first educators and the early institutional education and upbringing, Ohrid became the centre of intense missionary work, educating the clergy from Slavic ranks. Subdeacons, deacons and presbyters prepared here were sent not only to the southwestern regions of Macedonia, but further on among the Serbs. Thanks to the disciples Clement and Naum, they spread educational and pedagogical ideas and literary work in the south Slavic countries; the educator St. Sava continued this work in the in the Middle Ages, thus laying the foundation for the coming institutionalization of education of Serbs.

Editions on the History of Alphabets for Students of the Book Publishing Industry

Problems of literacy, correctness of speech, correction of errors in printed editions, which rose a hundred years ago, are relevant today. For the first time there are examined the textbooks published for students and professionals in book printing. The main substantive aspects of the article are the role and importance of these textbooks. At the turn of XIX-XX centuries in St. Petersburg there were several schools of book printing, where in the classroom the students got acquainted with the basic techniques of typesetting works. There was a need of publishing the special literature. The authors of textbooks have become school teachers. The article analyzes the following editions: R. Nippert «ABC Books of Eastern and Western Languages» (SPb., 1859), A.Serkov «Quick Start Guide for Compositors of Typographic Art» (St. Petersburg., 1861), G. Kerbach «Slavic Alphabet» (SPb., 1894), G. Schroeder «On the History of Alphabets» (SPb., 1896). Publications on the history of alphabets made an enormous contribution to the expansion of knowledge on book printing in Russia and formed the basis for the subsequently developed special educational literature on the art of typesetting, book printing and decorating books.

How the old Slavs (Serbs) wrote numbers

Traces of old Slav literacy date back to the second half of the ninth century. The first missionaries among the Slavs were the educators and monks, brothers Cyril (827–869) and Methodius (?–885), who compiled the Old Slavic alphabet. The basis of this alphabet was the ancient Greek cursive script. The Slavic alphabet led to the appearance of mathematical literacy among the Old Slavs, which means among the Serbs too. Numerals were written using letters, following the Greek alphabetic system. As well as showing how the 27 letters were used to write numbers from 1 to 999, this paper will show how the Old Slavs also used alphabetical letters to write much larger numbers. They also had special names for large numbers. Further, we shall present the traces of the Old Slavic ways of writing numbers, such as can be found in old inscriptions on medieval monastery arches, old charts, and medieval Serbian books. Most commonly, they denoted dates or quantities.

Saint Cyril and Methodius: Missionaries among Slavic peoples

Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius, two learned and educated Greek Byzantine brothers from Thessalonica, well experienced in missionary work, received an order by the Byzantine emperor Michael III to go to the Slav country of Great Moravia and spread the Christian faith in their native Slavic language. In this, the Byzantine ruler wanted to please the Moravian ruler Prince Rastislav who had requested such missionaries having probably heard that 'all people from Thessalonica speak pure Slavic' and would therefore be fit to spread the word of Christ to his population in an understandable language for them, since his people could speak neither Greek nor Latin. So, the brothers set off on a long and uncertain journey at the end of 863AD or beginning of 894AD. They took along a number of their pupils who spoke the Slavic language and also some basic liturgical books translated into Slavic. Their stay in Great Moravia was hard and strenuous - the German priests they found there (Prince Rastislav's state was under Roman church administration) were full of animosity towards the brothers: they often complained to the Pope about their missionary work, so that Cyril and Methodius even had to go to Rome to defend themselves against accusations of heresy. After many such troubles, Pope Hadrian II finally allowed holding liturgy in Slavic. Cyril soon died (869AD) and was buried in Rome in the Church of St Clement of Rome, while Methodius and his pupils returned to Great Moravia where Methodius became the archbishop of the Moravian diocese. Nevertheless, he and his pupils continued to be relentlessly persecuted by German priests. When Methodius died in 885 AD his pupils were forced to withdraw to the south of Great Moravia where the South Slavic peoples lived. The West Slavic peoples who were under the jurisdiction of the West Roman Church soon abandoned the liturgical practices in Slavic, disregard the use of Slavic alphabet and returned to the use of Latin, as before. The South Slavs, however, accepted the pupils of the two Thessalonica brothers along with the use of the Slavic language in liturgy and the Slavic alphabet, upholding to this day the great work and heritage of Cyril and Methodius.

