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The Beginning of Written Slavic
Horace G. Lunt
Slavic Review, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Jun., 1964), pp. 212-219.
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T H E B E G I N N I N G
O F W R I T T E N
S L A V I C
Y HORACE G LUNT
T h e lucid account of the Moravian missioil of Constantine-Cyril and
Methodius that Professor Dvornik has given is a persuasive and up-to-
date statement of widely accepted views. Yet scarcely
a
single specialist
would be willing to agree unhesitatingly with all the details even in
such a brief rksumd of the quarter-century of relations between the
emerging Slavic nations and their neighbors. Indeed, some, as his foot-
notes suggest, might take exception to certain of his major points.
T h e difficulty lies in our historical sources-in their paucity, their
unclear allusions, their omissions, and, worst of all, their contradictions.
First of all , so little of the ninth-century material has survived that we
are dependent on the views written decades or even centuries after the
events. Th en, even the contemporary writings have come down to us
in modified form, owing to varying amounts of recopying and editing,
with inevitable distortions, omissions, reinterpretations, and interpola-
tions.
T h e two principal sources are the Lives of Cyril and Xlethodius, com-
posed originally in Old Church
S1avonic.l T h e V i t a C o n s t n n t i n i
(VC)
was very likely written by hlethodius. Only about a third (i.e., about
eleven pages of this format) is devoted to the Moravian mission, the
rest chronicling Constantine's earlier missions to the Saracens and Kha-
zars, and in particular his theological debates with various opponents.
T h e
V i t a A g e t h o d i i
(VhI) must have been written immediately after the
death of Methodius 8 8 5 ) , for it makes no inention of the sudden dis-
persal of his followers and the termination of their work in hloravia.
I t is shorter (about ten pages of this format) and includes a florid three-
page introduction recounting the history of chosen men from the Crea-
tion down to the Church Councils. T h e biography itself is stylistically
much simpler than that of VC, and there seems to be an assumption
that the reader is acquainted with VC, for only the most necessary
M R . L C h ' T is professor of Slnuic langunges at Halua? d r ni u e f s i t y
T h e traditional name is the Pannonia n Legends, where the epithe t is du e to a
~nistakcnnineteenth-century theory that Old Church Slavonic was a Pannonian dialect,
tvhile the noun is a technical term for the life of a saint. I prefer to avoid the term
legend here because of the auto mati c association of th at word wit h fiction an d fantasy;
these two Lives ar e biographies of solid historical value t ha t emphasize th e sanctity a nd
piety of the heroes withou t attributin g supernatura l powers or miracles to them.
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2 3
h e Beginning of W ri t t e n S lavi c
major points are reiterated; the aim is to chronicle Methodius' activi-
ties without repeating what was said about Constantine.
T he manuscript tradition of the two texts is very different. VR/I is
known only in eight copies, all Russian, and none of the later seven
(fifteenth-eighteenth centuries) offers readings that enable us to recon-
struct anything of importance not found in the oldest, a clear and
rather archaic copy from the end of the t~velfth entury (in the Uspen-
skii sbornik). VC has survived in some thirty copies of importance,
none older than about 1450. Ther e are ttvo major redactions, a South
Slavic and an East Slavic one, the latter further subdivided into a num-
ber of
group^.^
Thus our text of VM is at least three hundred years
removed from the original, and that of VC has undergone at least five
centuries of copying and editing.
Nearly all the other pertinent Slavic texts (brief Lives, panegyric
eulogies to the Saints, hymns and services to their memory, lives of their
disciples, references in the Povest' vl-ernennyklz let) either offer little
supplementary information or else are so patently of later origin that
the additional points they seem to provide are al~vays uspect.
There are some ninth-century Latin sources, comprising about a
dozen papal letters and similar documents as tvell as some rather
oblique references in the Carolingian chronicles compiled fairly soon
after the events. Yet the kno~v n enchant of local bishops and prince-
lings for suppressing documents and forging new ones in support of
various claims to lands and privileges has led scholars to question the
authenticity of some of these texts or at least of some of the important
details. One later compilation, a seven-page Latin account of the dis-
covery and transfer of the relics of St. Clement, confirms many details
of VC and VhI, and adds some new information. I t looks as though the
author of this Italian Legend, Leo of Ostia cn. 1 oo), had at hand
both Slavic and Latin sources-the question is just what he had and hotv
he used it. Being two centuries removed from the events, his vie~vs re
not necessarily entirely correct.
