Creation of the Slavic alphabet. Creators of the Slavic alphabet: Cyril and Methodius

The alphabet of the Old Slavonic alphabet, like any other alphabet, was a system of certain signs, to which a certain sound was assigned. The Slavic alphabet was formed in the territory inhabited by peoples Ancient Russia many centuries ago.

Events of the historical past

The year 862 went down in history as the year when the first official steps were taken in Russia to adopt Christianity. Prince Vsevolod sent ambassadors to the Byzantine emperor Michael, who were supposed to convey his request that the emperor send preachers of the Christian faith to Great Moravia. The need for preachers arose due to the fact that people themselves could not penetrate the essence of Christian teaching, because the Holy Scriptures were only in Latin.

In response to this request, two brothers were sent to the Russian lands: Cyril and Methodius. The first of them received the name Cyril a little later, when he took monastic vows. This choice has been carefully considered. The brothers were born in Thessalonica in the family of a military leader. The Greek version is Thessaloniki. The level of education for that time they had a very high. Konstantin (Cyril) was trained and brought up at the court of Emperor Michael the Third. He could speak several languages:

• Greek
• Arabic,
• Slavic
• Jewish.

For his ability to initiate others into the secrets of philosophy, he received the nickname Constantine the Philosopher.

Methodius began his career with military service, he tried himself as the ruler of one of the regions, which was inhabited by the Slavs. In 860, they made a trip to the Khazars, their goal was to spread the Christian faith and reach some agreements with these people.

History of written signs

Konstantin had to create written signs with the active help of his brother. After all, Holy Scripture was only in Latin. To convey this knowledge to a large number of people, the written version of the Holy Books in the language of the Slavs was simply necessary. As a result of their painstaking work, the Slavic alphabet appeared in 863.

Two variants of the alphabet: Glagolitic and Cyrillic are ambiguous. Researchers argue about which of these two options belongs directly to Cyril, and which one appeared later.

After the creation of the written system, the brothers were engaged in translating the Bible into the language of the Slavs. The meaning of this alphabet is enormous. The people could not only speak their own language. But also to write, and to form the literary basis of the language. Some of the words of that time have come down to our time and function in Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian languages.

Word symbols

The letters of the ancient alphabet had names that coincided with the words. The very word "alphabet" comes from the first letters of the alphabet: "az" and "beeches". They were the modern letters "A" and "B".

The first written symbols in the Slavic lands were scratched on the walls of the churches of Pereslavl in the form of pictures. It was in the 9th century. In the 11th century, this alphabet appeared in Kyiv, in St. Sophia Cathedral, where signs were interpreted, written translations were made.

A new stage in the formation of the alphabet is associated with the advent of printing. 1574 brought the first alphabet to the Russian lands, which was printed. It was called "Old Slavonic alphabet". The name of the person who released it entered the centuries - Ivan Fedorov.

The connection between the emergence of writing and the spread of Christianity

The Old Slavonic alphabet was more than a simple set of characters. Her presence made it possible a large number people to get acquainted with the Christian faith, to penetrate into its essence, to give it their heart. All scholars agree that without the appearance of writing, Christianity in the Russian lands would not have appeared so quickly. Between the creation of letters and the adoption of Christianity - 125 years, during which there was a huge leap in the self-consciousness of the people. From dense beliefs and customs, people came to faith in the One God. It was the Holy Books, which were distributed throughout the territory of Russia, and the ability to read them, that became the basis for the spread of Christian knowledge.

863 is the year of the creation of the alphabet, 988 is the date of the adoption of Christianity in Russia. This year, Prince Vladimir announced that a new faith was being introduced in the principality and a struggle began against all manifestations of polytheism.

The mystery of written symbols

Some scholars believe that symbols Slavic alphabet are secret signs in which religious and philosophical knowledge. Together they represent complex system based on clear logic and mathematical connections. There is an opinion that all the letters in this alphabet are an integral, inseparable system, which is why the alphabet was created as a system, and not as separate elements and signs.

The first such signs were something between numbers and letters. The Old Slavonic alphabet was based on the Greek uncial writing system. The Slavic Cyrillic alphabet consisted of 43 letters. The brothers took 24 letters from the Greek unique, and the remaining 19 were invented by themselves. The need to invent new sounds arose due to the fact that the Slavic language contained sounds that were not characteristic of Greek pronunciation. Accordingly, there were no such letters. Constantine either took these symbols from other systems or invented them himself.

"higher" and "lower" part

The whole system can be divided into two distinct parts. Conventionally, they received the names "higher" and "lower". The first part includes letters from "a" to "f" ("az" - "fet"). Each letter is a symbol-word. Such a name was completely focused on people, because these words were clear to everyone. The lower part went from "sha" to the letter "Izhitsa". These symbols were left without digital correspondence, were filled with negative connotations. “In order to penetrate the essence of the cryptography of these symbols, they need to be carefully studied, analyzed all the nuances. After all, in each of them lives the meaning laid down by the creator.

