Olga Nedeljkovic The Linguistic Diglossia ...

Serbian Studies Research
Vol. 2, No. 1 (2011): 7-80. 7
UDC 821.163.41.08 Venclović Stefanović G.

Прегледни рад
Dr Olga Nedeljković1
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages and Literatures
United States of America
THE LINGUISTIC “DIGLOSSIA” OF GAVRILO

STEFANOVIĆ VENCLOVIĆ AND “ПРОСТА МОВА”
IN THE LITERATURE OF THE ORTHODOX SLAVS2
Abstract: In the first part of my study, I present the existing opinions about the rela-
tion of Venclović’s “ср’бскы” то “славенски”. Historians of the Serbian literary language have
never disputed the ordinary-people’s language in Venclović’s texts, because they have readily
1
olganedl@uic.edu
2
This article was originally written as a contribution to Riccardo Picchio’s Festschrift as “The Linguistic
Dualism of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović and ‘Prosta Mova’ in the Literature of the Orthodox Slavs”,
in: Studia Slavica Mediaevalia et Humanistica Riccardo Picchio dicata, eds. Michele Colucci, Giuseppe
dell’Agata and Harvey Goldblatt (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1986), 597-613. In addition to the updated
bibliography, the original text has been revised for greater precision. The concept of linguistic dualism,
referring to the community of the Orthodox Slavs, has been replaced by a more appropriate one of lin-
guistic diglossia that characterized their linguistic culture. The idea of diglossia was first introduced by
Charles Ferguson’s seminal work, “Diglossia”, Word 15, no. 2 (August 1959): 325-40, a concise typology,
that gives examples of diglossic situations in the Arabic nations, Switzerland, Haiti and Greece. These
diglossic speech communities have prestigious High varieties and Low varieties with no official status.
The two are in complementary distribution with each other, for instance, the High variety might be used
for literary discourse and the Low variety for ordinary conversation. Ferguson’s original definition of di-
glossia is that the two varieties in a diglossic relationship are closely related, and therefore diglossia is
not bilingualism or dualism. An important component of diglossia is that speakers personally perceive
that the High variety is the “real” language and the low variety is an “incorrect” usage. Diglossia is pres-
ently giving way in Greece, where it had held sway until a government decree ordained the shift from
High (katharevousa) to Low (demotiki) in many spheres of life. See also Ferguson, “Epilogue: Diglossia
revisted” in Southwest Journal of Linguistics 10, no. 1 (1991), 214-34; A. Hudson, “Outline of a theory of
diglossia”, in International Journal of the Sociology of Language, vol. 157 (2002), 1-48 (the entire volume
has been entitled Focus on diglossia). In my text, “Языковые уровни и характерные черты диглоссии
в средневековых текстах православных Славян”, in: American Contributions to the Tenth International
Congress of Slavists. vol. 1. Linguistics, ed. Alexander M. Schenker (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1988),
265-300, I developed the idea that the Byzantine-Orthodox Slavic diglossic culture resulted from the
Orthodox Slavs’ constant emulation of Byzantine linguistic and literary patterns.
8 | Olga Nedeljković
recognized a language which did not differ greatly from the modern Serbian literary language
that they themselves use. The eminent French Slavist, Boris Unbegaun, completely denies this
pure “народни језик” the status and function of a literary language. In his opinion, accord-
ing to Venclović’s own understanding, Church Slavonic was the sole literary language. The
Italian Slavist, Lionello Costantini, perceives Venclović’s programmatic pronouncements as
having the value of loci communes, and that the people’s language is accorded the full right
of existence directly alongside the liturgical language; a certain state of bilingualism is pro-
claimed. Constatini does not, however, enter into an analysis of Venclović’s potential sources
that, incidentally remained unknown and unexamined to this day. In the second part, I de-
fine Venclović’s “ср’бскы” from a purely linguistic point of view. It was an independent lin-
guistic system which was created completely within the Roman Catholic cultural sphere in
the Western Balkans under the name “Illyrian”. It was the original idiom of Dubrovnik, or
“jezik slaveno-ilirički izgovora bosanskoga” of the Counterreformation missionaries. For
their missionary and political goals, they chose the Štokavian dialect of Bosnia as the most
wide-spread idiom in the Central Balkans. The Illyrian language was specially developed
and adapted for the use of the Orthodox Serbs from the sixteenth century onwards. At that
time, the Cyrillic alphabet was the preferred alphabet for the Illyrian language, favored over
In the above-mentioned article, I describe Orthodox Slavic diglossia in the overall context of
Byzantine diglossia. The latter is well recognized. Cf., for example, K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der
Byzantinischen Litteratur, Von Justinian bis zum Ende des Oströmischen Reiches 527-1453, in Handbuch der
Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft 9, 1 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1897), 385 ff.; H. G. Beck, Geschichte der byz-
antinischen Volksliteratur, Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft 12, 2, 3 (Munich: Beck, 1971); H. Hunger,
Die hochsprachliche profane Literatur der Byzantiner, vol. I and II, in Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft
12, 5, 2 (Munich: Beck, 1978); R. Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983); idem, “Greek diglossia yesterday and today”, in International journal of the soci-
ology of language, vol. 35 (1982), 49-68; idem, “The language of Byzantine literature”, in Byzantina kai
Metabyzantina I. The Past in Medieval and Modern Greek Culture, ed. Speros Vryonis, Jr. (Malibu: Undena
Publications, 1978), 103-33; E. Kriaras, “Diglossie des deniers siècles de Byzance: Naissance de la litté-
rature néo-hellenique”, in Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Byzantine Studies (Oxford,
5-10 September, 1966, London: Oxford University Press, 1967), 283-299; André Mirambel, “Diglossie
des derniers siècles de Byzance”, Ibid., 309-313; Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis, Koine und Diglossie, in
Mediterranean language and culture monograph series, vol. 10 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1994); Notis
Toufexis, “Diglossia and register variation in Medieval Greek”, in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, vol.
32, no. 2 (2008), 203-217, just to mention several important studies discussing Byzantine diglossia. In
this study, I recognize Byzantine diglossia as a theoretical framework for the interpretation of the
linguistic situation among the Orthodox Slavs and Romanians in the post-Byzantine centuries. After
the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, being an organic part of the broader diglossic linguistic system of
the Byzantine period, the Orthodox peoples continued to imitate the latest stage of Byzantine diglos-
sia, which took place in the period from 1204 to 1453, and during the centuries of Turcocratia when
the Greek vernacular(s) was introduced into Byzantine and Post-Byzantine literature in parallel to ar-
chaizing written forms of Greek. See more about it and its Orthodox Slavic parallel developments in my
“Языковые уровни и характерные черты диглоссии в средневековых текстах православных славян,
283-292. Cf. also a recently published study of Михаил Виденов, Диглосията с оглед на българската
езикова ситуация (София: Академично издателство “Марин Дринов”, 2005) pp. 249. The Serbian
scholars have written about Serbian medieval diglossia as well.
The Linguistic “Diglossia” of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović and | 9
“Проста Мова” in the Literature of the Orthodox Slavs
Glagolitic or Latin characters. The terms “Illyrians” and “Illyrian” were used not only in ref-
erence to South Slavic people and their language, but also in reference to the ideology of the
so-called “Illyrism.” This ideology was incorporated into the political and defensive “platform
of the Post-Tridentine Counter-Reformational Catholicism oriented towards institutional
and dogmatic consolidation as well as to the proselytistic expansion...” Venclović’s “ср’бскы”
language was introduced into his ecclesiastical and still medieval texts within the ideological
framework of “Serbian Orthodox Illyrism” on the territory of the Habsburg Empire. I pro-
vide a number of concrete examples to corroborate all my statements. The third part of my
analysis reveals the Slavic Orthodox community as an impressive case of a supranational, re-
ligious and linguistic unity. After the Fall of the Byzantine Empire and after the Turkish oc-
cupation of the Balkans, the sole available model for both the Serbs and Bulgarians in their
In order to avoid any confusion with Serbian medieval diglossia of the “српскословенски” pe-
riod, introduced by Pavle Ivić into Serbian scholarship—(“Свети Сава је родоначелник писања на
српскословенском, али истовремено и писања на народном језику и комбиновања тих двају
изражајних система у истом тексту. Од њега почиње диглосија у српској писмености”, in his “O jeзику
у списима светога Саве”, in Међународни скуп Сава Немањић - Свети Сава. Историја и предање,
Београд: САНУ, 1979, 167-75, the quotation appears on p. 169; see also his “Доба Немањића, око 1170-
1371, узлет српске писмености и учвршћивање диглосије”, in his Преглед историје српског језика,
Целокупна дела Павла Ивића, vol. 8, еd. Александар Младеновић, Нови Сад: Издавачка књижарница
Зорана Стојановића, 1998, 28-58; cf. also Младеновић, “Језичка ситуација код Срба у време Велике
сеобе 1690”, in his Историја српског језика, Одабрани радови, Београд Чигоја, 2008, 170-175; idem,
”О континуитету у развоју српског књижевног језика до средине XIX века”, in his Историја српског
језика. Одабрани радови, Београд: Чигоја, 2008, 519-520; Димитрије Богдановић, Стара српска
књижевност, Историја српске књижевности 1, Београд: Досије Научна књига, 1991, 43-47)—I
would like to give the following explanation. In contrast to Ivić’s interpretation of “српскословенски”
diglossia, I have accepted the opinion of the specialists for the Serbian Middle Ages who do not see
any possibility of determining a layer of the spoken vernacular underlying the literary language (i.e.,
“српскословенски”) in old Serbian literature. For example:
Да би се горе наведени поткњижевни слој усменог народног језика, који нам је у старој
српској књижевности поглавито познат само у језичком руху српске редакције црквеносло-
венског, приказао у своме садејству са црквенословенским књижевним слојем, недостају, како
данас ствари стоје у српској науци о књижевности, готово све претпоставке и предрадње.
Неопходан је мукотрпан детаљан рад да би се из текстова издвојили они фондови за које
се може претпоставити да нису црквенословенског порекла. Велике тешкоће ствара окол-
ност да оба ова слоја не теку раздвојено, један поред другог, него се, према закону једне обли-
котворне воље, међусобно прожимају. Ако добро процењујем ствари, тренутно смо у стању
да само местимично укажемо на ове појаве, при чему се као ослонац, поред садржајних, могу
узети у обзир и стилистички критеријуми, будући да се и у књижевности средњег века усме-
ни ритмички стил битно разликује од писменог.
Станислав Хафнер, ”О питању типолошких и стилскоисторијских промена у старој српској књи-
жевности”, in his Српски средњи век, ed. Јованка Калић, trans. Јованка Калић and Слободан Грубачић
(Београд: Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства, Вукова задужбина, Матица Српска, 2001, p. 32. Cf.
also: Stanislaus Hafner, Serbisches Mittelalter, vol. 1, in Slavische Geschichtesschreiber, vol. 2, Graz, 1962,
and Serbisches Mittelalter, vol. 2 in Slavische Geschichtsschreiber, in Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, vol. 62,
Munich, 1964.
renewed literary activities was the literature of the Eastern Orthodox Slavs. In this light, the
Slavo-Russian cultural orientations of the Serbs, Bulgarians and Romanians was fully justi-
fied from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The comparative analysis of Venclović’s
writings in “ср’бскы” with other Orthodox texts written in the “проста мова (vernacular)”,
demonstrates that both belong to the same developmental phase of the Church Slavonic
language. This phase, characterized by the gradual introduction of the ordinary people’s
language into literature as a medium parallel to Church Slavonic, was common to the en-
tire Orthodox community. This phenomenon first appeared during the fifteenth and six-
teenth centuries among the Eastern Slavs in Moscovite Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. It occurred there first for two reasons: the Eastern Slavs were not occupied
by the Turks, and the Commonwealth, in particular, offered the most favorable conditions for
this kind of innovation. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Romanian vernacular
made its appearance in Wallachia and Moldavia. The same developmental phase emerged
among the Bulgarians in the second half of the seventeenth century and among the Serbs in
the first quarter of the eighteenth century when circumstances were favorable in the occu-
pied Balkans. Thus, the linguistic diglossia found in Venclović’s texts marks the beginning of
a new phase of Byzantine-Slavic diglossia. It was introduced into Serbian literature about two
centuries later than in the rest of the Orthodox world. It is only in the light of this phase of
linguistic diglossia that it is possible to interpret the subsequent stage that occurred among
the Serbs after Venclović, under the name of “славеносербски.”
Keywords: Orthodox linguistic diglossia, common developmental phase of the
Orthodox peoples; Venclović’s diglossia: славенски + прости сербски iезикъ= иллирический,
the common language of the Catholics and Orthodox in the Habsburg Monarchy; Counter-
Reformational Catholicism and Serbian National Illyrism; The Serbian Orthodox Church in
Hungary and its linguistic policy.
Already in 1969, Irena Grickat extensively describes the basic criteria for deferring the literary lan-
guage from the language of literature, emphasizing the impossibility of investigating the history of any
language, including Old “cрпскословенски”, on the basis of preserved texts. Cf. her “Језик књижевности
и књижевни језик—на основу српског писаног наслеђа из старијих епоха”, in Јужнословенски
филолог. vol. 28, nos. 1-2, 1-36. It is interesting to point out that in this regard N. I. Tolstoj expresses rath-
er impossibility of determining diglossia in Old Serbian literature, although he does not speak about di-
glossia as Ivić does, but operates with the term bilingualism: “В заключение необходимо подчеркнуть,
что проблема определения двуязычия для древнесербской литературно-языковой ситуации
очень сложна и при этом приходится сталкиваться со значительно большими трудностями,
чем для той же древнерусской ситуации”, in his “Отношение древнесербского книжного языка
к древнеславянскому языку в связи с развитием жанров в древнесербской литературе”, in his
Избранные труды, vol. II: Славянская литературно-языковая ситуация (Москва : Языки русской
культуры, 1998), p. 211.
Nemanjić’s Serbia was subject to its own specific developmental trends, which yielded an excep-
tionally successful synthesis of Church Slavonic literary models and its indigenous tradition. Therefore,
the language of the entire corpus of Nemanjić’s Serbia does not display any kind of diglossia. Diglossia
emerged only with the introduction of Slaveno-Russian into eighteenth-century Serbian literaturе,
which is the major topic of my current study.
VENCLOVIĆ’S “СР’БСКЫ” AND ITS RELATION TO

