Runes, Glagolitic, Cyrillic: What Cyril and Methodius Really Invented

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Eleven centuries of the existence of the Cyrillic alphabet have not revealed all the secrets of its origin. It is now known that this alphabet was not created by St. Cyril, Equal to the Apostles, that the new writing replaced the ancient Slavic rune signs that have not yet been studied, and that it was not only and not so much a tool of enlightenment as a means of political struggle.

Why did the Slavs need writing

The brothers Cyril and Methodius, as you know, brought writing on the territory of the Slavic states, this marked the beginning of the spread of Christianity in Russia. The alphabet, whose age is more than a millennium, is called the Cyrillic alphabet - however, it was not created by Cyril at all, and Cyril himself lived his whole life under the name Constantine, nicknamed the Philosopher, accepting the schema only before his death.

Whether the Slavs had written language before the Greek missionaries is a controversial issue associated with both the ambiguity of many historical facts and the peculiarities of the political situation that determined the events of those times and the ways of their display. Because in the 9th century, a serious struggle unfolded for spheres of influence in European and Asian lands - a struggle in which Rome and Constantinople were involved first of all.

The story goes that the prince of Moravia Rostislav turned to the emperor of Byzantium Michael III with a request to help organize the church administration and arrange the main liturgical books in the Slavic language. Great Moravia was a large and powerful Slavic state that united the territory of many modern European states - Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, part of Poland and Ukraine. The integrity of the country in the 9th century was threatened by the Frankish and Bulgarian peoples, and this was the reason for the desire to create an independent church.

It is interesting that all the Slavs of that time - both southern, eastern and western - communicated in an Old Slavonic language that was understandable to every nation. It was perfectly owned by Constantine and Methodius (in the world - Michael), brothers from the Byzantine city of Thessaloniki (Thessaloniki), and the emperor instructed them to go to Moravia as missionaries. The fact that Constantine was a pupil of a great official under the emperor, Theoktist, and, moreover, a very capable and versatile person, who already in his youth received the post of church reader and curator of the library, also played a role. Methodius, who chose the monastic path for himself, was 12 years older than his brother.

Glagolitic and Cyrillic

The creation of the Slavic alphabet dates back to 863 - it was the result of work on the isolation of the sounds of the Slavic language and their creation of a system of written signs, the basis of the structure of which was the Greek alphabet. Attempts to write Slavic words in Greek letters were made earlier, but did not lead to any result due to the differences in the sounds used by the Greeks and Slavs. A comprehensive, fundamental approach was required, and it was with its help that the brothers achieved the result.

Cyril-Constantine is considered the author of the first Slavic alphabet - but, according to the majority of modern scholars, he created not the Cyrillic alphabet, but the Glagolitic alphabet. The letters of this alphabet, perhaps, were created under the influence of the ancient Slavic runes, the existence of which has not been proven, but now gives rise to many romantic theories about the pre-Christian culture of the peoples of Russia. These "features and cuts" are also endowed with magical meaning, like the runes of the Germanic peoples, the very name of which comes from the word "mystery".

The alphabet created in the 9th century was used to translate the main church books - the Gospel, the Psalter, the Apostle. If there was no suitable word in the Slavic language, the missionary brothers used Greek - hence a large number of words borrowed from this language. Since the creation of the alphabet and the appearance of church literature, Moravian priests began to conduct services in their own language. Despite the fact that the rules prohibited the use of a "barbarian" language in the church - only Greek, Latin and Hebrew were allowed, the Pope made such an exception. Apparently, various factors influenced Rome's decision, including the fact that in 868 the brothers Constantine and Methodius handed over to the Vatican the relics of St. Clement, found in Chersonesos during their other mission - to the Khazar Kaganate.

One way or another, but already a few years after the death of Emperor Michael, Slavic writing was banned in Moravia. From there it was taken over by the Bulgarians and Croats. In 869, Constantine fell seriously ill and after a while died, having taken monastic vows before his death. Methodius returned to Moravia in 870, spent several years in prison and was released on the direct order of the new Pope, John VIII.

The Moravian mission also included Constantine's disciple, Clement from the city of Ohrid. He continued to work on the dissemination of Slavic writing, at the invitation of the Bulgarian Tsar Boris I, he organized training in schools. In the process of work, Clement also optimized the previously created alphabet - in contrast to the Glagolitic alphabet, the letters in the new alphabet had a simpler and clearer outline. 24 letters of the Greek alphabet and 19 letters for recording specific sounds of the Slavic language made up the "klimentitsa", as the Cyrillic alphabet was initially called. Perhaps the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet was dictated by dissatisfaction with the alphabet that Constantine invented - namely, the complexity of writing symbols.

Gaps in the history of the Cyrillic alphabet

Unfortunately, the works of Cyril and Methodius have not reached the present time, and information about their works is often contained in the works of one author, which brings doubts about the objectivity and reliability of the data. In particular, the fact that the Glagolitic alphabet was created by Cyril is directly mentioned by the only source of authorship of the priest Ghoul Dashing. True, there is also indirect evidence that the Glagolitic alphabet appeared earlier: on the numerous parchments-palimpsests found, the Cyrillic texts are written over the scraped-off words of the Glagolitic spelling.

On the territory of Russia, the Glagolitic alphabet was almost never used - only a few samples of the text survived (Novgorod St. Sophia Cathedral is one of the few ancient Russian monuments where you can see a Glagolic inscription). As for the Cyrillic alphabet, with the adoption of Christianity in 988, it became widespread and acquired the status of the Church Slavonic language.

Before the reform of Peter I, all letters were in uppercase, after the reform, they began to write in lowercase, other changes were introduced - a number of letters were abolished, others were legalized, for the third they changed the style. And in the thirties of the XX century, a number of the peoples of the USSR who did not have a written language or used other types of writing - in particular, Arabic, received the Cyrillic alphabet as the official alphabet.

Due to the lack of a sufficient number of sources on many issues related to writing in Russia, there are serious disputes. There is a theory that the word "Cyrillic" is derived from the ancient Slavic term for writing, and "Cyril" in this case simply means "scribe". According to one version, the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet preceded the appearance of the Glagolitic alphabet, which was created as a cryptography to replace the forbidden Cyrillic alphabet. However, you can immerse yourself in the secrets of the past of Russia endlessly, and finding connections with the already mentioned Scandinavian runes, and pointing to monuments-falsifications, such as the famous "Veles's book".

There is no doubt that Greek writing arose on the basis of a rich and developed Slavic culture, the originality of which, taking into account the innovations, probably suffered some damage. The phonetics of words changed irreversibly, the Slavic terms were replaced by their Greek counterparts. On the other hand, it was precisely the emergence of writing in Russia that made it possible to preserve its history for centuries, reflecting it in chronicles, letters and household documents - and in The "notebooks" of the boy Onfim, which became a symbol of continuity between the world of Ancient Russia and modern children's drawings.