К осмыслению традиции эксперимента в русской культуре. Испытание как прием. (Введение к выпуску)

The legacy of experiment in Russian cultural history can be analysed in a variety of ways. This introductory essay delineates some of the most significant milestones of this history stretching from the invention of the Slavic alphabet to the radical Modernism of the Avant-Garde. How does the “experimentality” of Russian radical aesthetics of the twentieth century correspond to the preceding cultural strata of the nationʼs history? Theoretical groundwork is outlined with respect to the possibility of conducting analytical research of various forms and guises of experiment. What makes the “Russian experiment” so unique? What endows Russian experimental culture with its unprecedented features? It is to these questions that the introductory essay rendered below is devoted.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship between Church, Nation and State in Bulgaria (review)

Reviewed by: The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship between Church, Nation and State in Bulgaria Dennis P. Hupchick The Bulgarian Orthodox Church: A Socio-Historical Analysis of the Evolving Relationship between Church, Nation and State in Bulgaria. By James Lindsay Hopkins. [East European Monographs, No. DCCXXVI.] (Boulder: Eastern European Monographs. Distrib. by Columbia University Press. 2009. Pp. xvi, 340. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-880-33624-6.) Bulgaria appears so infrequently in published English-language historical studies that the publication of any such work elicits interest by serious scholars in that field. One that examines the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria is of special interest because of the culturally important role that the institution played in Bulgaria since medieval times. The creation of the Cyrillic Slavic literary language in the ninth century and the establishment of the first autocephalous Slavic Orthodox church organization in the tenth are considered Bulgaria’s seminal contribution to world cultural history by most specialists. Bulgarian cultural identity and Orthodoxy have been partnered intimately through centuries of Ottoman Islamic domination, Western-style secularization/modernization, and communist dictatorship. The exact nature of this partnership over time seldom has been examined in detail. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church by James Hopkins purports to achieve this feat. Unfortunately, it succeeds in doing so only to a limited extent. [End Page 386] Hopkins informs the reader that the primary emphasis of his study is on analyzing the Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s political and social position during the communist and postcommunist periods and that a “new,” more “objective” interpretation of the Church’s history is necessary for full comprehension of that analysis. Truly, the two chapters covering those more contemporary periods are the most informative and insightful of the nine in the book and should have received expanded treatment. Unfortunately, the preceding five precommunist historical and one concluding philosophical chapters should have been summarized in the introduction alone. Hopkins’s “new” historical interpretive perspective rarely moves beyond bursting a string of “straw man” arguments that reflect past and present Bulgarian ultranationalist myths (i.e., Cyril and Methodius being “Slavs”; the Ottoman “Yoke”) that are rejected or long discredited by most serious contemporary scholars. In one of the “newest” interpretations, which depicts the early-medieval Bulgarian church as “foreign” to the Bulgarian “nation,” except for the tenthand eleventh-century Bogomil heretical movement, the author bases his argument on a traditional idea that the Bogomils enjoyed a mass following and fostered social discontent when no primary evidence actually supports such contentions. Another “new” interpretation is the claim that mass “nations” existed in medieval times. An unsuccessful attempt to validate this assertion in the book’s final chapter ultimately demonstrates that the author’s definition of the term is too generalized to take seriously. The historical presentation is colored by a stated preconception that, historically, the Bulgarian church was more often a tool of foreign influences than a native Bulgarian manifestation. Only “highlights” in the church’s history purporting to support the author’s view are presented, rendering coverage selective, sometimes questionable, and spotty, with gaps filled by generalities and conflicting circumstances omitted. Thus, the nineteenth-century Bulgarian National Revival is portrayed as a purely secular affair with the church culturally inactive, ignoring the important linguistic/literary role of clerics such as Neofit Rilski. Furthermore, the historical narrative is marred by factual flaws of omission and commission (such as no mention that Cyril’s Slavic alphabet was Glagolitic, or that Cyrillic was created later in Bulgaria by others; Januarius MacGahan and not James; Eugene Schyler did not write for the Daily News; and it was the Russians and British, not Americans, who met at the 1876 Constantinople conference). Last, the scholarly mechanics of the book are amateurish and rigidly pedantic—each chapter introduces a topic and conclusion and then proceeds to achieve the aforementioned conclusion in its narrative, at the end of which the conclusion is restated as proved. Worse, Hopkins apparently cannot discriminate between primary and secondary sources in the bibliography, labeling all Bulgarian- and Russian-language works “primary” while listing works that most serious historians would consider primary under the “secondary” heading. [End Page 387] Readers interested in...

The role of Cyril and Methodius tradition in the formation of features of Kiev Christianity

In the context of the development of Kyivan Christianity, the spiritual tradition of East and West was the adoption of the Cyril and Methodius heritage. By that time, the Slavic alphabet had already been created, and some liturgical and legal texts, including the Gospel, the Apostle, the Psalter, the Prayer, the Judgment of the People, and others, had been translated into the Slavic language. The activity of Cyril and Methodius was of general Slavic importance.

Reply

There are few events in history which had such a profound influence on the cultural development of so many nations as had the Byzantine mission to Moravia. Although the mission failed in the country for which it had been destined, the work of the two Greek brothers, aided by a few disciples, produced unexpected fruit among the Bulgarians, Serbians, Croats, and Eastern Slavs, and became the basis of the oldest Christian Slavic culture. This shows us the excellence of the first literary achievements in Moravia and testifies to the geniality of the inventor of the Slavic alphabet, and to Constantine’s extraordinary philological talent. A mediocre work could not have survived the Moravian catastrophe and the many upheavals in the early history of the southern and eastern Slavs.