“СЛАВЕНСКИ”, I.E., CHURCH SLAVONIC
This article considers the emergence of vernacular codifications and their in-
troduction into Orthodox Slavic literature through an analysis of several fragments
from manuscripts written by Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović (c. 1680-1749). As a start-
ing point, I selected the language of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, not because his
“ср’бскы” is also my native tongue, but because, as I will demonstrate, among all
the vernaculars of the Orthodox Slavs, his “ср’бскы” was structurally the furthest
language away from the common foundational language of the Orthodox Slavs:
“славенски”, i.e. Church Slavonic. Furthermore, of all the existing Orthodox Slavic
vernacular codifications in opposition to Church Slavonic, at the time, it was the most
well defined common people’s language. As such, Venclović’s “ср’бскы” offers us the
best case for drawing conclusions about the linguistic status of other Orthodox ver-
nacular formations. When we take the significantly earlier appearance of vernacular
codifications among the Eastern Slavs into account, the study of Venclović’s language
seems especially desirable. I have in mind the so-called “простое слово” (simple
word) in the Лаодикийское посланїе (Laodikijskij message) from the beginning of
the sixteenth century, or the “проста мова” which appeared as early as the sixteenth
century, in contrast to Venclović’s “ср’бскы” which did not enter the Orthodox sphere
until the first quarter of the eighteenth century.3
3
Н. А. Казакова and Я. С. Лурье, Антифеодальные еретические движения на Руси XIV-начала
XVI века (Москва-Ленинград: Академия наук СССР, 1955), 256-76; Ia. S. Lur'e, “Unresolved Issues in
the History of the Ideological Movements of the Late Fifteenth Century”, in Medieval Russian Culture,
California Slavic Studies XII, eds. H. Birnbaum and M.S. Flier (1984), 150-171. At this point it is worth
mentioning a Russian-Byzantine conversation book Рѣчь тонкословїя греческaго, written in the fif-
teenth century, or perhaps earlier, by a Russian for the Russian pilgrims visiting the Athos monasteries.
Cf. M. Vasmer, Ein russisch-byzantinisches Gesprachbuch, Beiträge zur Erforschung der alteren russischen
Lexikographie (Leipzig: In Kommission bei Markert & Petters, 1922); K.C. Ковтун, Русская лексикография
эпохи средневековья (Ленинград Изд- во Академия наук СССР -Ленинградское отделение, 1963),
318-89. O. B. Strakhova draws attention to the deeply entrenched tradition of Graeco-Byzantine linguis-
tic models in Slavo-Russian texts in the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries:
... для некоторой части - русских книжников - грекофилов - явление “простого языка” мог-
ло складываться под влиянием взаимно диффундирующих в их языковом сознании “простой
мовы” и “общего” (κοινὴ διάλεκτος, κοινὴ γλῶσσα, κοινότης φωνῆς) или “простого” (άπλοῦς λόγος,
άπλῆ) языка греческой культурной традиции... Большое количество переводов этого време-
ни было сделано с греческого “простого” или “общего” языка, [...] что способствовало фор-
мированию на великорусской территории эквивалентного греческому “простому” или “об-
From a purely typological point of view, in the period of late Byzantine and Post-
Byzantine-Slavic diglossia, established through the introduction of ordinary speech
into official Orthodox religious and medieval literature, the only vernacular that
was not formed according to literary Orthodox models was Venclović’s “ср’бскы.”
Venclović’s “ср’бскы” was, in fact, one and the same with the Illyrian language that
had been created according to the Latin-Italian patterns. All other Orthodox vernac-
ular codifications, including Romanian, were formed exclusively on the basis of com-
mon typological models from the Orthodox community. While its genesis differed
from the other Orthodox vernaculars, Venclović’s “ср’бскы” was used in the same
function, that is, it was used as a Low variety in a diglossic relation to Church Slavonic,
which was perceived as a High variety. In the early eighteenth century, Venclović’s
“ср’бскы” was the most developed literary medium among all the Orthodox vernacu-
lars, and, as such, posed a greater challenge than any of them (i.e., Orthodox vernac-
ulars) to Church Slavonic as the only recognized literary language of the Orthodox
community.
The problem of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović ‘s language is unquestionably one
of the most interesting chapters in the history of the Serbian literary language. It is
also one of the most difficult to resolve. As one of the first writers of renown from
the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy after the Great Migration of the Serbs under
the Patriarch Arsenije III Čarnojević in 1690, Venclović used two distinctly separate
щему” языку понятия “просторечия”, “простого языка” и.т.п. Иными словами, происходит
процесс заимствования языковой ситуации Греции, процесс, параллельный югозападнорус-
скому влиянию.
See her “K вопросу о греческой филологической традиции в восточнославянской книжной сре-
де (Страничка из истории церковнославянского языка концa XVII - начала XVIII века)”, in Советское
славяноведение, vol. 4 (Москва, 1986), 66-75, the quotation appears on pp. 67 and 68. Cf. also: O. Б.
Страхова, “К вопросу об отношении к греческому языку в славянской письменности ( XI - XVII
вв.)”, in Этногенез, ранняя этническая история и культура славян (Москва 1985), quoted from
Stakhova’s above-cited article, p.74; eadem, “Attitudes to Greek Language and Culture in Seventeenth-
Century Muscovy”, in Modern Greek Studies Yearbook, vol. 6 (University of Minnesota, 1990), 123-155; Е.
А. Целунова, “Псалтырь 1683 г на “простом словенском” языке”, in Ученые записки вузов Литовской
ССР. Языкознание, vol. 39. no. 2 (Vilnius, 1988), 112-118. B. А. Uspenskij also points to Greek-Russian
linguistic contacts of the early modern period:
Выражение “общий российский язык”, которым пользуется при этом Алeксей Барсов, бли-
жайшим образом напоминает наименование “простой мовы” в киевской Постной Триоди
1627 г., где говорится о “российской беседе общей...” Это совпадение объясняется ввиду того,
что как то, так и другое выражение калькирует название новогреческого языка: не случайно в
обоих случаях имеет место перевод с греческого. Мы вправе предположить, таким образом,
что Барсов как-то ассоциирует русскую и греческую языковую ситуацию; такая же позиция
характерна в те же годы и для других великорусских книжников того же круга.
types of literary languages: Church Slavonic and the spoken language of the common
people. Historians of the Serbian literary language have tended to explain the pres-
ence of two separate linguistic codes in Venclović’s texts without pursuing the reasons
for linguistic dualism. It should be pointed out that Venclović’s texts, as a whole, be-
See Б. А. Успенский, Языковая ситуация Киевской Руси и её значение для истории русского лите-
ратурного языка. Доклад на IX Международном съезде славистов. Киев 1983 (Москва: Издательство
Московского университета, 1983), 95.
Although Victor Zhivov does not speak extensively about the “простый язык” of the Petrine era, he
mentions that
Задача переделки текста с церковностарославянского языка на “простой” не могла не
ассоцироваться с известными в Москве прецендентами перевода (как сказано в одной ру-
кописи) с “ветхаго еллинскаго языка, егоже нынешнии еллини не разумеют” на “общий гре-
ческий язык.” (A.И.Соболевский, Переводная литература Московской Руси XIV-XVII вв., in
Сборник Отделения Русского языка и Словестности, vol. LXXIV, 1, CПб.,1903, 356). Для постви-
зантского периода это была широко распространенная практика и Лихуды [the Leichudes
brothers, Sofronij and Ioakim, came to Moscow to occupy a dominant position within the Grecophile
party and became the activists of the Enlightenment movement in Russia. They took part in organizing
the Slavo-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow at the end of the seventeenth- and at the beginning of the
eighteenth centuries] учили такому переводу своих студентов. [bolding added]
B. M. Живов, Язык и культура в России XVIII века (Москва: Школа “Языки русской культуры”, 1996),
94.
Cf. also: Борис Л. Фонкич, Греко-русские культурные связи в XV-XVII вв. Греческие рукописи в
России (Москва: Наука,1977); idem, Graeco-Russian Contacts from the Middle of the XVI Century up to
the Beginning of the XVIII Century: the Greek Documents in Moscow Archives: Catalogue of the exhibition
compiled by B. L. Fonkich, International Congress of Byzantine Studies: 18th century (Moscow: Archive of
Russian History, 1991); idem, Греческие рукописи и документы в России в XIV - началe XVIII в., Россия
и християнский Восток. Библиотека, vol. 4 (Москва: Изд-во: “Indrik”, 2003); idem, Греко-славянские
школы в Москве в XVII веке, Россия и християнский Восток . Библиотекa, vol. 7 ( Москва: Языки
славянских культур, 2009). Cf. also: Н. Киселев, “Греческая печать на Украине в XVI веке”, in Книга
Исследования и материалы, vol. 7 (Москва, 1962), 171-198; I. Ševčenko, Byzantine Roots of Ukrainian
Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Ukrainian Studies Fund, Harvard University, 1984), pp. 26. Also Iaroslav
Isaievych emphasizes:
The first period of the Ukrainian cultural revival in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
was most fruitful for the development of Greek studies and the spread of Greek culture in the Ukraine.
The Greek scholars, as well as their Ukrainian colleagues, were attempting with some success to forge
intellectual links between the Hellenism of the old Byzantine East and the new Hellenism of the West.
See Iaroslav Isaievych, “Greek culture in the Ukraine: 1550-1650”, in Modern Greek Studies Yearbook,
vol. 6, 97-122, the quotation appears on p. 115; idem, Братства та їх роль у розвитку української
культури XVI-XVIII ст. (Київ: Наукова думка, 1966); idem, Джерела з історії української культури
доби феодалізму XVI-XVIII ст. (Київ: Наукова думка, 1972), 55-57; idem, Літературна спадщина Івана
Федорова (Львів:Вишча школа, 1989), 133-138; І. Мицько, “Острожский культурно-просветительный
центр”, in Фёдоровские чтения 1981 (Москва 1985), 57-61;K. Харалампович, Западнорусские
православные школы XVI и начала XVII века (Казань: Типо-лит. императорского ун-та, 1898), pp.
265 just to mention several important works devoted to Greek-Ukrainian cultural contacts of the early
modern period.
long to an exclusively ecclesiastic, still medieval literature. All of the scholars—from

