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The Glagolitic script (Glagolitsa) is the oldest known Slavic script and supposedly was created by the missionaries St Cyril (827-869 AD) and St Methodius (826-885 AD). They needed it to translate the bible and other religious texts into Old Slavic language when the Slavic world converted to Christianity. The letters were probably modeled after a cursive Greek script. With their translations which were based on a slavic dialect of the Thessaloniki area, they created the literary standard known as Old Church Slavonic.
The name »Glagolitic« comes from the fourth letter of the script, »glagol«. »Glagol« in turn stems from the Serbo-Croatian glagoljica, from Old Church Slavonic glagolŭ - »word«. The script was also referred to as »azbuka« which is a generic term derived from the names of the first two letters of the alphabet. The Glagolitic script consists of 33 basic letters whose order is mainly based on the Greek script, apart from some letters that represent Slavic sounds not found in Greek language. The origin of the shape of the non-Greek Glyphs is unknown, some say they are derived from hebrew or Coptic script, but there is little evidence. The earliest documents written in Glagolitic are from the 9th century. Glagolitic was used until the 12th century and then gradually replaced by Cyrillic, sometimes Latin in liturgical uses. Only in Croatia was it used in church until the 19th century, because in 1248, the Croats had been given special permission by Pope Innocent IV to use their own language and script in liturgy. In Croatia, the rounded shapes of the Glagolitic Glyphs (seen above) also evolved into a very distinctive, more square variant which features a lot of ligatures. Today, Glagolitic is a dead script only used for research and scholarly purposes. |
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The Missal of Hrvoje is probably the most interesting Glagolitic book. It is a liturgical book written in 1404 by a Glagolitic scribe Butko. It has 94 beautiful illuminations, 380 colourful initials (some of them in gold), and many more small initials. Some initials contain architectural elements of the city of Split. The book has been kept in the Library of the Turkish sultans (Topkapi Saray) in Constantinople since the 16th century. Once bound in precious covers, from 19th century Hrvoje\'s Missal is in leather binding. It is written in two columns on 488 pp (22.5x31 cm), and contains also some music notation.
(Source: http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html author: Darko Zubrinic) |
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The first Croatian printed book in Glagolitic letters appeared as early as 1483, only 28 years after Gutenberg\'s Bible, 6 years after the first printed book in Paris and Venice, one year before Stockholm, 58 years before Berlin and 70 years before Moscow. It was a Missal (440 pp, 19x26 cm), unfortunately it is not known where it was printed. The Croatian Glagolitic Script was the fifth to appear in the history of European printing, very soon after the Latin, Gothic, Greek and Hebrew scripts. Eleven preserved copies of the first Croatian incunabulum are kept in
* The Library of Congress in Washington, * in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg, * in the National Library in Vienna, * in Apostolic Library in the Vatican (two copies), * and in Croatia (six copies). (Source: http://www.hr/darko/etf/et03.html author: Darko Zubrinic) |
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