T he only Greek source of real value supplies the epilogue-the
account of the destruction of Methodius' work in hloravia-Pannonia,
the dispersal of his pupils, and the flowering of his teachings in Mace-
donia. ICno~vn s the Bulgarian Legend, it is a twenty-five-page Life
of Kliment, a pupil of Methodius who was bishop in Macedonia, 893-
916. T h e author is generally recognized as the Greek Theophylactus,
2
T h e sta nda rd edition of these an d almost all other Slavic source texts is unfortunatel y
very rare:
H
A.
Jaspos,
ed.,
dln?izepun.zb~ no
UCIIZOI UIC
e0 3n u~ .t io ae nu ~dpeaneiizi~eii
c,zns~ncxoiinucs~~eicliocn~zc A
edition of V C and VM,
with most
Leni ngra d, 1930). new
of the Latin sources directly connected with the brothers, is now available:
F. Grivec
and F. TomSiE, Constanti iztrs et M et ho di us Thes salonicenses: Fontes Rado wi Staroslaw-
e11skog insti tuta, Vol. IV; Zagreb, 1960). I t includes a full Lati n translat ion of t he two
Lives an d a brief comm entary ab ou t the manuscripts. Nonetheless, a repr int of Lavrov
woultl be highl y desirable.
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214 lavic
Rezjiew
Archbishop of Ohrid, 1084-1107, bu t many scholars are convinced
that he merely adapted an originally Slavonic biography written shortly
after Kliment's death.
T o oversimplify the problem, the inner core of reasonably firsthand
evidence could be printed on about seventy pages, most of which repre-
sent the result of several (how many?) copyings and redactions (of what
kind?). Or, to be so generous as to include much further repetition, all
possible references and obviously late compilations and even fictions up
to about 1700, the total text could still be accommodated easily in a
three hundred-page volume. And this is to cover the actions and moti-
vations of several popes and patriarchs, of Byzantine emperors, Caro-
lingian kings and dukes, a number of Slavic rulers in three or four
nascent states, with the details of subtle theological disputes and com-
plex political negotiations.
It is then no ~vonder hat scholarly controversy has continued from
the first notice of VC and VM in
1843. Every investigator, armed by
infallible instinct, is able to spot an interpolation, supply a missing
passage, correct a bias that is obvious in one of the sources. An author
who can call the work of another two-penny romance fantasies can
draw important conclusions by extracting ou t the true facts artfully
Tvoven in with fabrications in a document known to be a medieval falsi-
fication. Even the soberest of scholars must be constantly on guard to
remember hotv much of his interpretation is based on his oTvn assump-
tions and to keep in sight the multiple adjustments in the tvhole struc-
tu re of explanation that must be made when one change of hypothesis
is made.
T o cite a single example from Professor Dvornik's essay, he deduces
that Rastislav3 had requested Rome to send a bishop and that Pope
Nicholas was too dependent on the support of the Franks an d re-
jected the request, whereupon the Moravian tu rned toward Byzantium.
Now the word bishop is only in VC XIV where Rastislav (alone) asks
for a bishop and teacher. In VM v Rastislav and Svatopluk ask only
for a teacher, and in VM
VIII
(cf. Dvornik's note 6 Hadrian writes to
Rastislav and Svatopluk and Kocel, For you aslced for a teacher not
only of this episcopal see, but of the true-believing emperor Michael.
And he sent you the blessed philosopher Constantine, even with his
brother, ~vhil ewe did not get to it. If one chooses to regard the word
bishop in VC as an interpolation4 the whole picture looks different:
the Moravians are making then a purely cultural request, not a far-
reaching political gambit. Fur ther, Rome's failure to react to such a
request is of much less importance than ignoring the plea for a bishop
or, as Dvornik will have it, actually refusing, for reasons supplied by
I
defer to F ath er Dvornik in us ing t his So uth Slavic form for th e \ \Test Slav whose
nam e is recorded correc t ly in VM as Rost is lav.
4
Cf
J.
Kurz,
Slavia
XXXII (1963), 314.