Gavrilo Vitković to Milorad Pavić and Aleksandar Мladenović4—agree with Јovan
Skerlić’s findings that Venclović employed two distinct languages:
When he writes something intended exclusively for ecclesiastical use, or
when he translates works of ecclesiastical scholarship, he writes in the literary
4 Literature about Venclović is enormous. I will quote only the most important works about him in the
field of language and literature: Г. Витковић, “О књижевном раду јеромонаха Гаврила Стефановића”,
Гласник Српскога Ученог друштва, vol. 34 (1872): 151-77; Стојан Новаковић, Историја српске књи-
жевности, Друго сасвим прерађено издање с једним литографисаним снимком (Београд: Издање
и штампа државне штампарије, 1871), 182-183; idem, Примери књижевности и језика старога и
српско-словенскога (Београд: Штампа краљ.-српске државне штампарије, 1904), 180-203; Тихомир
Остојић, Српска књижевност од Велике Сеобе до Доситеја Обрадовића (Сремски Карловци: Ср-
пска манастирcка штампарија, 1905), 36-37, and 62; Владан Јовановић, “Гаврило Стефановић Вен-
цловић”, Дијалектолошки зборник C. К. Академије, vol . 2 (1911), 105-306; Љуба Стојановић, Ката-
лог рукописа и старих штампаних књига (Београд: Српска краљевска државна штампарија, 1901),
84-171; Joван Скерлић, “Гаврило Стефановић Венцловић”, in his Српска књижевност у XVIII веку
(Београд: Напредак, 1923), 168-72; idem, “Гаврило Стефановић Венцловић”, in his Историја нове
српске књижевности. Потпуно и илустровано друго издање, са 100 слика у тексту (Београд: Геце
Кона, 1921), 28-29; Никола Радојчић, “О презимену и пореклу Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”,
Гласник историјског друштва у Новом Саду, vol. IV/2 (1931), 314-316; Ристо Ковијанић, “О Гаврилу
Стефановићу-Венцловићу”, in Зборник Матице српске за књижевност и језик, vol. I (1953), 164-5; M.
Павловић, Примери историског развитка српскохрватског језика (Београд: Научна књига, 1956), 50-
51, 27; Д. J. Поповић and M. Богдановић. “Девет писама Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, Зборник
Матице cрпске за књижевност и језик 4-5 (1956-1957): 233-47; M. Урошевић, Српска књижевност
у XVIII веку (Београд: Научна књига, 1961), 118-120; A. Mладеновић, “Још једно писмо Гаврила
Стефановића Венцловића”, Зборник Maтице cрпске за књижевност и језик 12, no. 1 (1964): 334-36;
idem, “Слово Ђ пре Вука”, Зборник за филологију и лингвистику 7 (1963): 159-62; idem, “Обележавање
гласова Ћ и Ђ у рукопису ‘Мач Духовни’ Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, Зборник за филологију
и лингвистику, X (1967): 113-24; idem, “Типови књижевног језика код Срба у другој половини XVIII и
почетком XIX века”, in: Радови за међународни конгрес слависта у Варшави (Нови Сад: Филозофски
факултет у Новом Саду, 1973), 41-42; idem, “Нaпомене о једној особини српскословенског језика у
књигама Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, in: Историја српског језика (Београд: Чигоја, 2008), 64-
67; Aleksandar Albijanić, “The Creation of the Slaveno-Serbski Literary Language”, The Slavonic and East
European Review 48, no. 113 (October 1970): 485-86; idem, “Serbian Church Slavic Elements in Vojvodina
Sources”, Die Welt der Slaven 23, no. 2 (1978): 268-83; idem, “Икавизми фонетског и морфолошког порек-
ла у језику Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, in Зборник за филологију и лингвистику, xxv/2 (1982),
83-90; idem, “Kратак осврт на треће лице множине у језику Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”,
ibidem, XXVI/1 (1983), 79-82; idem, “Прилог проучавању неких морфолшких особина у језику Гаврила
Стефановића Венцловића”, ibidem, XXVI/1, 69-78; idem, “The Demise of Serbian Church Slavic and
the advent of the Slaveno-Serbski Literary Dialect”, in: The Formation of the Slavonic Literary Languages,
eds. Gerald Stone and Dean Worth (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1985), 117; idem, “Најмаркантније
језичке особине Венцловићевог рукописа ‘Поученија и слова разлика’”, in Сентандрејски збор-
ник, vol. 1 (1987), 237-250; M. Павић, “Гаврил Стефановић Венцловић”, Књижевност 7-8 (1965): 90-
109; idem, Гаврил Стефановић Венцловић, Црни биво у срцу, Легенде, беседе, песме (Београд: Нолит,
1966), 542; idem, “Беседничко песништво Гаврила Венцловића”, in: Oд барока до класицима, Српска
књижевност у књижевној критици, vol. 3 (Београд: Нолит 1966), 81-122; idem, Историја српске
“српско-словенски” language as it was preserved in the church tradition he

learned from his teacher, Kiprijan Račanin. But when he writes for the secu-
lar reader, especially when he composes “беседе” (homilies) in the manner of
a preacher, he employs the beautiful and pure “народни језик” (the language
of the ordinary people).5
Skerlić’s insistence on the presence of the common people’s language in Venclo-
vić’s texts has never been disputed by Serbian philologists, primarily because they
readily recognized a language that does not differ greatly from the modern Serbian
literary language they themselves use. This is probably the main reason why the
question of linguistic diglossia in Venclović’s texts has never been raised, much less
satisfactorily answered in Serbian philology. Precisely because of the appearance of
the common people’s language in Venclović’s works, scholars regard Venclović as the
turning point in the development of the Serbian literary language. He is seen as the
forerunner of Vuk Karadžić and Dositej Оbradović. He stands alone, and, “for half a
књижевности барокног доба (XVII i XVIII век) (Београд: Нолит, 1970), cf. all pages referring to Венцловић
on p. 516; idem, Гаврил Стефановић Венцловић (Београд: Српска књижевна задруга, 1972); idem,
“Венцловић о иконокластичким борбама у Византији”, in Сентандрејски зборник (Београд: САНУ,
1987), 59-75; Rolf-Dieter Kluge, “Неколико запажања о беседничком песништву Г. Ст. Венцловића”,
in Зборник за славистику, 15 (1978), 95-101; idem, “О српској књижевности 18. века”, in Српска
књижевност у књижевној критици, 28-41; Ирена Грицкат, “Језик књижевности и књижевни језик”,
20-24; Ђорђе Трифуновић, Примери из старе српске књижевности, Од Григорија дијака до Гаврила
Стефановића (Београд: Слово љубве, 1975), 160-62 and 193-195; idem, Стара српска књижевност
- основе (Београд: Филип Вишњић, 1994), 76-84; Челица Миловановић, “O изворима и књижевном
поступку Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, Зборник Матице Српске за књижевност и језик 29, no.
1 (1981): 27-42; 30, no. 1 (1982): 5-17; Јован Деретић, ”Мистификација око Венцловића и старе пое-
зије”, Књижевна историја, vol. IV-16 (1972), 705-22; idem, Историја српске књижевности (Београд
Нолит, 1983), 169-74; Димитрије Стефановић, “Напомене о синтакси и лексици у језику Житија све-
тог владике Максима од Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, Научни састанак слависта у Вукове
дане, vol. 20/1 (1990), 389-396; П. Радић and М. Ружић, “Из твробе девербативних именица у де-
лима Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, in Зборник за филологију и лингвистику, vol. 32/1 (1989),
93-101; Маријан Мишић, “Полемике о делу Гаврила Стефановића Венцловића”, in Свеске, vol. 15,
no. 72 (2004), 213-222; vol. 16, no. 73 (2004), 236-249; Павле Ивић, Српски народ и његов језик, 160-3,
166; idem, О језику некадашњем и садашњем (Београд – Приштина: БИГЗ – Јединство, 1990), 110;
idem, Преглед историје српског језика, 107,109, 112- 113; cf.also: B. Unbegaun, Les débuts de la langue
littéraire chez les Serbes (Paris: H. Champion, 1935), 21-25; L. Costantini, “A proposito della lingua di Gavrilo
Stefanović Venclović”, Ricerche slavistiche 14 (1966): 53-76; idem, Gli Annali del Baronio-Skarga quale
fonte di Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović, in Ricerche slavistiche, vol. XVI (1968-69), 163-190; Н. И. Толстой,
“Литературный язык сербов в XVIII в. (до 1780 г.) - Язык Гавриила Стефановича Венцловича”, in
Славянское и балканское языкознание. История литературных языков и письменность (Москва:
Академия наук СССР, Институт славяноведения и балканистики, Наука, 1979), 162-65; Rosanna
Morabito, “Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović”, in her Tradizione e innovazione linguistica nella cultura serba del
XVIII secolo (Cassino: Università di Cassino, 2001), 169-95.
5 Скерлић, Српска књижевност у XVIII веку, 171.
century is at the head of a dark period.”6 His texts are considered the beginnings of
the modern Serbian language. They indicate, “the ways in which the literary language
of the Serbian people would have developed in contrast to the ‘српско-словенски’
language, if there had been no interruption.”7
The question of the parallel use of Church Slavonic and the language of the
common people in Venclović’s texts was first raised by the eminent Slavist, Boris
Unbegaun. On the basis of Venclović’s own pronouncements regarding the use of
the people’s language in his numerous manuscripts—pronouncements that are, in
fact, more apologies than explanations by nature—Unbegaun concludes that, “for
Venclović the only literary language is Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension.”8
Unbegaun underscores this assertion by completely denying Venclović’s “ср’бскы”
the status and function of a literary language: “The ordinary Serbian language is used
only in homilies and cannot be regarded either as a (legitimate) written language or
even as a literary language.” The reasons for this are:
Venclović limits the use of the ordinary language to his homilies, which
were intended to be preached before country folk. His sole aim is for the peo-
ple to understand fully the language so that its complete instructional value
would be assured. Every time, or almost every time, that Venclović uses the or-
dinary Serbian language, he never fails to point out that he uses it for purely
practical reasons.9
Furthermore, whenever Venclović uses ordinary Serbian, “he uses the popular
lexicon as much as possible, not avoiding any words, not even German, Hungarian or
Turkish words (which are exceptionally numerous), and he does this without regard
for the literary quality of his language.”10 Yet, these reasons are neither sufficient nor
fully relevant for determining whether a certain linguistic code does or does not ful-
fill the function of a literary language. While a discussion of these reasons exceeds
the scope of this article, here I will focus on Venclović’s own conception of the liter-
ary language he was using, because that was precisely the conception that Unbegaun
attempted to define when he concluded that, according to Venclović’s own under-
standing, Church Slavonic was the sole literary language.
6 Ibid., 172.
7 Новаковић, Примери књижевности и језика старога и српско-словенскога, 180.
8 “Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension or version” is used for the French term “le slavon serbe.”
See: B. Unbegaun, Les débuts de la langue littéraire chez les serbes, 21-24, quotation appears on p. 23.
9 Ibid., 23.
10 Ibid., 23.
In his study, The Language of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović: General Questions, the
Italian Slavist, Lionello Costantini, continued the discussion begun by Unbegaun.11
Through careful analysis, Costantini questions Unbegaun’s interpretation of
Venclović’s programmatic pronouncements. In fact, he finds the pronouncements
deceptive. Costantini cannot accept that Venclović’s alleged transition to the spoken,
ordinary Serbian language was simply to make his homilies maximally understand-
able. Rather, Costantini finds that Venclović’s apologies derive from his stylistic form:
traditional Orthodox topoi that were adopted by the Račka school.12 Venclović’s in-
troductory formulas and explanations had the value of loci communes, and should in
no way be interpreted as interventions made on Venclović’s own initiative:
In any event, the same stylistic impact that the overall sentence structure
of [Venclović’s] pronouncements attains through its conciseness and incisive-
ness in the use of forms and stereotypical expressions inherited from a centu-
ries-old tradition is evidence that we are dealing here with something differ-
ent, something current, a design which should be kept in mind. What could
that “something current” be? It seems to me that the answer can be obtained
on the basis of consecutive words which constitute the discriminating criterion
for two different linguistic usages: Church Slavonic on the one hand, and the
common people’s language on the other.13
Costantini is right: we are faced with something new, something truly differ-
ent, something very current and, as I shall further demonstrate, something decid-
edly essential for the further development of Orthodox Slavdom and its linguistic
unity. This is not yet the developmental phase of the Education Movement led by
Dositej Оbradović, nor is it the Romantic epoch of Vuk Кaradžić. Both of these men
struggled for the exclusive acceptance of the language of the common people in
Serbian literature within the framework of secular culture. As Costantini accurately
points out, Venclović’s activity unfolded in an entirely different cultural and spiritu-
al atmosphere, characterized by the absolute supremacy of religious and ecclesias-
tical. Notwithstanding, his work has been mistakenly and repeatedly connected to
Оbradović and Кaradžić in Serbian philology down to the present.14
11
L. Costantini, “A proposito della lingua di Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović”, 53-76.
12 Ibid., 72-74.
13 Ibid., 73.
14 Ibid. 75. Costantini does not, however, enter into an analysis of Venclović's potential sources that, in-
cidentally, remain unknown and unexamined to this day.
In contrast to Unbegaun, who denies the value of a literary language to the peo-
ple’s language, Costantini, with great philological intuition, concludes the theoretical
portion of his analysis by stating:
... as defined in (Venclović’s) clear programmatic statement, the people’s
language is accorded the full right of existence directly alongside the liturgical lan-
guage; a certain state of bilingualism is proclaimed [emphasis added] in which
both of these linguistic modalities, [i.e. Church Slavonic and the people’s lan-
guage] are postulated not as precluding one another, but rather as correlatives
operating in a “symphonic” relationship. Within the confines of secular cul-
ture—even though we cannot ever be forgetful of the fact that we are facing
a fundamentally religious and ecclesiastical phenomenon here —the people’s
language is accorded the dignity of a “literary language”, without any implica-
tion that this fact means a break with tradition [emphasis added]. As regards the
practical part of the question, we can isolate two “languages” in Venclović’s ex-
tant texts: one of these languages is tied to the foundations of Church Slavonic,
the other to the foundations of the people’s language. However, due to the lack
of textual analysis of Venclović’s texts that could demonstrate to what degree
Venclović was dependent on his sources, it is difficult to arrive at a single clear
and well-rounded conclusion.15
Thus, Unbegaun and Costantini ultimately arrived at similar conclusions about
the relationship between the two idioms Venclović used in his writings. His “ср’бскы”
had the special function of clarifying the text and making the major literary medi-
um, “славенски”, i.e. Church Slavonic, more readily understandable. It was seemingly
able to follow Church Slavonic without tending to free itself and become separate.
Furthermore, for Venclović, “славенски” was the sole recognized literary language in
the full sense of the word.
Venclović seems to be neither the first nor the only copyist or writer during the
first decades of the eighteenth century who introduced Serbian vernacular into his
texts written in Church Slavonic. On the basis of Nikita I. Tolstoj’s short descrip-
tion of the language of Jerotej Račanin’s Путьшаствiе къ граду Iерусалиму (A
Travelogue to the City of Jerusalem), written in 1727 in the monastery of Velika
Remeta, in the area of the Fruška mountain, I have concluded that Račanin used the
same type of diglossic language as Venclović, similarly perceiving Church Slavonic as
15 Costantini, “La lìngua di Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović”, 75.