Researchers also find the meaning of the triad in these symbols. A person, comprehending this knowledge, must reach a higher level of spiritual perfection. Thus, the alphabet is the creation of Cyril and Methodius, leading to the self-improvement of people.

At the end of 862, the prince of Great Moravia (the state of the Western Slavs) Rostislav turned to the Byzantine emperor Michael with a request to send preachers to Moravia who could spread Christianity in the Slavic language (sermons in those parts were read in Latin, unfamiliar and incomprehensible to the people).

863 is considered the year of birth of the Slavic alphabet.

The creators of the Slavic alphabet were the brothers Cyril and Methodius.

Emperor Michael sent the Greeks to Moravia - the scientist Constantine the Philosopher (the name Cyril Constantine received when he became a monk in 869, and with this name he went down in history) and his older brother Methodius.

The choice was not random. The brothers Constantine and Methodius were born in Thessalonica (in Greek, Thessaloniki) in the family of a military commander, received a good education. Cyril studied in Constantinople at the court of the Byzantine emperor Michael III, knew Greek, Slavic, Latin, Hebrew well, Arabic, taught philosophy, for which he received the nickname Philosopher. Methodius was in military service, then for several years he ruled one of the regions inhabited by the Slavs; subsequently retired to a monastery.

In 860, the brothers had already made a trip to the Khazars for missionary and diplomatic purposes.

In order to be able to preach Christianity in the Slavonic language, it was necessary to make a translation of the Holy Scripture into the Slavic language; however, the alphabet capable of conveying Slavic speech did not exist at that moment.

Constantine set about creating the Slavic alphabet. Methodius, who also knew the Slavic language well, helped him in his work, since a lot of Slavs lived in Thessalonica (the city was considered half-Greek, half-Slavic). In 863, the Slavic alphabet was created (the Slavic alphabet existed in two versions: the Glagolitic alphabet - from the verb - “speech” and the Cyrillic alphabet; scientists still do not have a consensus which of these two options was created by Cyril). With the help of Methodius, a number of liturgical books were translated from Greek into Slavonic. The Slavs got the opportunity to read and write in their own language. The Slavs had not only their own, Slavic, alphabet, but also the first Slavic literary language, many words of which still live in Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian and other Slavic languages.

After the death of the brothers, their activities were continued by their students, who were expelled from Moravia in 886,

in the South Slavic countries. (In the West, the Slavic alphabet and Slavic literacy did not survive; Western Slavs - Poles, Czechs ... - still use the Latin alphabet). The Slavic literacy was firmly established in Bulgaria, from where it spread to the countries of the southern and Eastern Slavs(IX century). Writing came to Russia in the 10th century (988 - the baptism of Russia).

The creation of the Slavic alphabet was and still is of great importance for the development of Slavic writing, Slavic peoples, Slavic culture.

The Bulgarian Church established the day of memory of Cyril and Methodius - May 11, according to the old style (May 24, according to the new style). Bulgaria also established the Order of Cyril and Methodius.

May 24 in many Slavic countries, including Russia, is a holiday of Slavic writing and culture.

By the 9th century, the East Slavic tribes occupied vast territories on the great waterway "from the Varangians to the Greeks", i.e. territories from Lake Ilmen and the Zapadnaya Dvina basin to the Dnieper, as well as to the east (in the upper reaches of the Oka, Volga and Don) and to the west (in Volyn, Podolia and Galicia). All these tribes spoke closely related East Slavic dialects and were at different stages of economic and cultural development; on the basis of the linguistic community of the Eastern Slavs, the language of the Old Russian people was formed, which received its statehood in Kievan Rus.

The Old Russian language was unwritten. The emergence of Slavic writing is inextricably linked with the adoption of Christianity by the Slavs: liturgical texts that were understandable to the Slavs were necessary.

Consider the history of the creation of the first Slavic alphabet.

In 862 or 863, ambassadors from the Moravian prince Rostislav arrived at the Byzantine emperor Michael. They conveyed to the emperor a request to send missionaries to Moravia who could preach and worship in a language understandable to the Moravians. mother tongue instead of the Latin language of the German clergy. “Our people have abandoned paganism and adhere to the Christian law, but we do not have such a teacher who could instruct us in the Christian faith in our native language,” the ambassadors said. Emperor Michael and the Greek Patriarch Photius gladly received the ambassadors of Rostislav and sent the scientist Constantine the Philosopher and his elder brother Methodius to Moravia. The brothers Constantine and Methodius were not chosen by chance: Methodius for a number of years was the ruler of the Slavic region in Byzantium, probably in the southeast, in Macedonia. The younger brother, Konstantin, was a man of great learning, he received an excellent education. In written sources, he is usually called "Philosopher". In addition, Constantine and Methodius were born in the city of Solun (now Thessaloniki, Greece), in the vicinity of which many Slavs lived. Many Greeks, including Constantine and Methodius, knew their language well.

