The Beginning of Written Slavic

Horace G. Lunt
Slavic Review, Vol. 23, No. 2. (Jun., 1964), pp. 212-219.
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THE BEGINNING

OF W R I T T E N SLAVIC

BY HORACE G . L U N T

T h e lucid account of the Moravian missioil of Constantine-Cyril and

Methodius that Professor Dvornik has given is a persuasive and up-todate 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 footnotes 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. Then, 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 interpolations.
T h e two principal sources are the Lives of Cyril and Xlethodius, composed originally in Old Church S1avonic.l T h e V i t a Constnntini (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 Khazars, and in particular his theological debates with various opponents.
T h e V i t a Agethodii (VhI) must have been written immediately after the
death of Methodius ( 8 8 5 ) , for it makes no inention of the sudden dispersal of his followers and the termination of their work in hloravia.
It is shorter (about ten pages of this format) and includes a florid threepage introduction recounting the history of chosen men from the Creation 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 n i u e f s i t y
1 T h e traditional name is the "Pannonian Legends," where the epithet is d u 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 automatic association of that word with fiction a n d fantasy;
these two Lives are biographies of solid historical value that emphasize the sanctity and
piety of the "heroes" without attributing supernatural powers o r miracles to them.

T h e Beginning of W r i t t e n Slavic

213

major points are reiterated; the aim is to chronicle Methodius' activities without repeating what was said about Constantine.
T h e 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 reconstruct anything of importance not found in the oldest, a clear and
rather archaic copy from the end of the t~velfthcentury (in the Uspenskii sbornik). VC has survived in some thirty copies of importance,
none older than about 1450. There are ttvo major redactions, a South
Slavic and an East Slavic one, the latter further subdivided into a number 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~vayssuspect.
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~vnpenchant of local bishops and princelings 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 discovery and transfer of the relics of St. Clement, confirms many details
of VC and VhI, and adds some new information. It looks as though the
author of this "Italian Legend," Leo of Ostia (cn. 1loo), 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~vsare
not necessarily entirely correct.
T h e 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 Macedonia. ICno~vnas the "Bulgarian Legend," it is a twenty-five-page Life
of Kliment, a pupil of Methodius who was bishop in Macedonia, 893916. T h e author is generally recognized as the Greek Theophylactus,
2 T h e standard edition of these a n d almost all other Slavic source texts is unfortunately
very rare: H. A. Jaspos, ed., dln?izepun.zb~ no UCIIZOI)UIC e03nu~.tioaenu~dpeaneiizi~eii
(Leningrad, 1930). A new edition of VC and VM, with most
c,zns~ncxoii nucs~~eicliocn~zc
of the Latin sources directly connected with the brothers, is now available: F. Grivec
a n d F. TomSiE, Constantiiztrs et Methodius Thessalonicenses: Fontes (Radowi Staroslawe11skog instituta, Vol. IV; Zagreb, 1960). I t includes a full Latin translation of the two
Lives and a brief commentary about the manuscripts. Nonetheless, a reprint of Lavrov
woultl be highly desirable.

214

Slavic Rezjiew

Archbishop of Ohrid, 1084-1107, but 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 represent 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 motivations of several popes and patriarchs, of Byzantine emperors, Carolingian kings and dukes, a number of Slavic rulers in three or four
nascent states, with the details of subtle theological disputes and complex political negotiations.
It is then no ~vonderthat 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 out the "true facts" artfully
Tvoven in with fabrications in a document known to be a medieval falsification. Even the soberest of scholars must be constantly on guard to
remember hotv much of his interpretation is based on his oTvn assumptions and to keep in sight the multiple adjustments in the tvhole structure 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" and rejected the request, whereupon the Moravian turned toward Byzantium.
Now the word "bishop" is only in VC XIV, where Rastislav (alone) asks
for a "bishop and teacher." I n 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, ~vhilewe 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 farreaching political gambit. Further, 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
3 I defer to Father Dvornik in using this South Slavic form for the \\Test Slav whose
name is recorded correctly in VM as Rostislav.
4 Cf. J. Kurz, Slavia, XXXII (1963), 314.