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215
he eg inn ing
of
W ri t t e n S lavi c
the scholar. Th e point is a small one, but i t is the sum of such little
disputed details that adds up to the total summary made by Dvornik or
any other specialist.
T he linguist often disagrees with the historian's interpretation of the
sources, partly because he may be less concerned with the broader con-
sequences of his reading of certain passages. Vh4, for example, four
times uses forms of the word korol- usually translated king, in
accordance with the meaning attested from about 1100 (at the earliest
1000) on. Th e etymology is generally agreed to be the personal name
Karl, that is, Charlemagne, who died i n 816. Yet the passages concerned
cause difficulty, for the kings referred to do not qui te
f i t
the general
historical sense. I t seems to me, as I have set forth in detail elsewhere,
that the hloravians, dealing from day to day with the descendants of
Charlemagne, were not yet so remote that they ~vould se his name as
a title of honor for their own rulers. Indeed i t seems that to read
Karl in VR.1 makes much better sense, bu t bringing unexpected
Carolingians onto the scene upsets some of the quite reasonable plausi-
bilities that historians have woven into a consistent series of explana-
tions that fit both VhI and the bits of data from chronicles and papal
letters. I t becomes necessary to find new plausibilities that account for
the Karls, separating out Karl I1 from Karlmann and Karl 111, all of
whom were powerful men the Moravians and Methodius surely had to
deal with.
It is necessary perhaps to insist that historians and philologists alike
have to operate largely in plausibilities in all their broader interpreta-
tions as well as in many minor points of detail. How many plausibilities
must interlock to add up to a reasonable certainty? A specious question,
of course, yet
I
think that many investigators would do well with
a
larger dose of sober skepticism. I t is healthy to admit frankly, from
time to time, that one does not have all the answers for certain.
Perhaps the clearest indication of the relative interest in Constantine
and Methodius and their Moravian mission is the fact that their impact
is recorded in Western sources as a dangerous bu t passing encroachment
on the German bishoprics, while Greek chroniclers make no mention
at all. At best, perhaps, Byzantium regarded the mission as a minor
failure.
It
is the Slavs who have clung to the pious memory of the
holy brothers, never allowing their fame to die. I t would, to be sure,
be fascinating to be fully apprised of the motives of Rastislav and
Svatopluk and of Rome and Byzantium and to know the full details
of the Mission.
Yet the importance is that
863
despite many unanswered questions,
marks the beginning of written Slavic culture. It does not matter
whether the Moravians wanted a bishop, a teacher of law, a learned
theologian, or merely a skilled translator, nor does it matter whether
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216 lavic eview
the brothers went to Rome by invitation or by summons, or whether
their pupils ever worked in Poland. T h e important thing is that
all
sources attribute to Cyril and/ or Methodius the invention of the Slavic
alphabet and to the brothers and their immediate pupils the translation
of the major liturgical books an d thereby the establishment of a nen7
written language.
Certain Bulgarian and Russian scholars are reluctant to admit the
sudden burgeoning of the new books and argue that the brothers'
accomplishment in producing so many translations
mu s t have been the
result of a long process. They exaggerate the dimensions of the
problem. We must assume that the ambitious Slav in the Byzantine
Empire would strive to be acculturated-to become a Christian adept
in Greek. Since there surely were many Christian Slavs around such
centers as Salonilta, the elementary terminology of the new religion had
undoubtedly been created. Surely many Greeks, like Constantine and
Methodius, had grown up speaking Slavic.
VC makes it clear, and contemporary Latin documents seem to sup-
port the point, that Constantine was a gifted linguist whose experience
included languages written in various alphabets. I t is only a pious ex-
aggeration of the hagiographers to regard as superhuman Constantine's
skill at devising nerv letters suitable to express a Slavic dialect accu-
rately. Nor need we resort to divine assistance as the explanation for
the rapid translation of the most urgently needed texts, presumably
a few prayers, the Psalter, and the lectionaries containing lessons from
both Old and New Testaments. VC and ViCI indicate that the Gospel
lectionary was first, and meticulous philological analyses of surviving
manuscripts have established clearly that the most ancient form of
the
euange l i a r i um
is an excellent translation. Constantine was able
to render the sense in natural, unforced Slavic, although, naturally
enough, with frequent Hellenisms. It was not his fault that later
scribes constantly corrected the translation with a slavish mechanistic
literalism that eventually led to a wooden word-for-word reproduction
of the official Greek versions. T h e other books, so far as the sparse
supply of manuscripts allows us to reconstruct the most ancient tra-
dition, show the same history of progressive Hellenizing purism. Indeed
it is this very history that justifies the admiration of the ninth-century
papal librarian Anastasius for Constantine's learning and the hagiog-
raphers' wonder at his skill as a writer and translator.
