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Glagolitic

The Glagolitic alphabet, also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The wiki explains its history: The two Slavic missionaries canonized as Saints Cyril and Methodius were sent to Great Moravia in 862 by the Byzantine emperor at the request of Knyaz (Duke) Rastislav, who wanted to weaken the dependence of his country on East Frankish priests. The glagolitic alphabet, however it originated, was used between 863 and 885 for government and religious documents and books, and at the Great Moravian Academy founded by the missionaries, where their followers were educated. In 886, an East Frankish bishop of Nitra named Wiching banned the script and jailed 200 followers of Methodius, mostly students of the original academy. They were then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves by the Franks. Many of them (including Naum, Clement, Angelarious, Sava and Gorazd), however, reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I of Bulgaria to teach and instruct the future clergy of the state into the Slavic languages. After the adoption of Christianity in Bulgaria in 865, religious ceremonies and Divine Liturgy were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from the Byzantine Empire, using the Byzantine rite. Fearing growing Byzantine influence and weakening of the state, Boris viewed the introduction of the Slavic alphabet and language in church use as a way to preserve the independence of Slavic Bulgaria from Greek Constantinople. As a result of Boris's measures, two academies, one in Ohrid and one in Preslav, were founded. A page from the 10th-11th century Codex Zographensis found in the Zograf Monastery in 1843. From there, the students traveled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to Croatia (into Dalmatia), where the squared variant arose and where the Glagolitic remained in use for a long time. In 1248, Pope Innocent IV gave the Croats of southern Dalmatia the unique privilege of using their own language and this script in the Roman Rite liturgy. Formally given to bishop Philip of Senj, the permission to use the Glagolitic liturgy (the Roman Rite conducted in Slavic language instead of Latin, not the Byzantine rite), actually extended to all Croatian lands, mostly along the Adriatic coast. The Holy See had several Glagolitic missals published in Rome. Authorisation for use of this language was extended to some other Slavic regions between 1886 and 1935. In missals, the Glagolitic script was eventually replaced with the Latin alphabet, but the use of the Slavic language in the Mass continued, until replaced by the modern vernacular languages. Some of the students of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was used in the 10th and 11th century, along with other scripts. Glagolitic was also used in Kievan Rus. In Croatia, from the 12th century onwards, Glagolitic inscriptions appeared mostly in littoral areas: Istra, Primorje, Kvarner and Kvarner islands, notably Krk, Cres and Losinj in Dalmatia, on the islands of Zadar, but there were also findings in inner Lika and Krbava, reaching to Kupa river, and even as far as Slovenia. The Hrvoje's Missal (Croatian Hrvojev misal) was written in Split, and it is considered as one of the most beautiful Croatian Glagolitic books. Until 1992, it was believed that Glagolitsa in Croatia was present only in those areas, and then, in 1992, the discovery of Glagolitic inscriptions in churches along the Orljava river in Slavonia, totally changed the picture (churches in Brodski Drenovac, Lovcic and some others), showing that use of Glagolitic alphabet was spread from Slavonia also. At the end of the 9th century, one of these students of Methodius who was settled in Preslav (Bulgaria) created the Cyrillic alphabet, which almost entirely replaced the Glagolitic during the Middle Ages. The Cyrillic alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, with (at least 10) letters peculiar to Slavic languages being derived from the Glagolitic. Nowadays, Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavic (Croatian and Czech recensions).

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