Constantine was the compiler of the first Slavic alphabet - Glagolitic. None of the alphabets known to science was used as the basis for the graphics of the Glagolitic alphabet: Konstantin created it based on the sound composition of the Slavic language. In the Glagolitic one can partially find elements or letters similar to the letters of other alphabets of developed languages ​​(Greek, Syriac, Coptic writing and other graphic systems), but it cannot be said that one of these alphabets is the basis of the Glagolitic script. The alphabet, compiled by Cyril - Konstantin, is original, author's and does not repeat any of the alphabets that existed at that time. The graphics of the Glagolitic were based on three figures: a cross, a circle and a triangle. The verb letter is uniform in style, it is rounded in shape. The main difference between the Glagolitic script and the previous writing systems attributed to the Slavs is that it perfectly accurately reflected the phonemic composition of the Slavic language and did not require the introduction or establishment of combinations of other letters to designate some specific Slavic phonemes.

The Glagolitic alphabet became widespread in Moravia and Pannonia, where the brothers carried out their missionary activities, but in Bulgaria, where the disciples of Constantine and Methodius went after their death, the Glagolitic alphabet did not take root. In Bulgaria, before the advent of the Slavic alphabet, the letters of the Greek alphabet were used to record Slavic speech. Therefore, “taking into account the specifics of the situation, the students of Constantine and Methodius adapted the Greek alphabet for recording Slavic speech. At the same time, to designate Slavic sounds ( W, SCH et al.), which were absent in Greek, the Glagolitic letters were taken with some changes in their style according to the type of angular and rectangular Greek uncial letters. This alphabet received its name - Cyrillic - by the name of the real creator of Slavic writing, Cyril (Konstantin): with whom, if not with him, the name of the most common alphabet among the Slavs should be associated.

Manuscripts of Slavic translations of Constantine and Methodius, as well as their students, have not survived to our time. The oldest Slavic manuscripts date back to the 10th-11th centuries. Most of them (12 out of 18) are written in Glagolitic. These manuscripts are closest in origin to the translations of Constantine and Methodius and their students. The most famous of them are the Glagolitic gospels of Zografskoe, Mariinskoe, Assemanievo, the Cyrillic Savvin's book, the Supralskaya manuscript, the Hilandar leaflets. The language of these texts is called Old Church Slavonic.

Old Church Slavonic has never been a spoken, living language. It is impossible to identify it with the language of the ancient Slavs - the vocabulary, morphology and syntax of Old Slavonic translations largely reflect the features of the vocabulary, morphology and syntax of texts written in Greek, i.e. Slavic words follow the patterns on which Greek words were built. Being the first (known to us) written language of the Slavs, Old Slavonic for the Slavs became a model, model, ideal of the written language. And in the future, its structure was largely preserved already in the texts of the Church Slavonic language of various versions.

  KIRILL(before he became a monk at the beginning of 869 - Constantine) (c. 827-14.02.869) and METHODIUS(c. 815-06.04.885) - Enlighteners, creators of the Slavic alphabet, who translated the Holy Books into Slavic, preachers of Christianity, creators of the Slavic Church independent of the German episcopate, Orthodox saints.

The brothers came from a noble Greek family that lived in Thessalonica. Methodius was the eldest of seven brothers, Constantine was the youngest. Having a military rank, Methodius was the ruler in one of the subordinates Byzantine Empire Slavic principalities and studied the Slavic language. After staying there for about 10 years, Methodius became a monk in one of the monasteries on Mount Olympus in Asia Minor. Constantine studied together with the future Byzantine Emperor Michael with the best teachers in Constantinople, including the future Patriarch Photius. For his mind and outstanding knowledge, he received the title of Philosopher. At the end of his studies, he took the rank of priest and was appointed curator of the patriarchal library at the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople. Then he became a teacher of philosophy at the higher school of Constantinople. In 851, Constantine was included in the Byzantine embassy to the Arab countries. After that, Constantine retired to his brother Methodius in a monastery on Mount Olympus.

In 860, the emperor and patriarch sent Constantine and Methodius on a mission to Khazaria to convince the kagan to accept Christianity. On the way to Khazaria, during a short stay in Korsun (Crimea), they found the relics of St. Clement, Pope of Rome. Here Konstantin found the Gospel and the Psalter, written in "Russian letters". Upon his return, Constantine remained in Constantinople, and Methodius received hegumenship at the Polychron monastery.