Yet Constantine was not working alone.
hlethodius had been some
sort of administrator in a Slavic area and was surely adept at expressing
complex ideas in a Slavic idiom. At the very least five more associates
are mentioned (though not in VC or VM as having accompanied the
brothers from Constantinople, and in AIoravia they found Slavs already
trained in Latin culture who surely helped speed the translations. None
o
the indispensable church books is very large, and one can easily
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2 7
lze Beginning
of
W ri t t en Slaoic
imagine the translation being done from week to week and revised
from year to year in the light of continued experience.
T h e reasons for introducing the vernacular into the full church
usage are extremely controversial. I t looks as though Greek clerics near
Byzantium preferred to identify Christianity with Greek language and
culture, and baptism with a desire for Hellenization.
In the JVest, it
was established that a Christian was obliged to know the Lord's Prayer,
the Apostles' Creed, and some form of general confession in his native
tongue, but all further efforts toward education were in Latin.
Some
scholars speak darkly in terms of political intrigue about orders from
the Byzantine emperor and patriarch, while others argue in terms of
the nineteenth-century romanticism-based struggles for national self-
determination. Unless some sensational new source is discovered, we
shall never know the true motivation, but it is certain that Constantine
was a tenacious and devoted advocate of the right of every man to
~vorship he Lord in his own language. He and his followers found
eloquent support for this view in Scriptures, particularly St. Paul, and
did battle by word and deed against all opponents. T h e pervasivenes?
of this ideology in all the Cyrillo-Methodian writings al lo~vsno other
conclusion, even though one admits that the political overtones, partic-
ularly in regard to the anti-Slavonic forces, are very strong indeed.
Given the initial impulse, whatever it may have been, the brothers
pressed o n to carry through a complete Slavonicization of the whole
culture. T h e Greek scholar and writer desired that the Slav too have
all the same advantages, not only the basic Gospel word and indispen-
sable prayers but the subtle arguments of the Church Fathers and the
enrichment of poetry an d Christian song. T h e transfer of poetical
forms to
a
new language was more difficult, but the
Proglas ,
an intro-
duction to the Gospel, is amazingly successful, and its attribution to
Constantine is surely right. T h e mass translations of the myriad hymns
of the ever longer and more complex church services, mostly accom-
plished in tenth-century Bulgaria, are frequently dismal failures, but
the original compositions of obscure or unknown Slavs often were of
good quality. Most important was the demonstrated fact that the new
written language
cozild be used for all purposes, and the step from this
possibility to the belief i n the necessity underlay the development of
Slavic Christian culture.
T h e dispute about the alphabet invented by Constantine continues,
with nothing really new to invalidate the very strong arguments in
favor of Glagolitic. Again it is the modern Slavs who use Cyrillic who
object, but their disquisitions about the mysterious scratchings on va-
rious objects discovered at widely scattered points in the East and South
Slavic areas have added only examples of the infinite imagination some
men possess, and nothing to counteract the fact that the oldest and most
archaic texts are written in Glagolitic. T h e Psalter and Gospel written
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Slaoic Review
rus~skymi ismeny found by Cyril in the Crimea on the way to the
Khazar court (VC VIII) still nourish Russian patriots, who translate in
Russian letters and interpret the episode as irrefutable evidence that
the East Slavs indeed had Christians who had invented an alphabet
( proto-Cyrillic ) and translated the books.5 More plausible is an
ancient and banal transposition of an original
surbsk-
Syrian, Syriac :
the presence of either refugee or merchant Syriac-speaking Christians
in Cherson at the time is highly l i k e l ~ . ~yril's knowledge (presumed,
not specified in the sources) of Hebrew and probably Arabic would
make it easy for him quickly to learn the Syriac alphabet and, mirac-
ulously, to interpret texts he knew by heart in Greek. He seems to
have been extremely interested in heretical and non-Christian works
precisely in order to prepare himself for the disputes with Jewish and
perhaps other opponents among the Khazars.