the sole literary language.16 Church Slavonic was also the only literary language for
the writers of the so-called “славеносербски” period, including Vikentije Ljuština17
at the end of the eighteenth century, and Milovan Vidaković in the first half of the
nineteenth century.18 As with all these writers, Venclović’s “ср’бскы” had a subordi-
nate function in relation to the “славенски” language, with its long literary and sacred
tradition among the Orthodox Slavs.
ILLYRIAN, THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF THE CATHOLICS

AND ORTHODOX IN THE HABSBURG MONARCHY
From a purely linguistic point of view, “ср’бскы” was indisputably an indepen-

dent linguistic system that differed structurally from Church Slavonic.19 In fact,
Venclović’s “ср’бскы”, as a literary form, was created entirely within the Roman
Catholic cultural sphere in the Western Balkans during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries under the name of “Illyrian.” For the sake of illustration, I will quote from
16 Тоlstoj’s description reads as follows:

Иерофей Рачанинский допускает в духе языка светских жанров сербской средневековой
письменности смешение разных подъязыков в одном тексте, иногда в одном слове или сло-
восочетании. В представлении Иерофея элементы подъязыков видимо воспринима-
лись как варианты одного языка. [bolding added]
See his “Язык Ерофея Рачанинского”, in Славянское и балканское языкознание. История
литературных языков и письменность, 161-62.
In my opinion, Тоlstoj’s interpretation of Jerotej Račanin’s conception about the literary language is
accurate. It is puzzling that he does not take into consideration Irena Grickat’s analysis of Račanin and
other travelogues writers’ language, although he cites her article (see my fn. 84). Račanin perceived
Church Slavonic and the common people’s language, i.e. the Serbian vernacular, as one and the same
language. My further analysis will prove that all the Eastern Slavic writers and copyists—as well as
Venclović—who introduced their vernaculars into Church Slavonic literature recognized “славенски”,
i.e., Church Slavonic, as the sole and sacred literary language.
17
L. Costantini, Slavo ecclesiastico e volgare nella Grammatika Italianskaja di Vikentije Ljuština, Studia his-
torica et philologica III, Sectio slavoromanica 1 (Firenze: Licosa editrice, 1976), 51-52.
18 L. Costantini, “Un capitolo della questione della lingua serba: Milovan Vidaković”, Ricerche slavistiche,
vols. 24-26 (1977-1979): 179-195.
19 Irena Grickat emphasizes: “На другом месту смо говорили о несродности српског и старосло-
венског језичког елемента, у области суфиксације, творбе сложеница одн. полусложеница, и у
синтакси.” See her: Актуелни језички и текстолошки проблеми у старим српским ћирилским спо-
меницима (Београд: Народна библиотека СР Србије, 1972), 28, fn. 20; Cf. also her work, “Jeзик књи-
жевности и књижевни језик, на основу српског писаног наслеђа из старијих епоха”, 24-32.
John Fine’s monograph, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans, in which he
correctly describes the language of the Serbs living in Habsburg territory:
Many “Serbs” had also migrated into the Habsburg lands in the centuries
after the Turkish conquest of Serbia. We find people called ‘Serbs’ settled in the
Vojvodina, Srem, and Slavonia, where they had their own Church organiza-
tion, which was often under pressure from the political authorities to convert
to Catholicism or at least to accept Uniatism. Since the Serbs had their own
Serbian Church organization, the name ‘Serb’ was used with frequency for these
people. However, the local vocabulary used by and about the Catholic Slavs
also penetrated Serb communities. Thus, for example, Jagić uncovered texts
discussing the publication of their Church books in the 1770s, about them set-
ting up their own Illyrian printing press (1771) and talking about the govern-
ment decision, noted previously, from 1779 on language. In their discussion of
the matter and descriptions of the ruling, the Serbs noted that only Cyrillic let-
ters and Illyrian liturgical language (illyrica lingua lithurgica)20 could be used
in Church books, whereas in secular works and schoolbooks, the press would
utilize the popular Illyrian dialect (dialecto vulgari illirica) and Latin letters.
We find in 1794 that a Serbian Orthodox priest, Vikentije Ljustina, printed in
Cyrillic in Slavono-Serbski a 507-page Italian grammar for the use of Illyrian
youth (radi upotreblenia illyričeskija junosti). The local Serbs had come in this
case to call their language ‘Illyrian,’ distinguishing Church Slavonic (as liturgical
Illyrian) from everyday Slavic speech (as vulgar Illyrian). Thus, these Habsburg
20
The “Illyrian liturgical language” was the name of the language in which Croatian glagolitic litur-
gical books were written. Its existence began to be recognized as early as the post Tridentine period.
During the Council of Trent (1545-1563), only a few scholars conversant with the linguistic problems
were aware of it. It was the Bishop of Zara, Mutius Callinus, who remarked that: “in Dalmatia, the liturgy
is legitimately performed in the lingua Schiava antica.” He described “this old Slavic language” as “non è
volgare, e ma-terna di quei popoli, anzi è loro oscura, come quasi ai nostri idioti Italiani la Latina.” See:
Luka Jelić, Fontes historici liturgiae glagolitico-romanae a XIII ad XIX saeculum (Veglae: “Slavorum Litterae
Theologicae” Pragae, 1906), XV, 115. A tendency to emphasize the difference between the lingua vul-
garis and the liturgical language, i.e. lingua litteralis, appeared during the Council of Trent. In fact, the
function of Church Slavonic, the literary language of Orthodox liturgy, was assigned to the lingua litte-
ralis. Particularly after the foundation of the Congregatio de Propaganda fide in 1622, Catholic reform-
ers elaborated on the concept of the sclavonice antique and attempted to force the introduction of this
language into literary practice. The illyrica litteralis was intended to become a means for achieving the
Church union with the Orthodox. Thus, Rafael Levaković, one of the creators of lingua Illyrica litteralis,
attempted to transform it into a common pan-Slavic literary language. See fn. 30 for additional expla-
nation.
Serbs were calling their language by the same name that many of their Catholic
neighbors were using for theirs.21
Illyrian, i.e., “volgare illirico”, was the original idiom of Dubrovnik, also known
as “jezik slaveno-ilirički izgovora bosanskoga”, i.e. the linguagio bosnese, or volgare il-
lirico of the Counterreformation missionaries. Sante Graciotti convincingly explains
why the Bosnian dialect was selected to serve as the basis of the common Illyrian
language:
When the problem of choosing a dialect to form the basis of the common
Croatian literary language was raised in Dalmatia, none of the Dalmatian dia-
lects was selected, but the Bosnian dialect from the interior was promulgated
[to serve as the basis for such a common literary language.] After a century of
the splendid development of Dalmatian-Ragusan literature, this choice must
have seemed inadmissible; but one could already detect the reasons for such a
solution. From the beginning of the sixteenth century to the end of the seven-
teenth century, scholars put forward to justify it [the choice]: a puristic reason
- the Bosnian dialect was more authentic than any of the coastal dialects--, and
a political reason -- the Bosnian dialect was the most widespread and the most
comprehensible in the entire South Slavic area. Among other things, also no
one should forget that the Ragusan dialect was recognized as belonging to the
Štokavian-Ijekavian dialect of Bosnia to such a degree that it was perceived as
its offshoot; and sometimes one spoke explicitly about the languages of Ragusa
and Bosnia as one and the same language.22
21
John V. A. Fine, When Ethnicity Did Not Matter in the Balkans. A Study of Identity in Pre-Nationalist
Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2006), 543. In the context of Fine’s explanation, it becomes fully understandable why, in
1773, Constantin Philippidi defined “славеносрпски” as the liturgical language of the Serbs, and called it
“iллyрiческо-славéно-сéрбский.” (Quoted from Толстой, “Литературный язык сербов в XVIII в. (до 1780
г.),” 170, fn. 29. Speaking about the language of the handbook, Ручная книга потребная магистром
иллирических неунитских малих школ в цесаро-кралевских государствах, published in Vienna in
1776, Dimitrije Kirilović says: “овај ‘илирически’ језик је црквенословенски, који је био у употреби
у то доба код велике већине наших писаца.” Clearly, Kirilović refers to Slavo-Serbian, i.e. Serbianized
Slavo-Russian (see fns. 65 and 66), which at the time performed the function of Church Slavonic and
was designated as illirica lingua lithurgica, i.e. liturgical Illyrian, in contrast to everyday Slavic speech, i.e.
vulgar Illyrian (see fns. 20 and 30 for additional explanation). Cf. Кириловић, Српске основне школе у
Војводини у 18 веку: 1740-1780 (Сремски Карловци: Српска манастирска штампарија, 1929), 48.
22 Sante Graciotti, Il problema della lingua letteraria nell’antica letteratura croata”, in Ricerche slavistiche,
vol. 15 (1967), 123-164, the quotation appears on p. 127. As Graciotti further indicates, the first who prais-
es the high quality of Bosnian was the Benedictine monk, Mavro Orbini, from Dubrovnik. In his Il Regno
degli Slavi (1601), Orbini says: “Fra tutti i populi della lingua slava, costoro [li Bosnesi] hanno la più tersa
et la più elegante lingua; et si gloriano, ch’essi soli hoggidì, mantengono la purità della lingua slava. (Il
Regno de gli Slavi , 377).” Sante Graciotti, op. cit., 128. Also, after quoting extensively from the available
Under the influence of the Counterreformation, the Renaissance language of