In 862, at the request of the Moravian prince Rostislav and the order of Emperor Michael, Constantine began work on translating texts into Slavic. Holy Scripture. In 863, with the help of brother Methodius and the disciples of Gorazd, Clement, Savva, Naum and Angelyar, he compiled the Slavic alphabet - Cyrillic and translated into Slavic the "service" books: the Gospel, the Apostle, the Psalter. In the same year, the brothers Constantine and Methodius set out to preach Christianity in Moravia. For preaching Holy Scripture in the Slavic language, and not in Hebrew, Greek or Latin, they were accused by the German bishops of trilingual heresy and summoned to Rome. Pope Adrian approved worship in the Slavic language, and ordered the translated books to be placed in Roman churches. While in Rome, Constantine fell ill, took tonsure with the name Cyril, and died 50 days later. He was buried in the church of St. Clement.

After the death of Cyril, Methodius, ordained archbishop of Moravia and Pannonia, was sent to Pannonia. There, together with his students, he continued to spread Christianity, writing and books in the Slavic language. The German bishops who preached in these lands achieved the arrest, trial, exile and imprisonment of Methodius. By order of Pope John VIII, he was released and restored to the rights of an archbishop. Methodius baptized the Czech prince Borivoi and his wife Lyudmila. For rejecting the teaching of the Roman Church about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son, Methodius was summoned to Rome, where he managed to defend his views. Last years Methodius spent his life in the capital of Moravia - Velehrad. With the help of two students, he translated into Slavonic Old Testament(except for the Maccabean books), Nomocanon (Regulations of the Holy Fathers) and patristic books (Paterik), and also wrote the Life of Constantine (Cyril) the Philosopher. Methodius was buried in the cathedral church of Velegrad.

Cyril and Methodius laid the foundation for a special direction in Christianity - the Cyril and Methodius tradition, which combines the features of various Christian teachings.

The brothers were called "Slovenian teachers". Memorial Day of Saints Equal-to-the-Apostles Cyril and Methodius: May 24 (11). On the same day, many Slavic countries celebrate the Holiday of Slavic Literature and Culture.

A feature of the culture of the Slavs was that among all European peoples only for the Slavs the creation of their own writing and the adoption of Christianity accompanied each other; and since then, book enlightenment has been inseparable from the spiritual nourishment of the people, being the work of the Church in close cooperation with state power.

The process of creating Slavic writing was long and complicated.

The studies of the last decades have proved that the Slavic writing actually arose even before the division of the common Slavic language into branches, i.e. no later than the middle of the 1st millennium AD. True, it was primitive - it included a small set of simple signs that varied among different tribes. Therefore, the use of the original Slavic writing was very limited.

The fact that the ancient Slavs had some kind of writing of their own is evidenced by the ancient Bulgarian writer of the late 9th - early 10th century. "Chernorizet Brave", the author of the first essay on the history of Slavic writing - "The Legend of the Letters". Brave in the "Tale" pointed out two types of writing in ancient Slavs – traits and cuts, which the Slavs chtehu and bastard(that is, they read, counted and guessed) . These were probably the simplest counting signs in the form of dashes, notches, etc., generic and personal signs, property signs, calendar conventions and signs for divination.

In addition to the testimony of Chernorizets the Brave, the existence of a letter of the “features and cuts” type among the ancient Slavs is confirmed by archaeological finds, as well as written reports of the 9th-10th centuries. peoples neighboring with the Slavs. Among these testimonies, the most significant are the following:

1. The Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan, who visited the Volga Bulgarians in 921, described the rite of burial of the Rus that he saw there: “ First they lit a fire and burned the body on it, says Ibn Fadlan, - and then they built something like a round hill and put a big piece of wood in the middle of it/carved from/ poplars, they wrote on it the name of this husband and the name of the king of the Rus and retired».

2. A contemporary of Ibn Fadlan, the Arab writer El Massudi (d. 956), in his work “Golden Meadows”, indicates that in one of the “Russian temples” he discovered a prophecy inscribed on a stone.

3. The Western European historian Bishop Titmar of Merseburg (976-1018) left a message that in the pagan temple of the city of Retra, their names were inscribed with special signs on Slavic idols.

4. The Arabic teachings of Ibn el Nedim in the work “The Book of Painting the Sciences” conveys the story of the ambassador of one of the Caucasian princes, who visited the prince of the Rus, dating back to 987: “ I was told by one on the veracity of which I rely, - writes Ibn el Nedim - that one of the kings of Mount Kabk sent him to the king of the Rus; he claimed that they have writing carved on wood. He also showed me a piece of white wood, on which were depicted, I don’t know, words or individual letters". Ibn el Nedim even sketched this inscription. It was not possible to decipher it; in terms of graphics, it is different from Greek, and from Latin, and from Glagolitic, and from Cyrillic writing.

