Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic (also called
Old Church Slavic,
Old Bulgarian,
Old Macedonian, and
Old Slavonic) is the first literary
Slavic language, developed from the Slavonic dialect of
Thessaloniki (Solun) by the
9th century Byzantine missionaries,
Saints Cyril and Methodius. It was used by them for translation of the
Bible and other texts from
Greek and for some of their own writings. It played a great role in the history of Slavic languages and evolved into
Church Slavonic, which is still used as a
liturgical language by some
Orthodox and
Catholic Churches of the Slavic peoples.
The language was standardized for the mission of the two apostles to
Great Moravia in
863 (see
Glagolitic alphabet for details). For that purpose,
Cyril and his brother
Methodius first codified Old Church Slavonic from the Southern Slavic dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of their city, Solun (
Thessaloniki), in the
Byzantine Empire.
As part of the preparation for the mission, in
862/
863, the
Glagolitic alphabet was created and the most important prayers and liturgical books, including the Aprakos Evangeliar (an Evangeliar containing only feast-day and Sunday readings), the
Psalter, and
Acts of the Apostles, were translated. (The Gospels were also translated early, but it is unclear whether Sts. Cyril or Methodius had a hand in this). The language and the alphabet were taught at the Great Moravian Academy (Veľkomoravské učilište) and were used for government and religious documents and books between
863 and
885. The texts written during this phase contain characteristics of the
Slavic vernaculars in
Great Moravia.
In 885, the use of the Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was prohibited by the
Pope in favour of
Latin. Students of the two apostles, who were expelled from Great Moravia in
886, brought the Glagolitic alphabet and the Old Church Slavonic language to the Bulgarian Empire. It was taught at two
Bulgarian academies - in
Preslav (capital
893-
972) and
Ohrid (capital
991/
997-
1015). The
Cyrillic alphabet was developed shortly afterwards in the
Preslav Literary School and replaced the Glagolitic one. The texts written during this era contain characteristics of the vernacular of Bulgaria. There are some linguistic differences between texts written in the two academies.
Thereupon the language, in its Bulgarian recension, spread to other South-Eastern and Eastern European Slavic territories, most notably to
Croatia,
Serbia,
Bohemia,
Lesser Poland, and the
Russian principalities. The texts written in each country contain characteristics of the local Slavonic vernacular.
Much later, local redactions of Old Church Slavonic were created for ecclesiastical and administrative use, and are collectively known as
Church Slavonic (
Bulgarian: църковнославянски език,
ts'rkovnoslavyanski ezik;
Russian: церковнославя́нский язы́к,
tserkovnoslavyánskiy yazík), but these terms are often confused. Church Slavonic maintained a prestige status, particularly in
Russia, for many centuries"among Slavs in the East it had a status analogous to that of the
Latin language in western
Europe, but had the advantage of being substantially less divergent from the
vernacular tongues of average parishioners. Some Orthodox churches, such as the
Russian Orthodox Church,
Bulgarian Orthodox Church and
Serbian Orthodox Church, as well as several
Greek Catholic churches, still use Church Slavonic in their services and chants today.
Initially Old Church Slavonic was written with the
Glagolitic alphabet, but later it was replaced by the
Cyrillic alphabet. Only in
Croatia was the local variant of Glagolitic alphabet preserved.
Old Church Slavonic is evidenced by a relatively small body of manuscripts, most of which were written during the late 10th and the early 11th centuries. The language has a Southern Slavic basis with an admixture of Western Slavic features inherited during the mission of
Saint Cyril and
Saint Methodius to
Great Moravia (
863 -
885). The only well-preserved manuscript of Moravian recension, the Kiev Folia, is characterised by the replacement of some Southern Slavonic phonetic and lexical features with Western Slavic ones. Manuscripts written in the medieval Bulgarian kingdom have, on the other hand, fewer Western Slavic features.