Dubrovnik became, in subsequent centuries, the common, colloquial Illyrian lan-
guage, which was gradually adopted by the majority of South Slavic territories in the
central Balkans. It was also in wide use in the area of the Balkans occupied by the
Turks, that is, in Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria,23 and even in Constantinople.24 The
sources, Micaele S. Iovine says: “The reports in question often refer to the local Christian population
(whether Catholic or Orthodox) in terms of an Illyrian-Bosnian model, which will become a hallmark of
the theoretical pronouncements of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century philologists.Various com-
munities are referred to as di linguagio bosnese or di lingua Illirica.” See her “The ‘Illyrian Language’ and
the Language Question among the Southern Slavs in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”, in:
Aspects of the Slavic Language Question, vol. 1, Church Slavonic - South Slavic - West Slavic, eds. Riccardo
Picchio and Harvey Goldblatt (New Haven: Yale Consilium on International and Area Studies, 1984), 101-
156, the quotation appears on p. 125.
23 For more about the use of the term “Illyrian” by Bulgarian Catholic missionaries, see Iovine, “The
‘Illyrian Language,’” 130-41. Cf. also: Ivan Dujčev, Il cattolicesimo in Bulgaria nel sec. XVII secondo (Rome:
Pont. Institutum orientalium studiorum, 1937); Evsebije Fermendžin, Acta Bulgariae ecclesiastica ab a.
1565 usque ad a. 1799, (Zagreb: JAZU, 1887); АБАГАР на Филип Станиславов Рим, 1651, Фототипно
издание, ed. Божидар Райков (София: Народна просвета, 1979), with a list of pertinent literature on
35-37. АБАГАР is a breviary written by the Bulgarian Roman Catholic Bishop of Nikopol, Filip Stanislavov,
printed in Rome in 1651. It was used by the Catholics from Chiprovtsi in the seventeenth century. The lan-
guage of the breviary is a specific mixture of Church Slavonic, Croatian (i.e. Illyrian) and Neo-Bulgarian el-
ements. See В. Пундев, “Сборникът Абагар от епископ Филип Станиславов”, Годишник на Народната
библиотека в Пловдив (1924): 289-337. In order to support my interpretation of Venclović’s “ср’бскы”
as Illyrian, I am listing the following additional works about the Serbian АБАГАР: Никола Радојчић,
“Српски Абагар”, Etnolog 4, no. 2 (1931): 187-211; Светозар Душанић, “Наш стари дрворез у Музеју
Српске православне цркве”, Багдала 13 (1971): 149-50. Душанић discovered a copy of АБАГАР writ-
ten by the priest Стефан Ликић in 1747, and another one written in Banja Luka at the end of the seven-
teenth century; Й Ерков, “Латински извори на Станиславовия ‘Aбагар’”, in Литературна история, vol.
II (София,1978), 60-68; Ирена Грицкат, “Језичка анализа јужнословенских абагара”, in Јужнословенски
филолог, vol XLI (1985), 35-64. Cf. also: Emanuela Sgambati, “Cultura e azione europea di un missionario
patriota bulgaro: Karsto Pejkič”, in Atti dell’ VIII Congresso internazionale di studi sull’alto medioevo, La cul-
tura bulgara nel medioevo balcanico tra oriente e occidente europeo (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro italiano
di studi sull’alti medioevo, 1983), 1-21; Josip Turčinović, Misionar Podunavlja, Bugarin Krsto Pejkić (1665-
1731), in Analecta croatica christiana, vol. 5 (Zagreb: Kršćanska sadašnjost,1973); Janja Jerkov, “Relazioni
delle visite apostliche e altri documenti sui Pauliciani bulgari del XVIII secolo”, First part in Ricerche slav-
istiche, n.s., vol. 4 (2006), 85-205.; Second part, ibidem n.s. vol. 5 (2007), 45-190.
24
M. Костић, Српски језик као дипломатски језик југоисточне Европе од XV-XVIII в. (Скопље, 1924),
quoted from Ивић, Преглед историје српског језика, 92.
Bлияние славянской культуры на турок было так велико, что сербский язык [=Illyrian]
получил в турецкой столице значение международного языка, на котором говорили в са-
мом султанском дворце. Итальянский историк первой половины XVI в. рассказывает о рас-
простанении в Константинополе различных языков. “При дворе султана, - пишет он - упо-
требляются разные языки; турецкий - язык государя, арабский - язык священного законода-
тельства Kорана; третье место занимает язык славянский - на нем, как на самом общеиз-
вестном, говорят янычары, четвертое место занимает язык греческий, речь константи-
wars between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans intensified the migrations of refu-
gees leaving the territories plundered and conquered by the Turks and settling in the
Croatian lands (Slavonia, Lika, Kordun and others). Fearing Turkish occupation and
oppression, an Orthodox Serbian population migrated to the free western area of the
Balkans, bringing about the creation of nuclei of mixed (Serbian and Croatian) com-
munities.25 Zoran Velagić cogently describes the activities of the Counterreformation
missionaries at the Frontier of Catholicism and Orthodoxy:
It is clear that the particular frontier location of Croatian authors led
them to write extensively about the Orthodox Church. These authors pro-
duced works in the vernacular that dealt exclusively with Orthodoxy. Moreover,
every larger catechism contained a section which specifically raised the ques-
tion of the “separated.” Catholic authors felt the need to teach their flock what
Orthodoxy was and what should be done if one came into immediate contact
with Orthodox believers. Sometimes they only wanted to inform their believ-
ers about the dangers of other denominations. However, other Catholic authors
wanted to create a common ground for achieving unity more easily. This was
the most important task for the Catholic polemicists at their frontier of faith.26
Missionaries of the Counterreformation specially developed and adapted the
Illyrian language for use by Orthodox Serbs from the sixteenth century onwards. At
that time, the Cyrillic alphabet was the preferred alphabet for the Illyrian language,
favored over Glagolitic or Latin characters.27 It suffices to mention that in the seven-
нопольцев и населения городов Греции.” На сербском языке обычно составлялись грамоты,

посылаемые от имени султана в Москву и в Молдавию. Значительное количество подобных
грамот занесено в копиях в книги Посольского приказа в так называемых “турецких делах.”
Mихаил Тихомиров, “Россия и южные славяне в XVI-XVII вв.” in his: Исторические связи России со
славянскими странами и Византией (Москва: Наука, 1969), 146-66, the quotation appears on 147.
25 “Although Croatia was largely Catholic, its Military Border was a heaven for Orthodox Serbs.” C.W.
Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy 1618-1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29.
26 Zoran Velagić, “The Croatian Author at the Frontier of Catholicism and Orthodoxy in Croatia”, in:
Frontiers of Faith. Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities 1400-1750, eds. Eszter
Andor and István György Tóth (Budapest: Central European University, 2001), 89-97, the quotation ap-
pears on p. 97.
27
An anonymous author wrote a letter (on July 5, 1627 in Rome) to the Cardinal of the Propaganda de
fide:
Bona parte del mondo parla in quella lingua (la lingua illyrica), in particulare: li Boemi, Moscouiti,
Poloni, Rutteni, Traci, Serviani, Crovati, Dalmatini, Ragusei, Bosnesi et molti altri; sarà però necessario
che la translatione, che si farà possa esser intesa d’ogn’uno di questi.
Il carattere è di due sorti, l’uno si chiama Bucuizza e l’altro Chiuriliza; questa è universale e di que-
sta si servono li Moscouiti, Ruteni, Seruiani, Bosnesi et molti altri, et in questa offitiano li monaci di S.
teenth and eighteenth centuries, Rafael Levaković and his followers—Matej Karaman,
Vicencije Zmajević, Matvej Sović, Ivan Paštrić and others who were sponsored by the
Sacra Congregation de Propaganda Fide—introduced the lingua Illyrica litteralis into
Croatian liturgical texts in order to make this language conform as closely as possible
to the liturgical Ukrainian version of Church Slavonic.28 Catholic reformers and ac-
tivists were thoroughly acquainted with the linguistic development of the Orthodox
Slavs. Thus, the intensive endeavors of missionaries to advance the language led not
only to the augmentation of the Cyrillic alphabet but also to the graphic adaptation
for the specific sounds of Štokavian.29 Books were specially printed in this common
Illyrian language for the Serbs.30 Thus, the Cyrillic alphabet and the common people’s
language were modified to fit the phonological peculiarities of Illyrian literary ex-
Basilio di rito greco, e li Rassiani scismatici; e stampandosi in questo carattere si potrebbe sperar per
questo mezzo qualque frutto in detti scismatici, li quali volontieri leggerano l’opere nove uscite nel-
la loro lingua e carattere; et a questo hebbe risguardo la santa memoria di PP. Gregorio XIII. che fece
stampare qui in Roma il catechismo e Cannasio, a la fel. memoria del Cardin. S. Severina si hebbe par-
ticolar cura e premura molto in questo negotio e fù causa della salute di molti.
Evsebije Fermendžin, “Listovi o izdanju glagolskih crkvenih knjiga i o drugih književnih poslovih u
Hrvatskoj od god. 1620-1648”, Starine JAZU 24 (1891), 1-40, the quotation appears on p. 18.
See also J. Jurić, “Pokušaj ‘Zbora za širenje vjere’ god. 1627 da kod Južnih Slavena uvede zajedničko
pismo”, Croatica Sacra 4 (1934), 143-74; Вид Вулетић Вукасовић, “Ћирилица код присташа
римокатоличке цркве до свршетка XVIII в. у Босни и Далмацији...” Споменик СКА, vol. XXXV (1903),
117-25; J. Радоњић, Штампарије и школе Римске курије у Италији и јужнословенским земљама у XVII
веку (Београд: Српска академија наука, 1949), 1-147, especially 126; Olga Nedeljković, “Josef Dobrovský
and the Serbian Literary Language at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”, Serbian Studies 1, no. 4 (1982),
3-19, especially 9.
28
P. Marko Japundžić, Matteo Karaman (1700-1771), Arcivescovo di Zara (Rome: [s.n.], 1961); Josip Hamm,
“Ruska redakcija u glagoljskim spomenicima”, Slovo 21 (1971), 213-22; Sante Graciotti, “Il problema del-
la lingua letteraria croata e la polemica tra Karaman e Rosa”, Ricerche slavistiche 13 (1965), 129; idem, “Il
problema della lingua letteraria nell’antica letteratura croata”, 148; Olga Nedeljković, “The Humanistic
Concept of Križanić’s Language”, Journal of Croatian Studies 31 (1990), 23-27.
29 Šime Budinić prepared parallel editions in Latin and Cyrillic for use among the Balkan Catholics and
Orthodox. See more about him and his writings in Šime Budinić, “Izabrana djela”, in: Planine, ed. Franjo
Švelec (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2002), 309-422, with a list of Budinić’s editions and pertinent literature
about him on 327-30.
30
There existed a general tendency not only to write books for the Orthodox Serbs and Bulgarians
in this lingua illyrica litteralis, but also to identify this lingua antica illyrica with the Church Slavonic
language in which Orthodox books were written. For example, Father Rafo Levaković made such an
identification in his description of ‘My relationship with schismatic Bishop Maxim,’ where he said: “...
he [Bicshop Maxim] showed me some books written in Serbian [i.e., Cyrillic] letters in the lingua an-
tica illyrica, such as Bibles, Maenologies, Euchologies, Lives of Saint Fathers, and other ecclesiastical
books in the Greek rite.
pression.31 Having established the evident connection between Venclović’s language

and Illyrian, we must conclude that Venclović’s “ср’бскы” was completely unrelated
to Church Slavonic: it was neither modeled upon nor structurally connected to the
literary language of the Orthodox Slavs.
Common Illyrian became the language of Orthodox settlers who fled Turkish
territory and settled in the western parts of the Balkans, especially in the area of the
Military Border in Croatia and Slavonia. As has already been mentioned, Illyrian
was the generally accepted language in all the Croatian provinces. These provinces
formed part of the multinational Habsburg Empire, which also included Bohemia,
Moravia, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. One should bear in mind that the Serbs
were never united in a single political territory inside the Habsburg Monarchy.
They were scattered and subject to different administrative systems.32 This said, the
Serbian Orthodox Church exerted a unifying power—it held both spiritual and po-
litical power over the Orthodox Christians33 under Ottoman rule, and endeavored to
Nedeljković, “The Humanistic Concept of Križanić’s Language”, 23. The quotation about Rafael
Levaković is taken from Evsebije Fermendžin, “O. Rafo Levaković i Vlasi u Hrvatskoj g. 1641.”, Starine 20
(1888), 27.
31
Mладеновић, “Слово Ђ пре Вука”, 159-62. Idem, “Обележавање гласова Ћ и Ђ у рукопису ‘Мач
Духовни,’” 113-24. Since there is no critical edition of Venclović’s manuscripts in general, and the manu-
script of the Spiritual Sword (Мачъ Духовный) in particular, upon which Mладеновић based his analysis,
one can only speculate whether the differences in the graphical representations of the letters ђ, ћ with
к, г, кiа, кiе, кю, ђа, ђе, ђи, ђю, ћа, гiа, ће, гiе, etc., could be assigned to Venclović alone. It seems plausi-
ble to assume that there were at least two if not three copyists involved in translating, though probably
only copying, the text of Baranovyč’s Мачъ Духовный to the manuscript assigned to Venclović (see the
six photocopies of the original text of the Spiritual Sword at the end of Mladenović’s article). At the end
of his description of manuscript No 92 (267) of the Spiritual Sword, Stojanović remarks: “На последњој
корици запис другом руком: Съписател книги сїе ест чстнѣиши отцъ Гаврїил їеромонах, капелан
Ћурски. 1736 году ноем. 8 (?)прочитах ю азъ свещенноїереи въ Будимскои вароши.” Стојановић,
Каталог рукописа и старих штампаних књига, 87. As already pointed out, without a critical edition of
Venclović’s texts, it is impossible to draw any reliable conclusion in this regard. Certainly, the creation of
the letters Ђ, Ћ and Џ that one encounters in Venclović’s manuscripts can hardly be assigned to Venclović
alone.
32 See Алекса Ивић, Миграције Срба у Хрватској током XVI, XVII, и XVIII столећа. Насеља српских
земаља (Суботица: СКА, 1923); idem, Миграција Срба у Славонију током XVI. XVII, XVIII столећа (Су-
ботица: СКА, 1926); idem, Историја Срба у Војводини од најстаријих времена до оснивања потиско-
поморишке границе 1703 (Нови Сад: Издање Матице Српске, 1929); Адам Прибићевић, Насељавање
Срба по Хрватској и Далмацији (Виндзор, Ontario: Avala, 1955); Душан Поповић, “Узроци померања
српског народа из Србије у крајеве северно од Дунава и Саве”, in: Срби у Војводини. Од најстаријих
времена до Карловачког мира 1699, vol. 1 (Нови Сад: Матица српска, 1990), 96-109.
33
Preobrazba bizantskog pravoslavlja u srpsku narodnu religiju, posebna organizacija Pravoslavne