The “names” written on Slavic idols (according to Titmar of Merseburg), the names of the late Rus and his “king” (reported by Ibn Fadlan), were probably conventional personal signs; similar signs were often used by Russian princes of the 10th-11th centuries. on their coins and seals. But the mention of a prophecy inscribed on a stone in the "temple of the Rus" (which El Massoudi mentioned) makes one think of "features and cuts" for divination. As for the inscription copied by Ibn el Nedim, some researchers assumed that this was a distorted Arabic spelling, while others saw them as similar to Scandinavian runes. However, the majority of Russian and Bulgarian scientists (P.Ya. Chernykh, D.S. Likhachev, E. Georgiev and others) consider the inscription of Ibn el Nedim to be a monument of pre-Cyrillic writing of the “devils and cuts” type. However, a hypothesis was also put forward that this inscription is nothing more than a pictographic route map. But in any case, the possibility of using Latin or Greek writing for all the mentioned inscriptions, even if adapted to Slavic speech, is completely excluded. After all, Titmar, and El Massoudi, and Ibn el Nedim, and Ibn Fadlan were familiar with the Latin and Greek alphabets.

The presence among the Slavs of writing such as "features and cuts" is also confirmed by archaeological finds. For example, signs on a vase intended for ritual purposes (found in Lepesovka inside a pagan sanctuary). The wide side of the vase is divided into 12 sectors corresponding to the 12 months of the year. Each of the sectors is filled with symbolic images, the content and sequence of which correspond to the monthly sequence of the pagan holidays of the ancient Slavs and the calendar of agricultural work in the area. According to B.A. Rybakov, these signs (they are also present on other objects of the so-called "Chernyakhov culture") are a kind of ancient Slavic "features and cuts".

A letter like "damn and cuts" was convenient for keeping a calendar, for divination, counting, etc., but completely unsuitable for writing complex documentary texts such as orders, contracts, etc. The need for such records undoubtedly appeared among the Slavs (as well as among all other historical peoples) at the same time as the emergence of the Slavic states. Therefore, even before the adoption of Christianity and before the creation of the alphabet by Constantine the Philosopher, the Slavs used the Greek alphabets in the east and south, and the Greek and Latin alphabets in the west. The monument of recording Slavic speech in Latin letters is the so-called "Freisingen passages" (X century), where a record in Greek letters of individual words of Slavic speech, interspersed in Greek texts, was found.

The fact that with the adoption of Christianity by the Slavic countries, repeated attempts were made to create their own Slavic script, is evidenced by the same “Chernorizet Brave”. According to him, having adopted Christianity and joined the culture of the Roman Empire, the Slavs tried to write down their speech in "Roman and Greek letters", i.e. with the help of the letters of the Latin and Greek alphabets, but "without dispensation", that is, without special device them to Slavic speech. So, for example, the sound b was transmitted by the Greek letter "vita", the sound w- "sigma", h- a combination of "theta" with "zeta", c- a combination of "theta" with "sigma", at- a combination of "omicron" with "upsilon". That's what the Greeks did. The Slavs, according to the Bulgarian linguist E. Georgiev, undoubtedly moved even further along the path of adapting Greek writing to their speech. For this they are Greek letters they formed ligatures, and also supplemented the Greek alphabet with letters from other alphabets, in particular, from the Hebrew alphabet, which was known to the Slavs through the Khazars. "And so it went on for many years," testifies Brave. An indication of the use of letters of different alphabets is evidence that attempts to create a Slavic letter were made simultaneously in different languages. Slavic territories, bordering both the Carolingian Empire and the Byzantine Empire.

However, the use of foreign alphabets to convey the sounds of Slavic speech, of course, could not be successful. Therefore, in the middle of the IX century. a more perfect writing system was created, reflecting all the phonetic features of Slavic pronunciation. It arose not in the Slavic countries, but in Byzantium, although in the territory inhabited by the Slavs. The creators of the Slavic writing were the children of the "drungar" from Thessalonica (present-day Thessaloniki) Constantine (in the schema Cyril) and Methodius.

Tradition assigns the main role in the creation of Slavic writing to St. Konstantin-Cyril, who received a brilliant classical education and for his scholarship, was nicknamed the Philosopher. One of the mentors of the future enlightener of the Slavs was, in particular, the famous Patriarch Photius. AT early years teaching, he worked seriously in the field of philology. The early work of Photius "Lexicon" is a huge summary of lexical and grammatical notes and materials. And just during the period of Photius's work on the Lexicon, Konstantin studied with him, who soon became the greatest philologist of his time.

