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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.


4/9

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.

lunt beginning of slavic.pdf

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