crkve, odnosi izmedju Crkve i države, sve je to odredilo ulogu Crkve u životu srpskog naroda za osman-
preserve the same privileges of the millet system34 in the Monarchy.35 Paul Pavlovich
explains the situation in which the Serbs found themselves thusly:
The rights and privileges which the Serbs had been granted upon entering
the Hungarian lands in the Austrian Kingdom had been considerable: [emphasis
added] they had been given a form of autonomy in their religious and educa-
tional affairs; they had been given the right to call and administer the church-
people assemblies, and had been promised the appointment of the Court’s ad-
visors for matters related to Serb affairs; a vague promise of separate territories
for Serb settlements had also been made, and a series of taxes had been adjust-
lijske vladavine. Ta se uloga protezala tako reći na sva životna područja pa je istovremeno osiguravala
isključivu duhovnu prevlast Crkve. Medjutim, to je bilo moguće samo pod turskom vladavinom, unutar
društvene situacije u kojoj su se onda nalazili Srbi.
László Hadrovics, Srpski narod i njegova crkva pod turskom vlašću, trans. Marko Kovačević (Zagreb:
Nakladni Zavod Globus, 2000), 121. In his book, Србија у време бечког рата 1683 -1699 (Београд: Нолит,
1976), 186, Gligor Stanojević characterizes the role of the Serbian Church as follows:
Монополишући сва црквена, а тиме и политичка права за себе, српска црква у Угарској
имаће пресудну улогу у друштвеном животу српског народа. Традиционализам српске цркве
као политичка концепција, која је и овом приликом дошла до израза, онемогућио јој је да са-
гледа низ нових проблема, које је време поставило пред српски народ. Иако је српска црква
иступила са својих уских сталешких позиција, она је била гаранција свести и идентитета
српског народа. Вером је српски народ у Војводини штитио свој идентитет, не само од ка-
толичанства и протестантизма, него је деломично остајао одсечен од великих токова
европске цивилизације.
34
Millet system is a term for the confessional communities in the Ottoman Empire. It refers to the
separate legal courts pertaining to ‘personal law’ under which communities (Muslim Sharia, Christian
Canon and Jewish Halanha law abiding) were allowed to rule themselves under their own system...
The word Millet comes from the Arabic word millah and literary means ‘nation.’ The Millet system of
Islamic law has been called an early example of pre-modern religious pluralism...
“Millet (Ottoman Empire)”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet_(Ottoman_Empire), (accessed March
16, 2011).
35
Bishop Isaac Djaković, as the Serbian negotiator with Leoplod I,
had succeeded tremendously in securing the right of Serb Church self-administration, in secur-
ing recognition of Arsenius’ Patriarchship and his overall position of leadership among the Serbs in
the Austrian Empire, in establishing the right to call assemblies which were to select only Serbs as
Archbishops, and in obtaining tax exemption for all the Serb churches and their lands; in exchange,
the Serbs had to swear loyalty to and accept recognition of Leopold as a hereditary ruler, as well as be
obliged to serve in military service. This original or initial set of privileges had been issued in August of
1690, and in ecclesiastical matters, the Serb Church head, in what is Voyvodina today, had been given
all the above rights as an ‘Archbishop of all the people who follow the Greek church service (mean-
ing Orthodox) in all of Greece, Rashka, Bulgaria, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Kosovo (Yenopolye), Hercegovina,
Hungary and Croatia.
Paul Pavlovich, The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church (Toronto: Serbian Heritage Books, 1989), 97.
ed and lowered in order to help the Serbs to quickly establish themselves eco-
nomically. It is interesting to note that these rights and privileges had covered
all the Serbs, those who had been long time citizens of the Austrian Empire as
well as those who had just arrived with the 1690 migration, and that these same
rights had applied to all parts of the Empire, whether it be Hungary, Croatia,
Slavonia, Lika, or elsewhere.36
Thus, in addition to the ecclesiastical, political and economic privileges Emperor
Leopold granted the Vojvodina37 church organization, the Serbian Orthodox Church
was free to promote education and culture, including the usage of language, books
and instructors. Until Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) came to the throne, ed-
ucation and culture were entirely in the hands of the church. The Orthodox clergy
regulated, approved and controlled all linguistic innovations, struggling to preserve
the Slavo-Serbian and Slavo-Russian cultural orientation of the Serbs.38 The cru-
cial question, then, is: why would the Orthodox Church have sanctioned the use
of Illyrian in Orthodox religious literature?39 This question becomes even more
36
Ibid, 107-08.
37 Vojvodina is an autonomous territorial community, located within the northern part of the Republic
of Serbia. It borders Hungary in the North, Romania in the East, Croatia in the West, and the Republica
Srpska entity in the South-West. It stretches over the Pannonian plain.
38
Дошавши у туђинску и иноверну земљу, од првог дана у верској опасности и без престанка
изложени великим верским гоњењима, Срби су осећали потребу да се што чвршће привежу
уз словенску верску и националну заједницу, и њима је изгледало да је усвајање рускословен-
ског језика једна велика гарантија за чување њихове угрожене народне и верске особености.
Скерлић, Српска књижевност у XVIII веку, 143.
39 The existing explanations of the presence of Serbian vernacular in Serbian ecclesiastical literature of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are not convincing. Cf., for example, Павић’s “Неостварена
симбиоза два књижевна језика, или православна реакција на католичку противреформацију” in:
Историја српске књижевности барокног доба, where he says:
Укратко, као што је реформација морала изазвати католичку реакцију, тако је снажење
католичанства у противреформационим процесима морало изазвати, свуда и увек када је
долазило до контакта између источног хришћанства и католицизма, православну реакцију
на католичку противреформацију. Тако су средства која је западна црква преузимала од
реформације морала бити уведена и у методе православне цркве. Отуда појава употре-
бе народног језика у црквеној и другој књижевности код Срба у XVII и на почетку XVIII века,
што у крајњој линији као принцип није у потпуности одговарало ономе што се догодило у
реформацији. (28-32, the quotation appears on p. 29.)
Pavić even questions his own explanation in the last part of the last sentence. However, he tries to
clarify his idea further by saying:
Како на Западу, у процесима паралелним противреформацијским тежњама католичан-
ства, тако се и овде црква нашла између опасности да ослаби пред ефикаснијим верским
intriguing when one takes into account the fact that after 1690, having escaped the
Turkish yoke and settled in southern Hungary, the Serbs resisted all innovations that,
by their reasoning, threatened the Orthodox tradition.40 Like all the Orthodox in
general, they rejected all that was Latin and Catholic. Living in the Catholic Habsburg
Empire, the Serbs considered themselves religiously and politically oppressed.41 It is
ривалом или да, уводећи народни језик и популаришући догму, отвори врата различитим
импулсима апокрифних и чак паганских народних предања. Одлучивши се за ово друго, црква
је жртвовала део својих интереса и начинила неке уступке, којима данас имамо да захва-
лимо за даљи развитак и секуларизацију старог путописа. See his “Народни језик у служби
секуларизације путописа. (ibid., 316-19, the quotation appears on p. 316)
It is hard to accept the explanation Pavić proposed in his Историја српске књижевности барокног
доба. As an erudite scholar, well-known postmodernist writer, and knowledgeable literary critic, Pavić
did not fully understand the language problems of the Slaveno-Serbian writers in Hungary, in particu-
lar Venclović’s diglossia. Specialists of Slaveno-Serbian have not provided an adequate explanation of
Slaveno-Serbian and Venclović’s language either (see fns. 65, 66 and 86). The Serbian Orthodox Church
could never have introduced the Serbian vernacular into literary works or as the official language of the
Serbian Orthodox Church. One can speak even less about the secularization of the Serbian travelogue
genre during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such a westernized approach to the Orthodox
peoples in general, and to the Serbs in particular, implies a serious distortion of their linguistic develop-
ment. See fn. 86 about the language of the earliest travelogues among the Serbs.
40 The appeal Metropolitan Mojsije Petrović sent to Emperor Peter the Great in 1721, requesting
teachers and books from Russia, illustrates well the anti-Latin and anti-Catholic feelings of the Serbs in
Vojvodina. In it, Metropolitan Petrović describes the Catholic clergy as “владајушти нас”, “врази наши”,
“со всјаким лживим художеством (лажном вештином) труждајут сја да уловјат нас в мрежу убитија
нашега.” In a letter to Count Golovkin, chancellor of the Emperor, Metropolitan Petrović says that the
Serbs find themselves “међу љутим зверовима и противницима православне вере.” Furthermore, he
begs the chancellor to persuade the Emperor to send teachers to the Serbs as soon as possible “док нису
дошли горди и грабљиви вуци да пограбе овце, јер оружија немамо којим би им могли насупрот
стати.” Quoted from Поповић, Срби у Војводини, 382.
41
One should bear in mind that:
On the one hand, the Serbs had envisaged themselves as a separate political entity within the
Empire, a position which they thought they had attained with the guarantees and privileges grant-
ed to them by Emperor Leopold I [...] In the Austrian Empire, on the other hand, the Serbs had found
themselves in a multinational Empire, where Austrian and Hungarian parts of it predominated, and
where the Roman Catholic Church was the church of the Imperial Court. Ever since the fall of the Serb
state, the Church head had also assumed Serb secular leadership, and the natural tendency had been
to continue with that practice in the Austrian Empire as well. However, was it really realistic to expect
the Vienna Emperor to agree to this lessening of his temporal power in relation to Serbs, when that had
not been the case in relation to any other of the many national groups within the Empire? [emphasis
added] Much of the Voyvodina Serb story was to be a constant struggle to remain Serb and Orthodox
and not to lose the faith of their forefathers, the story which of course was to be repeated many times
over, among the Serbs of Slavonia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun and Baniya.
Pavlovich, The History of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 107-108. Cf. also: Дејан Микавица, Српска
Војводина у Хабсбуршкој монархији 1690-1920. Историја идеје о држави и аутономији пречанских
sufficient to recall, for example, that they asked for books and teachers from Russia,
in order to avoid a complete break with their past tradition.42 The Slavo-Russian
cultural orientation of the Serbs demonstrates the strength of ties within the Slavic-
Orthodox community. These ties were just as strong at the end of the seventeenth
and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries as they were during the first centu-
ries when Christianity was adopted from Byzantium. My analysis reveals the Slavic
Orthodox community as an impressive case of a supranational, religious and lin-
guistic unity.43
Срба (Нови Сад: Stylos, 2005), with a list of pertinent literature; Славко Гавриловић, Из историје Срба
у Хрватској, Славонији и Угарској, XV-XIX век (Београд: Филип Вишњић, 1993), 7-157.
42 After the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, (when the Byzantine clergy had transferred their ecumeni-
cal ambitions from Constantinople to Moscow, proclaiming “Moscow - the Third Rome”), the Russians
were accorded the status of the models and leaders of the supranational Slavic Orthodox community.
From this context, it becomes clear why the Serbian Orthodox Church asked for teachers and books
from Russia to revive their literary activities in Vojvodina.
With the arrival in 1726 of the Russian teacher, Maksim Suvorov, Russian-type schools were found-
ed, with Russian books and instructors. The principal objective of these schools was to train clergy the
foundations of the Serbian educational system which were laid by Metropolitans Mojsije Petrović and
Vićentije Jovanović. After the departure of the Russian teachers, the development of education suffered
a setback, but recovered during the tenure of Metropolitan Pavle Nenadović.
Wayne Vucinich, “The Serbs in Austria-Hungary”, Austrian History Yearbook 3, pt. 2, (1967): 3-47, the
quotation appears on p. 41. Aлександар Младеновић, “Београдски митрополит Мојсије Петровић
(1713-1730) и почетак стварања српског књижевног језика новијег времена”, in Зборник за
филологију и лингвистику, vol.. XLVIII, 1-2 (2005), 77-84. Cf. also: Русско-сербские литературные
связи XVIII-начала XIX века, ed. Ю. Д. Беляева (Москва-Нови Сад: Институт славяноведения и
балканистики АНСССР, 1989); Рајко Л. Веселиновић, “Српско-руске везе крајем XVII и првих година
XVIII столећа”, in: Југословенске земље и Русија у XVIII веку (Београд САНУ, 1986), 15-38. Cf. the other
articles in the same edition; Vladimir Mošin”,O periodizaciji rusko-južnoslavenskih književnih veza, Slovo,
vol. XI-XII (1962), 13-125; I. Mokuter, “Русско-сербские литературные связи в XVIII веке”, in Studia slavi-
ca, vol. XVIII (1972), 1-29.
43
See more about Slavia Orthodoxa in Riccardo Picchio, “A proposito della Slavia ortodossa e del-
la comunità linguistica slava ecclesiastica”, Ricerche slavistiche 11 (1963): 8-9; idem, Slavia Orthodoxa
Литература и язык, eds. Н.Н. Запольская and В.В. Калугин (Москва: Знак, 2003), 3-47. Ol’ga B.
Strakhov aptly stresses that the South Slavs under the Turkish occupation hoped the Russians would
help them and eventually liberate them:
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries representatives of the southern Slavs who were under
Ottoman rule (e.g., despotitsa Angelina, the monasteries of Mt. Athos) actively promoted the idea of
Moscow as the only Orthodox center which retained religious independence...Russia seem to them
the country which retained the ancient piety (Древлее благочестие), able to a certain degree to pre-
serve and expand Orthodox, and first and foremost Byzantine, culture. That is, the Greeks themselves
were capable of supporting to one degree or another something akin to the notion of “Moscow the
Third Rome.” In many respects the appeal to Russia in their search for support—primarily material,
Investigating Venclović’s language in its socio-historical framework involves the