There is no reason to believe that the idea of ​​​​creating a special Slavic script - that is, the scientific ordering of the already existing writing systems among the Slavs - originated with Patriarch Photius himself or in his entourage. The intellectuals of the Fotievsky circle were just convinced of the exceptional properties of Greek culture and the Greek language. And this conviction led them to a complete unwillingness to know what cultural processes are taking place in the world around them. Photius himself, despite his encyclopedic education, apparently did not know any other language than Greek, and in his correspondence and writings he never mentioned the existence of a special “Slavic writing”, although he lived to the time when bookishness in the Slavic language spread widely.

At the same time, the idea of ​​creating a special letter for the Slavs was one of the manifestations of the broad political plans of the Byzantine state and the Church of the 9th century, aimed at drawing new territories, including the Slavic states, into the Byzantine sphere of influence. Constantine the Philosopher was directly involved in the implementation of these plans - for example, as part of the Byzantine diplomatic missions to the neighboring states of the Empire - Khazaria and the Arab Caliphate. During these embassies, he entered into discussions with Jewish and Arab scholars, victoriously repelling their attacks on Christianity.

Another direction of Byzantine policy was the Balkans, Crimea, North Caucasus and Eastern Europe. There, the preaching of Christianity was carried out for pagan and semi-pagan peoples with the aim of creating a church apparatus on these lands, subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. This opened up opportunities for involving such states as the First Bulgarian Kingdom, the Khazar Khaganate, the power of the "Rus" on the Dnieper into the orbit of Byzantine influence.

The geopolitical plans of the Byzantine kings in this case completely coincided with the missionary tasks of the Eastern Christian Church, which, according to the commandment of Christ, strives to "go and teach all peoples" the Truth of salvation, for which it was necessary "to be everything for everyone in order to save at least some" .

These tasks prompted Konstantin, who had apparently long wanted to create a special Slavic script, to intense philological studies. In preparation for missionary work for the benefit of the Church, he studied a number of Semitic languages ​​and their writing systems, studied the translation experience of some unbelieving authors (apparently translators of the Gospel into Syriac), substantiating this practice with reference to the authority of St. Cyril of Alexandria, who taught that " not all, if they say evil things, it’s lepo to run away and sweep away". Having received theoretical philological knowledge from Photius, Konstantin the Philosopher was able to analyze and compare systems with their help. different languages which the educated Byzantine elite considered beneath their dignity to study. This meticulous work prepared Konstantin to create an original writing system for the Slavs.

Life of St. Constantina-Cyril describes the creation of the Slavic alphabet as an act that did not require much time: an embassy from Great Moravia arrived in Constantinople with a request to send a teacher who could explain to the Moravians the truths of Christian teaching in their native Slavic language. The choice fell on Constantine - not only because he was famous for his outstanding theological and philological knowledge, but also because Constantine came from Thessalonica. The entire territory adjacent to this city was occupied by Slavic tribes, and its inhabitants spoke Slavic fluently. As a native of Thessalonica, Konstantin, the Slavic language was well known from childhood; there is even evidence (though not considered absolutely reliable) that the mother of Constantine and Methodius was of Slavic origin. And the father of the future enlighteners of the Slavs led one of the Slavic provinces of Byzantium, and therefore, of course, he had to be fluent in the language of his subordinates.

When the emperor turned to Constantine with a request to take on an educational mission in Moravia, the Philosopher asked if the Moravans had their own script, otherwise it would be very difficult to complete the task. The emperor said to this: “My grandfather, and my father, and many others sought ... and did not find,” which once again confirms the repeated attempts to create a special letter for the vast Slavic ecumene. The emperor, who knew the philological abilities of the Philosopher, suggested that he himself create such a letter. Constantine turned to God for help, the Slavic alphabet was created with grace-filled assistance. Constantine translated the Gospel for the Slavs and went to Moravia...

However, even if the alphabet, which accurately reflects the phonetic features of Slavic speech, was gracefully revealed to the Enlightener Equal to the Apostles, the translation of such a complex work as the Gospel was hardly possible in the few months that the Life of St. Constantine-Cyril assigns for such work. Most likely, work on the creation of the Slavic script and the translation of liturgical texts into the Slavic language began long before the arrival of the Moravian embassy in Constantinople, apparently still on the Bithynian Olympus (in Asia Minor), where Constantine and his elder brother Methodius lived for several years in the 50s years of the 9th century, "dealing only with books", as evidenced by the Life of Constantine-Cyril.

So, the first, even before leaving for Moravia, was the Gospel of the short aprakos type. In "Pr about voice" - a large verse preface to the translation of the Gospel - Constantine convinces: " soul is letterless(that is, a person who is not familiar with the text of Holy Scripture) - is dead"And with enthusiasm calls on the Slavs to accept the word of Divine Wisdom, set forth in a language they understand, written down in letters of the Slavic alphabet specially created for this.

