Old Slavic alphabets

The ancient Tale of the Bygone Years or Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let – PVL) is one of the main sources on the ancient history of the Slavic tribes  and the origin of Kievan Rus’. A variety of structural and thematic motifs, frequently going back to even earlier sources, can be isolated in the narrative. Among them, noteworthy is that of migration in a broad sense: e.g., the migration of Slavic tribes from the Danube river towards the East; the expansion and strenghtening of political power and authority (with consequent broadening of state borders); the spread of christian faith and writing; etc. The article examines in particular the well-known excerpt on the introduction of Slavic writing in Great Moravia at the time of the Cyrillo-Methodian mission (862-865) and its subsequent transplantation in the Eastern Slavic lands. The investigation attempts to clarify why this episode is mentioned in the PVL under the year 898, i.e. more than 30 years after the new glagolitic alphabet was actually introduced among the Western
Slavs (together with some translations of the Holy Scriptures into Old Church Slavonic). As a solution to the problem, for which a satisfactory interpretation is still lacking (despite some recent hypotheses due to the Russian historian V. Petrukhin), it is proposed to explain the anachronism in the light of the literary chronotope, according to the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin. Like other episodes registered in the PVL, even the entry about the invention and further propagation of the letters among the Slavs may be considered to be subordinated to the inner organization of the narrative structure and thus can be interpreted as a basic element in the tale about the expansion of authority and the struggle for the unification of Kievan Rus’ under prince Oleg (882-912). In other words, in his account the annalist is guided by the subject itself as well as by the rules of the literary (annalistic) genre, which in a sense compel him to place the episode of Slavonic letters and books at the very end of a long historical process, described in the perspective of what has been called the “chronotope of the Russian land”.

The paper “Cyrillic Manuscripts with Glagolitic Insertions” deals with the phenomenon of the so-called Cyrillic-Glagolitic digraphia (including the co-existence and diffusion of the two writing systems and the use of Glagolitic letters to restrict the message of the texts). All known Cyrillic manuscripts with Glagolitic insertions are taken into account in order to constitute a catalogue of these and to perform a complex scholarly analysis, that aims the classification of the Glagolitic insertions and the clarification of the reasons of their appearance in every Cyrillic manuscript (or group of manuscripts) under consideration.

The present paper shortly dwells upon the role played by Saint Cyril in the politically driven discourse of later epochs, with particular reference to the Soviet “linguistic constructors” (jazykovye stroiteli) in the twenties and thirties of the past century. Starting from an interesting article by R.O. Jakobson, published in 1945, it traces some striking parallels between Cyril’s invention of the first Slavic alphabet and language planning activity, with respect to the problem of alphabet choice, in different times and cultural contexts. The construction of a symbolic meaning around the figure of Cyril has given rise, in the course of time, to different and stimulating approaches and interpretations.

Настоящата статия накратко се спира на ролята на св. Кирил в политически водения дискурс през по-късните епохи, с особено внимание към съветските „езикови строители“ през двадесетте и тридесетте години на миналия век. Започвайки от интересната публикация на Роман Якобсон от 1945 г., в статията се проследяват някои поразителни паралели между създаването от св. Кирил на първата славянска азбука и дейностите по планиране на езикови политики спрямо проблема с избора на азбука през различни времена и съответен културен контекст. Изграждането на символично значение около фигурата на Кирил поражда с течение на времето различни и стимулиращи подходи и интерпретации.

The paper deals with the question of the oldest denomination of glagolitic alphabet and, in consequence, of the cyrillic too. Traditionally, scholars have related the current name «glagolitica» or «glagolica» to the verb glagolati or to the substantive “glagol”, which is also the name of the fourth letter. But this is clearly a paraetymology, whose origin goes back to later time. In fact, the oldest sources transmit ethnical names, i. e. slovenskyja gramota and its variants, but the russian Khronograf (1494) contains the enigmatic denomination “litica”. Different hypothesis arose to explain this name, but they start from a common assumption that there has been an orthographical misunderstanding of lection «glagolitica» by the scribe.
A new hypothesis is presented in this article according to which the name litica is a slavic derivation of the greek denomination «grammata lita» whose use as terminus technicus to indicate a majuscule writing is well known by greek sources. Slavic scribes would add to the greek adjective «lita» the slavic suffix -ica with collective meaning to indicate the letters as a whole (similar formations as bukvica or gramotica are also known). Maybe, in the course of time, the original significance of the word got lost and it would seem to be derivated from “glagol”.
In parallel with this question, other medieval denominations of both slavic alphabets are examinated.