use of written documents as source materials. In order to define the officially recog-
nized Slavic language within the multilingual setting of the Habsburg Empire, I will
briefly present the usage of the terms Illyricum and Illyrian by Slavo-Serbian authors
living in Hungary and the Croatian lands. Recalling the Roman administrative title
of the ancient territory of Illyricum, Renaissance humanists in Italy and Dalmatia
applied the term “Illyrian” to the South Slavs and their language.44 While this is not
the place to explore the long and rich tradition of the Illyrian language, I would like
to briefly clarify its major function. It was developed as the popular language, “the
lingua commune nazionale”, of the South Slavs. The terms “Illyrians” and “Illyrian”
were used not only in reference to the South Slavic people and their language, but
also in reference to the ideology of so-called “Illyrism.” This ideology was incorpo-
rated into the political and defensive:
platform of the Post-Tridentine Counter-Reformational Catholicism ori-
ented towards institutional and dogmatic consolidation as well as to the pros-
elytistic expansion. [...] Counter-Reformational Illyrism [which] absorbed and
made use of modified elements of the Orthodox, above all the Serbian, histori-
cal tradition.45
but also spiritual—naturally arose from the conditions of cultural life in the countries of the Orthodox
East under the Turks.
See her, “Attitudes to Greek Language and Culture in Seventeenth-Century Moscovy”, 123.
An Italian author wrote the following:
Все народы Болгарии, Сербии, Боснии, Мореи и Греции покланяются имени великого князя
московского, так как они принадлежат к тому же самому греческому вероисповеданию и не
надеются, что их освободят от турецкого рабства чья либо рука, кроме его. (Тихомиров,
оp. cit., 154)
44 Bruna Kuntić-Makvić, “Tradicija o našim krajevima u antičkom razdoblju kod dalmatinskih pisaca XVI
i XVII stoljeća”, Živa antika 34 (1984): 1-2, 155-64. The best source and description of all the Renaissance
humanistic innovations and new approaches to the history of the South Slavs is Daniele Farlati’s Illyricum
sacrum (1751-1819), an ecclesiastical-historical work with a huge number of documents. More than a
hundred collaborators collected the archival materials, which were presented in three hundred sheets
and nine huge volumes for the Jesuit church historian’s opus magnum. Cf. also Ivan Črnčić, “Prilozi k raz-
pravi imena Slovjanin i Ilir u našem gostinjcu u Rimu poslije 1453. god.”, Starine JAZU 18 (1886): 1-164.
45 Cf. Zdenka Blažević has written the most important study on this topic, Ilirizam prije ilirizma (Zagreb:
Golden Marketing- Tehnička knjiga, 2008), 348. In it, she classifies Catholic Reformational Illyrism into
four distinct subcategories: Interconfessional, Franciscan, Curial-Habsburg and Dalmatian Illyrism. At
the end of her analysis (319-45), she includes Serbian Illyrism, which is clearly expressed in the ideologi-
cal and political program of Count Djordje Branković, especially in his Romanian Chronicle written in
1688. (Cf. Gheorghe Brancovici, Cronica Romȃnească, ed. Damaschin Mioc, trans. Marieta Adam-Chiper
(Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste Romȃnia, 1987), and its Serbian translation: Ђорђе
If the Catholic counterreformers skillfully used Serbian elements for their po-
litical and religious purposes, Serbs living within the Habsburg Empire gradually
absorbed and adopted Illyrism. For example, Serbian leaders Djordje Branković and
Аrsenije III Čarnojević both fused the Serbian Orthodox tradition with analogous
Western models in order to make their national narrative transculturally legible.46
Zrinka Blažević has cogently defined this transconfessional and transnational modi-
fication of Illyrism as Serbian national Illyrism. Serbian Illyrism
found its strongest expression in the appropriation of the Illyrian appel-
lative and its gradual “nationalization.” When one considers the first,47 condi-
tionally designated as the confessional-theocratic political paradigm [of the
key figures of Orthodox hierarchy, Аrsenije III Čarnojević and Izaija Djaković],
the above-mentioned process can be followed in the modifications of the tit-
ulatures of Arsenije Čarnojević, Metropolitan in exile…48 Thus, after 1690,
Čarnojević changed the title inherited from the Middle Ages and added new
elements to it: “the Archbishop of the Eastern Church, the First Justinian”, “the
Metropolitan of all Illyricum”, and later he signed his title of rank mostly as
“The Slavo-Serbian Metropolitan.”49
Бранковић, Хроника Словена Илирика, Горње Мезије и Доње Мезије, ed. Јелка Ређеп, trans. Стеван
Бугарски (Нови Сад: Прометеј, 1994). An analysis of Djordje Branković’s Illyrism exceeds the scope of
my investigation. Branković was imprisoned in 1689 and could not have been responsible for the of-
ficial introduction of the Illyrian language in the ecclesiastic literature of the Serbs. It would be hard to
believe that the Illyrian language, i.e. the Serbian vernacular, could have appearance in Venclović’ s texts
without the knowledge of the key figures of the Orthodox hierarchy at the time.
46 Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma, 352.
47
One can follow the second paradigm, i.e., the parallel tendency to transform from Illyrian to the
Slaveno-Serbian nomenclature in the preserved works of Djordje Branković. See more about it in
Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma, 324-36.
48 Ibid, 324.
49
The full quotation from Arsenije III Čarnojević’s memorandum to Emperor Leopold I, which most like-
ly was composed by Count Djordje Branković, reads as follows:
Ultimatim, dum tandem aliquando inter duos potentissimos Monarchas, videlicet inter Augustiss-
imam Vestram Majestatem, et Turcarum Szultanum exoptata pax concludere videretur, cum patria no-
stra scilicet Slavo-Serborum, Bulgarorum, Rascianorum, Valachorumque una cum coeteris ditionibus,
regionibusque eidem annexis, quae sub nomine Slavo-Illyriae, maxime autem,quibus principatibus, ac
provinciis Primus Justinianus Imperator patriam Suam exornaverat, condecoraverat, amplificaverat,
Primam Justinianam, patriamque Suam esse denominaverat, comprehenduntur…
Славко Гавриловић, Извори о Србима у Угарској с краја XVII и почетком XVIII века (Београд: САНУ,
1990), 316. Since Metropolitan Arsenije’s memorandum to Leopold I is of the utmost importance, I will
provide the reader with Blažević’s translation of this quotation:
Venclović’s “ср’бскы” is of crucial significance for explaining the structure

and characteristic features of the Serbian common people’s language, i.e. сербски
прости iезикъ within the ideological framework of Serbian Orthodox Illyrism on
the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy.50 The transformation and appropriation of
Napokon, pošto se, kako se čini, izmedju dva najmoćnija vladara, naime Vašeg Uzvišenog Veličan-
stva i turskog sultana zaključi žudjeni mir, neka se pod našom domovinom, naime domovinom nas
Slavo-Srba, Bugara, Rašana, Vlaha, zajedno sa ostalim posjedima i područjima koja su joj pripojena,
shvaća sve ono obuhvaćeno pod nazivom Slavo-Ilirije, te ponajviše one kneževine i pokrajine kojima je
car Justinijan I uresio, uljepšao i proširio svoju domovinu, nazvavši je Prvom Justinijanom. (See p. 322)
Blažević gives an important explanation on p. 322, fn. 668:
Iustiniana Prima bio je službeni naziv katoličke Ohridske nadbiskupije, osnovane 1647. godine
u navodnom rodnom mjestu ‘ilirskog cara’ Justinijna, čiji je nesudjeni nadbiskup trebao biti Rafael
Levaković. Arsenijevo preuzimanje te titule izraz je ne samo njegovih legitimacijskih potreba nego i
nastojanja da odredi svoje jurisdikcijske ovlasti ‘prevodeći’ ih na katolički eklezijalnopolitički jezik. U
ovom slučaju ulogu interkulturnog medijatora imao je, čini se, despot Djordje Branković.
Usp. Nikola Radojčić, “Iustiniana Prima und Graf Georg Branković”, Südostforschungen 22 (1963), 312-335.
Blažević, Ilirizam prije ilirizma, 322. Aside from such a personality as Count Branković, Metropolitan
Čarnojević’s ecumenical ambitions in the Balkans expressed in the quotation above as well as in his tit-
ulatures could be best understood and interpreted in the context of the restoration of the Patriarchate
of Peć in 1557. It was an event of great importance for the Serbs, which helped the spiritual unification
of all the Orthodox (including the Bulgarians) not only in the Ottoman Empire, but in the entire Balkans:
Пећка патријаршија је у другој половини 16. века и у 17. веку заузимала већу територију
него за време Немањића, њене су границе биле шире и од самог Душановог царства, а и од
тадашњих оквира Васељенске патријаршије. Њу су признавали и Срби из јужних угарских
крајева. За нас су ови подаци важни због тога што су црква, и посебно Пећка патријаршија,
током целог тог времена формирале националну културу, идеологију и књижевност српског
народа, како су знале и умеле.
Грицкат, “Језик књижевности и књижевни језик”, 19.
Since the Ottomans had abolished the Patriarchate once again in 1766, Metropolitan Čarnojević
fought and received religious freedom from Emperor Leopold I, thus reestablishing the dominant po-
sition of the Serbian Orthodox Church among the Orthodox Balkan Slavs. However, his ecumenical as-
pirations were oriented towards much broader territories which would have included both the entire
Slavo-Illyria and all the principalities and regions of Justiniania prima i.e., of the Ohrid Archbishopric. See
more about “Serbian ecumenical imperialism” in Hadrovics, “Nacionalno poslanje srpske pravoslavne
crkve”,and “Patrijaršijska vanjska politika”, in his Srpski narod i njegova crkva pod turskom vlašću, 85-123;
Petre Guran, “Escatology and Political Theology in the last centuries of Byzantium”, in Revue des études
sud-est européennes, vol. 14, nos. 1-4 (Bucarest, 2007), 73-85.
50 The enormous topic of Serbian Illyrism has, for the most part, been woefully neglected in scholar-
ship. It can only be detected in the works of Serbian scholars. For example, Павић’s Историја српске
књижевности барокног доба contains an excellent description of Serbian Illyrism in general, as do his
works on Venclović’s numerous innovations and contributions to Serbian literature in the 1730’s and
1740’s in particular. The Croatian and Ukrainian baroque influences are cogently described in Pavić’s
writings and they represent the best parts of Pavić’s books. Even a short survey of them exceeds the
scope of my investigation. In regard to Pavić’s literary, aesthetic, philosophical, rhetorical, etc. description
Reformational Catholic Illyrism by the Serbs in Hungary were related to the expe-
rience of several centuries of migration in the areas of the Western Balkans. Taking
into consideration that Serbian Orthodox Illyrism represents an ideological modifi-
cation of Catholic Reformational Illyrism, whose missionaries sought to achieve the
confessional unification with the Orthodox, I would like to mention an important as-
pect that must have consciously or unconsciously contributed to the consolidation of
Serbian National Illyrism among the Orthodox Serbs in the Habsburg Empire. In this
regard, one must bear in mind that the formation of Orthodox Serbian confessional
identities and boundaries did not coincide with their political and cultural bound-
aries within the Monarchy. In everyday life, Serbs were subject to an administrative
and civilizational system marked by a powerful confessionalist Catholicism that em-
braced all spheres of public life. Despite the Serbian Orthodox Church’s efforts and
struggles to preserve the Orthodox faith and withstand the pressure to unify, the
clear-cut patterns of Serbian Orthodox confessionalism were challenged within the
of Venclović’s corpus of texts (cf. Павић’s “Предговор” in his Црни биво у срцу. Легенде, беседе, песме,
7-80), see Costantini’s friendly review of Павић’s Црни биво у срцу. Легенде, беседе, песме, in which he
correctly emphasizes: “...gli studiosi non hanno ancora determinato la genesi compositiva degli scritti
legati al nome di Venclović e non si è in grado di indicare se e quanto Venclović debba essere consid-
erato autore, e quanto invece traduttore, compilatore o copista di tali testi: Né ci risulta che tale indag-
ine sia stata compiuta da Pavić.” Ricerche slavistiche 15 (1967): 272-80, the quotation appears on p. 274.
Also cf. the critical remarks of Челица Миловановић in “О изворима и књижевном поступку Гаврила
Стефановића Венцловића”, 27-42. As a classical scholar and byzantinologist, Milovanović has skillfully
shed light on Venclović’s sources, and cogently indicated a number of weak aspects of Pavić’s overly en-
thusiastic evaluation of Venclović’s “revolutionary” contributions to Serbian literature and language. In
this regard, Venclović seems akin to someone like Francysk Skaryna (ca.1485-1540 or 1490-1551), who
received a Doctor’s degree in Medicine from the University of Padova in 1512 (for more on his works, see
the beginning of the third part of this study). As the first Byelorussian printer, Skaryna was undoubtedly
connected with the Counterreformers who composed, translated, appropriated and adapted numer-
ous texts to fit the ideology and needs of the Orthodox Slavs in the transconfessional areas of Ukraine,
Poland-Lithuania, Hungary and the Balkans. Most probably, Venclović was only a copyist who might
have recopied parts of the numerous manuscripts assigned to him (see the last part of fn. 29, and fn.
105). Without having a critical edition(s) of Venclović’s numerous manuscripts, it is impossible to make
any conclusion about either his literary competence or his knowledge of the Serbian language.
Serbian Illyrism can be detected in the writings of many Slavo-Serbian authors. For example, in
his “Рајићева Хрватска историја”, Nikola Radojčić speaks about Rajić’s specific South Slavic orien-
tation in his History: “Међу Хрватима Рајићевим савременицима, а може се мирне душе рећи, и
међу каснијим хрватским покољењима, није Рајићева Историја испунила намијењену јој мисију,
зближења свих Словена и сједињења јужних Словена.” Rad JAZU 222 (1920): 75-113, the quotation ap-
pears on p. 112. However, Ненад Љубинковић correctly detects the influences of Catholic Reformational
Illyrism (Mavro Orbini and Andrija Kačić-Miošić) in Рајић’s Историјa and Гаврило Ковачевић’s Cпев.
See his “Cпев Гаврилa Ковачевићa о Косовском боју, Историја Јована Рајића и идеје Андрије Качића
Миошића”, in: Јован Рајић. Живот и дело, ed. Марта Фрајнд (Београд: Институт за књижевност и
уметност, 1997), 108-18.
multinational Empire. Participating in the Catholic Habsburg state left an indelible