The work begun by Constantine was continued by him and his brother already in Moravia. In 864–867 the brothers translated the Apostle, also of the short aprakos type. The translations of the Paremeinik and the Psalter, the texts of the Liturgy, the Missal, the Trebnik, the Book of Hours, the Octoechos, the Common Menaion should probably be attributed to the same time - in general, as the author of the Life of Constantine-Cyril determined, attributing this merit only to the youngest of the brothers, " soon the whole church order translated».

The significance that the Slavic primary teachers and their students attached to this act is indicated by the paraphrase of a quotation from the book of the prophet Isaiah placed after this message: “ the ears of the deaf were opened to hear the words of the book, and the speech of the tongue-tied became clear". This meant that only with the establishment of worship in the Slavic language did Moravian Christians get the opportunity to consciously confess Christian doctrine.

After that, Constantine and Methodius began work together on a complete translation of the books included in the biblical canon.

Having provided the flock with the necessary liturgical texts, the Slavic primary teachers hurried to provide it with spiritual nourishment as well – they translate the “Writing on the Right Faith”, one of the sections of the treatise “Great Apologist” of Patriarch Nicephorus I of Constantinople, that is, they expound in the Slavic language the main dogmas and rules of Orthodox dogma. The appearance of this translation marked the beginning of the creation of philosophical and theological terminology in the Slavic language.

Another translation was made, absolutely necessary for the full life of the young Moravian Church, the translation of the Nomocanon, a collection of decrees church councils defining the norms of intra-church life. The so-called “Nomocanon of John Scholasticus” was taken as a basis, greatly abridged in translation, obviously to make it easier for the Slavs to assimilate the necessary minimum of basic legal norms and to adapt the Byzantine manual to more simple conditions Slavic life.

By this time should probably be attributed to the compilation of the Penance Book under the title "Commandments of the Holy Fathers", the text of which was preserved with other texts of Great Moravian origin in one of the oldest Glagolitic manuscripts - the so-called "Sinai breviary" of the 11th century.

important fruit joint cooperation the Thessalonica brothers and the Moravian nobility is ancient monument Slavic law - "The law of judgment for people."

Thus, at the time when, at the request of the Kyiv prince Askold, the Byzantine emperor sent a bishop to him for the baptism of Russia (about 866), a complete corpus of liturgical and doctrinal texts in the Slavic language already existed and was successfully used in the Slavic lands neighboring Russia, and clergy from the Slavs were also trained. According to some historians of the Church, Bishop Michael, who was then sent to Russia by the Patriarch of Constantinople, could have been a pupil of Constantine and Methodius...

After the death of Constantine-Cyril († 869), Methodius and his disciples continued to create a body of Slavic literature. In the early 80s of the ninth century. Methodius completed the translation of the bulk of the canonical books of the Old and entire New Testaments. This translation has not survived to our time, but played its role as a stimulus for the resumption of work on translations of biblical books in Bulgaria at the end of the 9th-10th centuries. - in the so-called "golden age" of ancient Bulgarian culture.

Note that the first translations of individual parts of the Bible, for example, into Old French were undertaken only in the second half of the 12th century. heretics, the Waldensians, and translations of the Bible into other Romance and Germanic languages ​​belong to an even later time.

In Moravia, and then in Bulgaria, where, after the death of Methodius († 885), the disciples of the Slavic enlighteners had to flee from the persecution of the German clergy, they translated the so-called "father's books" - either a collection of the lives of the saints, or a collection of the works of the "Church Fathers " - early Christian writers.

By many years of selfless service to the Church and their people, Saints Cyril and Methodius created not only a writing system that adequately reflected Slavic speech, not only a Slavonic written language capable of serving all spheres of spiritual and social life at the same high level as Greek and Latin, but and a corpus of texts in the Slavic language necessary for Christian worship and spiritual nourishment of believing Slavs.

On the Russian lands, on the basis of the Russian version of the Slavic (actually Old Slavonic) language of the Cyril and Methodius translations, over time, the Church Slavonic language developed, which was the main language of writing in Russia until the end of the 17th century and is still the language Orthodox worship in the East Slavic cultural area.

On the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet, Bulgarian (the end of the 9th century), Old Russian (the 11th century), Serbian (the 12th century) with a local Bosnian variant, the Slavic-speaking Wallachian and Moldavian (14th–15th centuries), Romanian (the 16th century, c. 1864 translated into Latin script) and other scripts. In the field of office work, Cyrillic was also used in the offices of Dalmatia (XIV-XVII centuries) and Albania (XIV-XV centuries).

In 1708–1710 By order of Peter I, a civil font was created on the basis of the Cyrillic alphabet for use in business writing and secular printing. Graphically, it is as close as possible to the styles of the book cursive, which was formed in the last third of the 17th century. under the influence of Ukrainian-Belarusian handwriting and fonts, influenced by the Latin and Greek traditions. quantitative and qualitative composition of this alphabet are defined by the reform of 1918.