Old Church Slavonic is valuable to historical linguists since it preserves archaic features believed to have once been common to all Slavonic languages. Some of these features are:
*nasal counterparts of the vowels o and e
*use of supershort vowels ь and ъ for
Proto-Indo-European short
i and
u *open articulation of the yat vowel
*[ň] and [ľ] for the Proto-Slavic [nj], [lj]
*Proto-Slavic declension system based on stem-endings (so-called o-stems, jo-stems, a-stems and ja-stems)
*aorists, the imperfect, Proto-Slavic paradigms for participles etc. were still used
The Southern Slavonic nature of the language is evident from the following variations:
* phonetic:
**use of [ra-], [la-] for the Proto-Slavic [or-], [ol-]
**use of [s] for the Proto-Slavic [x] before the Proto-Slavic åi
**use of [cv-], [dzv-] for the Proto-Slavic [kv'-], [gv'-]
* morphosyntactic
** use of the dative possessive case in personal pronouns and nouns: рка ти; отъпоуштенье грхомъ; descriptive future tense using the verb хотти; use of the comparative form мьнии (smaller) to mean younger.
**use of suffixed demonstrative pronouns (тъ, та, то). In Bulgarian and Macedonian these developed into suffixed definite articles.
Some of the phonetic features in Old Church Slavonic are typical only for Bulgarian, as follows:
* very wide articulation of the
Yat vowel (); originally still preserved in the Bulgarian dialects of the
Rhodope mountains;
* Proto-Slavonic reflexes of *tj ([t']) and *dj ([d']):
| Proto-Slavic | Old Church Slavonic | Bulgarian | Czech | Macedonian | Polish | Russian | Slovak | Slovenian | Serbian |
|---|
| *dʲ | 'd | 'd | z | gʲ | ʣ | ' | ʣ | j | ʥ |
| *tʲ | ʃt | ʃt | ʦ | kʲ | ʦ | ʧʲ | ʦ | ʧ | ʨ |
| *gt/kt | ʃt | ʃt | ʦ | kʲ | ʦ | ʧʲ | ʦ | ʧ | ʨ |
Bulgarian recensions
Several literary centres were operated in the
Bulgarian Empire. These centred around the two main academies in Ohrid and Preslav. This led to the appearance of multiple Bulgarian recensions in the period from the 9th to the 11th centuries. Thus:
* both Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets were concurrently used
* in some documents the original supershort vowels [ъ] and [ь] merged and only one of the letters was used to represent both of them
* in West-Bulgarian recensions [ъ] was sometimes substituted with [o]
* in East-Bulgarian recensions the original ascending reflex (
rь, lь) of syllabic 'r' and 'l' was sometimes changed to descending
ьr, ьl or a combination of both was used
* original [ы] and [ъi] merged to [ы]
* sometimes the use of letter 'Ѕ' (dz) was unified with that of 'З' (z)
* verb forms
naricaj, naricaješi were substituted or alternated with
narič, naričeši * lexical - use of words with proto-
Bulgar origin, such as
кумиръ, капище, чрьтогъ, блъванъ, etc.
Moravian recension
While in the
Prague fragments the only Moravian influence is replacing [št] with [c] and [žd] with [z], the recension evidenced by the Kiev Folia is characterised by the following features:
*confusion between the letters
Big yus () and
Uk () occurs once in the Kiev Folia, when the expected form is spelled
*use of [c] for the Proto-Slavonic *tj, use of [dz] for the Proto-Slavonic *dj, use of šč for the Proto-Slavonic *skj
*use of the words mьša, cirky, papežь, prěfacija, klepati, piskati etc.
*preservation of the group dl (e.g. modlitvami)
*use of the ending - ъmь instead of "omь in the masc. sg. instrumental, use of the pronoun čьso
Later recensions (Church Slavonic)
Later use of the language in a number of medieval Slavic states resulted in the adjustment of Old Church Slavonic to the local vernacular, though a number of Southern Slavic,
Moravian or
Bulgarian features were also preserved. Some of the significant later recensions of Old Church Slavonic (referred to as Church Slavonic) in the present time are:
Slovenian,
Croatian,
Serbian,
Russian.
Croatian recension
The Croatian recension of Old Church Slavonic is one of the earliest known today. It only used the Glagolitic alphabet. The nasal sounds []/[ę] had been substituted with [o]/[u] and a variety of reflections of the proto-Slavic *tj and *dj emerged.