Yet again, in the final analysis, none of this really matters.
What is
important is that the language and example of Cyril and Methodius
were the basis for the flowering of the Byzantinoslavic culture of Bul-
garia in the ninth century, and of Rus' i n the tenth century. Serbs and
Croats too shared in this culture, although the beginnings are obscure.
For the Orthodox Slavs, this original heritage was diluted and reinter-
preted, but i t remained vital down to modern times. T h e embattled
Slavonic-language culture of Bohemia, more Latinate i n flavor, was
finally suppressed at the end of the eleventh century and is known to
us only from scraps of evidence preserved chiefly among the East and
South Slavs. Nonetheless, Czech scholars have demonstrated that it
contributed to the flowering of a specifically Czech and Latin literature
in the thirteenth century. I n Dalmatia the Roman rite accepted a
Slavonic garb, and the Cyrillo-Methodian tradit ion lived on. T h e exact
routes by which manuscripts found their way from Moravia to Bulgaria
and Macedonia, to Rus' and Croatia, will probably never be known;
the interrelations were very likely immensely complicated.
T h e remarkable fact is how circumstances conspired to produce in a
So, mosr recently, B. A. H c ~ p a a
11
. em cnaaancxo6 aa gxu (Moscow, 1963), p. 105.
Istrin is remarkably ignorant of the con ten t of the works written in various alphabets and
extraordinarily cavalier about the shapes of the letters themselves. His reproduction of
others' theories leaves a great deal to be desired.
Apologists like Istrin doggedly ignore the poin t tha t the occurrence of a reading in all
copies does not make it a par t of the original
VC
but merely takes it back to some point
in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. At least one crippling error
u r n o m s
for
ujernb
uncle ) is common to nearly ail copies and to the excerpts in Croatian breviaries: i t thus
probably dates from no later than the eleventh century. Of course any emendation for
such a passage can be only plausible, bu t Jakobson long ago pointed out that in VC
XVI
the list of nations already praising the Lord in their own tongue includes the Syrians,
Suri ,
but in two of the relatively old and accurate copies they are called
R u s i
(cf. Grivec
and TomSi?, op . ci t . , p. 136, note ad XVI.8). I noted that in the Novgorod First Chronic le
the
mitropo1it .b sursskyi
( Syrian bishop ), whose arrival i n Kiev constitutes the sole entry
under 6412/1104 in the oldest copy (Synodal), has been naturalized to
rusltyi
in all other
copies.
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219
he eginning of Wr i t t en Slauic
few generations an almost pan-Slavic written language. Byzantine Slavs
working in Moravia produced excellent translations precisely at a time
when both Central European and Balkan Slavs (and probably the Dal-
matians) were willing and eager to accept them. Very soon the East
Slavs wanted them too. Dialect differences were partially suppressed
so that the homogeneity of the language of the oldest manuscripts
defies the linguists' at tempts to localize them; somewhat later texts show
such a mixture of identifiable bu t minor local features that again the
place of origin often cannot be specified. Th is Slavonic written lan-
guage then became relatively standardized in Serbian, Bulgarian, and
Russian varieties, but at no time can we find evidence that the dif-
ferences were regarded as vital. T h e diffusion of texts went on regard-
less of the political rivalries and the occasional complaints of scribes
at the difficulty of transcribing from one recension to another. T h e
history of medieval Slavic literature is usually compartmentalized ac-
cording to modern nationalism ( Old Russian, Old Serbian, etc.)
more than is justified by the fact of the language-Slavonic-and the
Byzantine orthodox connections.
great deal of preparatory work was done by the scholars of the
nineteenth century, but it is only very recently that the need has been
recognized to investigate separately the history of Slavonic, from the
Cyrillo-Methodian Old Church Slavonic, through the Macedonian,
Bulgarian, Kievan and other recensions and on down unti l the printing
press and nationalistic forces in the really modern states left Slavonic as
a purely liturgical language. For the historian, the Moravian mission
of Cyril an d Methodius is an intriguing puzzle in diplomatic and
ecclesiastical jurisdictional struggles, but for the Slavist it marks the
creation of the vehicle in which Slavic culture was expressed, the birth
date, so to speak, of Slavic literature.