During the 2nd half of XVIII- early 20th century modernized at the beginning of the 18th century. the Russian version of the Cyrillic alphabet (taking into account local features) formed the basis of the modern alphabets of the Orthodox Slavic countries: Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus and Macedonia. As a result of the centuries-old work of the clergy, philologists, teachers, state administration, a single cultural area of ​​Greek-Slavic writing was formed, including different national languages ​​and cultural traditions.

It is known that the Slavic alphabet is called Cyrillic named after its creator, St. Kirill. However, it is also known that in the Middle Ages two alphabets were used to record Slavic speech: along with the one that we now call "Cyrillic", another one called "Glagolitic" was also quite common. The differences between them were that if in Cyrillic letters of the Greek alphabet were used to convey sounds that coincided with the sounds of the Greek language, and letters of special styles were introduced only to convey those sounds that were absent in the Greek language, then in Glagolitic for all sounds of the Slavic language, special inscriptions were invented that had no analogies (with the exception of individual graphemes resembling the corresponding inscriptions of the letters of the Greek minuscule) in the alphabets of other peoples. At the same time, the continuity between the Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets is obvious, since the styles of some letters in them coincide or are very similar. In the earliest surviving monuments of Slavic writing (XI century), both alphabets are presented. Monuments are known where both types of writing are used in one code - for example, the so-called Reims Gospel (XIV century).

However, it has been proven that, in fact, Konstantin the Philosopher created not the Cyrillic, but the Glagolitic alphabet. Moreover, its creation was the result of a rather long process: developed on the basis of the dialects of the Slavic population of the Solun region, this alphabet already in Great Moravia underwent a number of changes caused by the need to take into account and reflect the peculiarities of local pronunciation; the following changes in the "Glagolitic" occurred during its distribution in other South Slavic lands, where there were their own peculiarities of pronunciation.

As the only Slavic alphabet, the Glagolitic existed for no more than a third of a century. Already at the end of the IX century. on the territory of the First Bulgarian Kingdom, where after the death of St. Methodius († 885) - as a result of the persecution of Slavic worship and writing in Great Moravia - the students of the Slavic enlighteners moved, a new alphabet was created, which eventually received the name Cyrillic. Its basis was the Greek uncial script; the Greek alphabet was supplemented by those letters of the alphabet brought from Moravia, which conveyed sounds specific to the Slavic language; but even these letters have undergone changes in accordance with the statutory nature of the letter. At the same time, a number of new graphemes were introduced to convey sounds characteristic of Bulgarian dialects, and those graphemes of the Glagolitic alphabet that reflected characteristics West Slavic dialects of Pannonia and Moravia. At the same time, the Cyrillic alphabet also included letters that convey the specific sounds of the Greek language used in borrowed words (“fita”, “ksi”, “psi”, “izhitsa”, etc.); the numerical value of the Cyrillic letters, with rare exceptions, is determined by the order of the Greek alphabet.

In the eastern regions of the First Bulgarian, where the Greek language was widely used, the Cyrillic alphabet, which was simpler in style, replaced the Glagolitic alphabet from use, the active use of which ceased on the Bulgarian lands by the turn of the 12th-13th centuries. In the X-XI centuries. (until 1096) Glagolitic was used as a system for writing liturgical books in the Czech Republic. Later, Glagolitic writing was preserved only in Croatia, where it was used by local Benedictine monks in liturgical books and in business writing until the beginning of the 20th century. Through Croatian mediation (as a result of the activities of Emperor Charles IV of Luxembourg), the Glagolitic in the XIV-XV centuries. again gained fame in individual monastic centers of the Czech Republic (Emmau Monastery "on the Slavs" in Prague), as well as in Poland (Olesnitsky Monastery in Silesia and "on Klepazh" in Krakow).

The alphabet, which spread in the eastern regions of the First Bulgarian Kingdom, created on the basis of the Greek uncial, was transferred to Russia, where it completely prevailed. Being the only known Slavic alphabet here, it began to be called by the name of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Enlightener of the Slavs " Cyrillic"(although initially this name was attached to the alphabet, which is now called the Glagolitic alphabet). In the same territories where the Glagolitic alphabet was established, its original name (after the name of the creator) could not be retained for various reasons: for example, the Croatian clergy, trying to achieve from the Roman curia of consent to the use of a special Slavic letter, attributed its invention to the early Christian writer of the 4th century Blessed Jerome - the famous translator of the Bible into Latin. Under these conditions, a neutral (in the sense of indicating authorship) name was established for the alphabet created by Constantine-Cyril " Glagolitic"...

The May issue of the Resurrection newspaper is posted in the newspaper archive section.

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