Russian recension
The Russian recension was developed after the
10th century on the basis of the earlier Bulgarian recensions, from which it differed slightly. Its main features are:
* substitution of the nasal sound [] with [u]
* merging of letters [ě] and [ja]
Serbian recension
The Serbian recension was at first written in Glagolitic alphabet, but later switched to Cyrillic alphabet. It appeared in the
12th century on the basis of the East-Bulgarian recensions:
* nasal vowels [] and [ę] were replaced with [u] and [е]
* use of diacritical signs by the
Resava recension
* use of letters [i], [y], [ě] for the sound 'i' by the
Bosnian recension
The history of Old Church Slavonic writing includes a northern tradition begun by the mission to
Great Moravia, including a short mission in the
Balaton principality, and a Bulgarian tradition begun by some of the missionaries who relocated to
Bulgaria after the expulsion from Great Moravia.
Old Church Slavonic's first writings, translations of Christian liturgical and Biblical texts, were produced by Byzantine missionaries
Saint Cyril and
Saint Methodius, mostly during their mission to
Great Moravia.
The most important authors in Old Church Slavonic after the death of Methodius and the dissolution of the Great Moravian academy were
Clement of Ohrid (active also in Great Moravia),
Constantine of Preslav,
Chernorizetz Hrabar and
John Exarch, all of whom worked in medieval
Bulgaria at the end of the
9th and the beginning of the
10th century.
The original name of the language in the Old Church Slavonic texts was simply "Slavonic" (словѣньскыи ѩзыкъ
slověnĭskyj językŭ),
[Nandris, Grigore (1959). Old Church Slavonic Grammar, p. 2 (London: University of London Athlone Press).] derived from the word словѣне
slověne, the self-designation of the compilers of the texts.
The language is sometimes called "Old Slavic", but that term is undesirable as it may be confused with the distinct
Proto-Slavic language.
The designation
Old Bulgarian (German
Altbulgarisch) was introduced in the
19th century by reputable linguists as
August Schleicher,
Martin Hattala and
Leopold Geitler who noticed that the linguistic features of the first Slavic literary works are the same as those of the Bulgarian language. For similar reasons
Russian linguist
Aleksandr Vostokov used the term
Slav-Bulgarian. The designation is, however, now considered by some as incorrect, as it implies that Old Church Slavonic was the ancestor exclusively of
Bulgarian and that all manuscripts have a connection to Bulgarian.
The commonly accepted terms in modern English-language Slavonic studies are
Old Church Slavonic and
Old Church Slavic. Some scholars use these terms for tradition's sake but believe that
Old Macedonian better reflects the language's basis in the dialect of Thessaloniki spoken by Cyril and Methodius. It should be noted that the name "Old Macedonian" is unrelated to current ethnic and political polemics surrounding the
Republic of Macedonia and the term predates the issue.
Old Bulgarian can still be found in a number of sources and is the only designation used by Bulgarian linguistics.
Modern Slavic nomenclature
Here are some of the names used by speakers of modern Slavonic languages:
*
Bosnian staro(crkveno)slavenski 'Old (Church) Slavonic'
*
Bulgarian старобългарски (
transliteration starobălgarski') 'Old Bulgarian'
*
Czech staroslověnština 'Old Slověnian'
*
Croatian staro(crkveno)slavenski 'Old (Church) Slavonic'
*
Macedonian старомакедонски (staromakedonski) 'Old Macedonian'
*
Polish staro-cerkiewno-słowiański 'Old Church Slavonic'
* (staroslavyánskiy yazýk) 'Old Slavonic'
*
Serbian старо(црквено)словенски, staro(crkveno)slovenski 'Old (Church) Slavonic'
*
Slovak (staro)slovienčina '(Old) Slověnian'
*
Slovene stara cerkvena slovanščina, starocrkvenoslovanščina 'Old Slavonic'
* (staroslovjans'ka mova) 'Old Slavonic'
* (staražytnasłavianskaja mova) 'Old Slavonic'
*
Wikisource has "Otche Nash", the
Lord's Prayer, in Old Church Slavonic and other Slavic languages
*
Proto-Slavic language*
Church Slavonic language*
Slavonic-Serbian*
Old Church Slavonic Online, a comprehensive tutorial at the A. Richard Diebold Center for Indo-European Language and Culture, Linguistics Research Center,
University of Texas at Austin
