Glagolitic script

Lore & Background

The Glagolitic script was created in the 9th century, generally agreed to have been devised by Cyril, a Christian monk from Thessalonica, for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic. Cyril and his brother Methodius were sent by the Byzantine Emperor to Great Moravia as missionaries. After their deaths, their disciples were expelled from Moravia and moved to the First Bulgarian Empire. The Early Cyrillic alphabet, developed gradually in the Preslav Literary School by scribes who incorporated some Glagolitic letters when writing in the Greek alphabet, gradually replaced Glagolitic in that region.

Reader's Guide

Glagolitic remained in use alongside Cyrillic and Latin script in the Kingdom of Croatia and Dalmatia and alongside Cyrillic until the 14th century in the Second Bulgarian Empire and the Serbian Empire; in later periods, its use in its eastern range was mainly for cryptographic purposes. It spread to the Kievan Rus', the Kingdom of Bohemia, Duklja, Zachlumia, and the March of Verona, surviving in Istria and Dalmatia into the 20th century for Church Slavonic. The script evolved from Rounded Glagolitic into Angular Glagolitic and a cursive form for notary purposes. Its authorship by Cyril was forgotten, replaced by an attribution to St. Jerome by early Benedictine adopters in Istria, a bid that ultimately secured papal approval. The Ottoman conquests and Counter-Reformation led to its decline, but it saw renewed interest in the 19th and 20th centuries among Slavicists and in nationalist circles, especially after the Independence of Croatia.

Did You Know?

• The word 'glagolitic' ultimately derives from the Old Church Slavonic word ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⱏ (glagolŭ), meaning 'utterance' or 'word'.
• The origins of the Glagolitic letters are debated; while some scholars suggest links to medieval cursive Greek or other scripts, no single source is universally accepted.
• The Kiev Missal, found in the 19th century in Jerusalem, was dated to the 10th century.
• Glagolitic numerals use letters with a numerical value based on their native alphabetic order, differing from Cyrillic numerals.