T h e Beginning of W r i t t e n Slavic

215

the scholar. T h e point is a small one, but it is the sum of such little
disputed details that adds up to the total summary made by Dvornik or
any other specialist.
T h e linguist often disagrees with the historian's interpretation of the
sources, partly because he may be less concerned with the broader consequences 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. T h e etymology is generally agreed to be the personal name
Karl, that is, Charlemagne, who died in 816. Yet the passages concerned
cause difficulty, for the "kings" referred to do not quite fit 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 ~voulduse his name as
a title of honor for their own rulers. Indeed it seems that to read
"Karl" in VR.1 makes much better sense, but bringing unexpected
Carolingians onto the scene upsets some of the quite reasonable plausibilities that historians have woven into a consistent series of explanations 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.
I t is necessary perhaps to insist that historians and philologists alike
have to operate largely in plausibilities in all their broader interpretations as well as in many minor points of detail. How many plausibilities
must interlock to add u p 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 but 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

216

Slavic Review

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 and 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 m u 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 support the point, that Constantine was a gifted linguist whose experience
included languages written in various alphabets. It is only a pious exaggeration of the hagiographers to regard as superhuman Constantine's
skill at devising nerv letters suitable to express a Slavic dialect accurately. 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 euangeliarium 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 tradition, 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 hagiographers' 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
of the indispensable church books is very large, and one can easily

Tlze Beginning of Written Slaoic

217

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. I n 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 selfdetermination. 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
~vorshipthe Lord in his own language. H e 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 allo~vsno other
conclusion, even though one admits that the political overtones, particularly in regard to the anti-Slavonic forces, are very strong indeed.
Given the initial impulse, whatever it may have been, the brothers
pressed on 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 indispensable prayers but the subtle arguments of the Church Fathers and the
enrichment of poetry and Christian song. T h e transfer of poetical
forms to a new language was more difficult, but the Proglas%, an introduction 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 accomplished 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 in 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 various 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

Slaoic Review
"rus~skymipismeny" 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 a n
ancient and banal transposition of an original surbsk- "Syrian, Syriac":
the presence of either refugee or merchant Syriac-speaking Christians
knowledge (presumed,
in Cherson at the time is highly l i k e l ~ .Cyril's
~
not specified i n the sources) of Hebrew and probably Arabic would
make it easy for him quickly to learn the Syriac alphabet and, miraculously, to "interpret" texts he knew by heart in Greek. H e 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 Bulgaria 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 reinterpreted, but it remained vital down to modern times. T h e embattled
Slavonic-language culture of Bohemia, more Latinate in 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 tradition 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
5 So, mosr recently, B. A. H c ~ p a a ,1100 .(em cnaaancxo6 aa6gxu (Moscow, 1963), p. 105.
Istrin is remarkably ignorant of the content 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.
6 Apologists like Istrin doggedly ignore the point that the occurrence of a reading in all
copies does not make it a part of the original VC, but merely takes it back to some point
in the thirteenth or fourteenth century. At least one crippling error (urnoms 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, but 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. cit., p. 136, note ad XVI.8). I noted that in the Novgorod First Chronicle
the mitropo1it.b sursskyi ("Syrian bishop"), whose arrival in Kiev constitutes the sole entry
under 6412/1104 in the oldest copy (Synodal), has been naturalized to rusltyi in all other
copies.

The Beginning of Written Slauic

219

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 Dalmatians) 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' attempts to localize them; somewhat later texts show
such a mixture of identifiable but minor local features that again the
place of origin often cannot be specified. This Slavonic written language then became relatively standardized in Serbian, Bulgarian, and
Russian varieties, but at no time can we find evidence that the differences were regarded as vital. T h e diffusion of texts went on regardless 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 according to modern nationalism ("Old Russian," "Old Serbian," etc.)
more than is justified by the fact of the language-Slavonic-and
the
Byzantine orthodox connections.
A 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 until 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 and 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.