Glagolitic alphabet
| Glagolitic |
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|---|---|
A page from the Zograf Codex with text of the Gospel of Luke
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| Type | |
| Languages | Old Church Slavic |
| Creator | Saints Cyril and Methodius |
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Time period
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862/863 to the Middle Ages |
| Direction | Left-to-right |
| ISO 15924 | Glag, 225 |
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Unicode alias
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Glagolitic |
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The Glagolitic script (/ˌɡlæɡəˈlɪtɪk/, Ⰳⰾⰰⰳⱁⰾⰻⱌⰰ Glagolitsa) is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It was created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a Byzantine monk from Thessaloniki. He and his brother, Saint Methodius, were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area. The brothers decided to translate liturgical books into the Old Slavic language that was understandable to the general population, but as the words of that language could not be easily written by using either the Greek or Latin alphabets, Cyril decided to invent a new script, Glagolitic, which he based on the local dialect of the Slavic tribes from the Byzantine Salonika region.
After the deaths of Cyril and Methodius, the Glagolitic alphabet ceased to be used in Moravia, but their students continued to propagate it in the west and south. The Glagolitic alphabet was preserved only by the Croats, using it from the 12th to the 20th century, mostly in liturgy.
The name was not created until many centuries after the script's creation, and comes from the Old Church Slavonic glagol "utterance". The verb glagolati means "to speak". It has been conjectured that the name glagolitsa developed in Croatia around the 14th century and was derived from the word glagolity, applied to adherents of the liturgy in Slavonic.
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