impact on the formation of culture among the Serbs in Vojvodina, impacting lan-
guage, literature and art. In order to make this aspect more tangible and concrete,
and avoid sweeping generalizations, I will now focus on examples of the deployment
of the terms “Illyricum” and “Illyrian”, which have been frequently misunderstood or
misinterpreted in scholarship.51
Metropolitan Arsenije III Čarnojević most probably was among the first to in-
troduced the term “Illyricum” in his title: “...Арсениј Черноевич Божијеју милостију
51
In his well elaborated article, “Покушаји бечке владе око увођења народног језика и правописа у
српске, хрватске и словеначке школе крајем 18. века”, in speaking about the attempts of the Vienna
government to introduce the vernacular and Latin script for the Serbs in schools outside the Orthodox
Church, Mita Kostić says:
То је рађено из чисто начелних културно-просветних разлога терезијанске школске поли-
тике да се почетна основна настава ради што бољег успеха заводи на народном језику сва-
ког народа у монархији; из скривених црквенополитичких разлога да се ради што бржег вер-
ско-културног нивелисања Срба и Хрвата књиге православних ‘Илира’ изједначе с књигама
католичких ‘Илира,’ и православни Срби одбију од Русије. [bolding added]
Прилози за књижевност, језик, историју и фолклор, vol. 17 (1937), 258.
Dimitrije Kirilović describes a special School Decree issued by Empress Maria Theresia as follows:
22. августа 1777. потврдила је Марија Терезија закон за школе у Угарској и у придруже-
ним јој покрајинама, под именом Ratio educationis totiusque rei literariae per regnum Hungariae
et provincias eidem adnexas. И овим законом је спроведено, да се у свим школама на које се он
односио, вршила обука на један начин и да су све те школе потпале под државни надзор.
Димитрије Кириловић, Српске основне школе у Војводини у 18 веку (1740-1780), 72.
In the introduction to her School Regulations, Maria Theresia says:
Da Wir unter andern Gegenständen Unserer landesmütterlichen Sorgfalt für das Wohl Unserer
lieben getreuen Illyrischen Nation den Unterricht der nicht unirten Illyrischen Jugend in denen
Trivial- oder Landesschulen, als einen der vorzüglichsten gnädigst ermessen, und dahero beschlossen
haben.. (Ibidem, 82) [bolding added]
Peter Herrity addresses the question of Serbian schools within the context of the same School
Decree, “Ratio educationis”, emphasizing that:
...only church books could be printed in Cyrillic, and that the “Illyrian” language (the vernacular
as used in Croatia and Slavonia), and the Latin alphabet had to be used in schools. This was, in
one way, a natural move on the part of the government to try and equate the Croatian and Serbian
populations on a cultural and linguistic level. [bolding added]
See his “Teodor Mirijevski’s Memorandum on Variants of Written Serbian (1782), “ in Зборник Матице
српске за филологију и лингвистику, vol. XXXIII (1990), 513-521, the quotation appears on p. 517.
The term “Илири” is used for the Orthodox and Catholic Slavs in the Habsburg Monarchy, and ac-
cordingly their language is called “илирски.” These terms are no longer clear today. For example, of
“Illyrisch” (see the full quotation and my explanation in fn. 59), Кsenija Maricki Gadjanski says: “Можда
је и “Illyrisch” требало да покрије целу словенску језичку област.” See her: “Јован Рајић о сродности
народа”, in: Јован Рајић. Живот и дело, 121.
православни Архиепископ Пекски и всјех Сербов и Болгаров и всего Илирика

патриарх…” [By God’s mercy, Arsenije Čarnojević, the Orthodox Archbishop of
Peć and Metropolitan of all the Serbs and Bulgarians and entire Illyricum].52 It was
also used to reflect religious administrative units as in the title: “Arxiepiskop pekskij
i vsex serbov, i bolgar, zapadnogo Pomorija, Dalmacii i Bosnii obeix storon Dunaja,
patriarx vsego Ilirika [The Archbishop of Peć, and of all the Serbs, Bulgarians, the
Western part of Primorje, both sides of the Danube river, the Metropolitan of all
Illyricum].”53 One finds an almost identical appellation of rank on the title page of
Hristifor Žefarović’s (1726-1753) Стематографiа, published in 1741 in Vienna and
dedicated to Metropolitan Арсеније IV:
СвҌтҌ́ишему и БлажeннҌ́ишему, господину Арсен ́ ЇЮ Четвер ́ тому,
Архiепис́ копу пекскому, всҌ́хъ Сер́ бовъ , Болгар́ Ѡвъ, запад́ наго Помор́ iа,
Далмац ́ iи,̓ Бос́ ны, ŐбоЮ
́ пол
́ у ДунаѦ́ , И̓ цҌ́лагѠ ИллѶ́рїка, ПатрЇар ́ ху
Господину МилостивҌ́ишему… (To the Holiest and the most Blessed Master,
Arsenije IV, Archbishop of Peć, and of all the Serbs, Bulgarians, the Western
part of Pomorije, Dalmatia, Bosnia, the both sides of the Danube river, and of
entire Illyricum, to the Metropolitan, the most Gracious Master…)54
Seeking to spiritually conquer Orthodox populations by creating a common lan-
guage comprehensible to all the South Slavs, missionaries in the service of Catholic
Propaganda created a huge corpus of texts written in Illyrian.55 I want to stress that
the term “Illyrian” was widely used not only in the Western parts of the Balkans for
52 Quoted from Стефан Чакић, Велика сеоба Срба 1689/90 и патријарх Арсеније Црнојевић (Нови
Сад: Добра вест, 1982), 364.
53
Quoted from Iovine, “The ‘Illyrian Language,’” 102.
54 Quoted from Павић’s Историја српске књижевности барокног доба, 49. In the framework of
Serbian National Illyrism, it becomes understandable why Žefarović’s Стематографiа represents a
free elaboration and translation of Pavao Ritter Vitezović’s (1652-1713) Stemmatographiae Illyricanae
liber primus authore equite Paulo Ritter (published in 1702). A new photocopied edition, Grbovi, biljezi
identiteta, trans. Ivo Banac, foreword Slobodan Prosperov Novak, contains descriptions of coat of arms
by Josip Kolanović (Zagreb: Grafički zavod Hrvatske, 1991), 33-130. Cf. also Павић, Историја српске
књижевности барокног доба, 48.
55 The literature on Catholic Counterreformers and their textual inspectors is enormous. Cf. Blaže-
vić, Ilirizam prije ilirizma. The basic guidelines are accurately described by Iovine in “The ‘Illyrian Lan-
guage,’”101-156; see also Slobodan Prosperov Novak, “Rano novovjekovlje: katolička obnova i prvo
prosvjetiteljstvo”, in: Povijest hrvatske književnosti, vol. 3, Od Gundulićeva Poroda od tmine do Kačićeva
Razgovora ugodnog naroda slovinskoga iz 1756 (Zagreb: Antibarbarus, 1999), 73-930. In his Историја
српске књижевности барокног доба, Pavić incorporates the works and activities of numerous mission-
aries of the Catholic Counterreformation as well as Baroque poets and writers of Dalmatia and Dubrovnik
who undoubtedly influenced the appearance of Baroque literature and its genres among the Serbs liv-
ing in Hungary during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
the both Orthodox languages—“the просто-сербский езикъ”, i.e. volgare illirico,

and Славеннносербский, i.e., Slavo-Russian, used both as the liturgical language and
in secular writings, cf., for example, Ljuština’s Italian Grammar was written “общимъ
наречиемъ диалектомъ Иллирическимъ, обыкновено Славеннносербскимъ
назватимъ”)56—but also among the Serbs in Hungary in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries. For example, on the same title page of his Стематографiа, Hristifor
Žefarović signed his name as follows: “Христоф ́ оръ Жефар ́ овичъ ил̓ лѴ
̓ рЇко
рассІанс́ кiй общїй зѠ́графъ (Christopher Zhefarovich, Illyrian-Rashian artist, or ,
more precisely, Illyrian artist of Raška).57 In 1742, Žefarović also prepared Привилегiи
славномoу народoу iллирико-рассiанскому (The Privileges of the glorious Illyrian-
Rashian people), which the future Serbian Metropolitan, Pavle Nenadović, printed
in Vienna in the same year.58 One could also mention Zaharije Orfelin (1726-1785),
who, after quitting his teaching position, was an “архиепископско-митрополиjски
илирически канцеларист”,59 a clerk in charge of documents written in Illyrian, the
common language of the Catholic and Orthodox Slavs in the Habsburg Monarchy.
Discursively perpetuating its own rich ideological heritage among the Orthodox
within the Habsburg Empire, eighteenth-century Catholic Reformational Illyrism
56 Вikентie Лустина, Грамматiка Италiанская ради употребленiя Иллирическiя юности, собранна

Вiкентiемъ Лустина (Въ Вѣннѣ: При Стефанѣ Благородномъ отъ Новаковичъ, 1794), 502. Slavo-
Russian was officially introduced in Serbian literature during the first decades of the eighteenth centu-
ry. At that time, Slavo-Russian already contained some “проста мова” and displayed the property of a
diglossic situation. Slavo-Serbian authors, the majority of whom did master neither Slavo-Russian, nor
Russian, tried to emulate such a diglossic language by introducing elements of their spoken vernacular
instead of “проста мова” in unrestricted and arbitrarily fashion. Even in the historiographic works of
Jovan Rajić and Pavle Julinac, Slavo-Russian elements represent only ca 70 %, the remaining 30 % con-
tain a mixture of elements from the Serbian vernacular and Slavo-Russian or Russian (see Младеновић,
“Типови књижевног језика код Срба у другој половини XVIII и почетком XIX века”, 43-44). One deals
all the time with various degrees of admixtures in works of Slavo-Serbian authors. Therefore, I do not
use the term “Slavo-Russian” in describing texts of Slavo-Serbian authors, because one deals either with
Serbianiazed Slavo-Russian or Slavonized Serbian (see more about these terms in fns. 63 and 64). The
diglossic nature of Slavo-Russian conditioned the presence of various degrees of mixed elements of
Slavo-Russian and “прости сербски iезик”, depending on literary genres. Therefore, I do not make any
difference between the term Slavo-Russian and Slavo-Serbian in Serbianized Slavo-Russian texts; they
represent the same type of diglossia present in ecclesiastical handbooks and texts of the Vojvodina Serbs
in the eighteenth century. In my opinion, the most suitable and accurate term for such a language con-
sisting of Slavo-Russian (or Russian) and Serbian elements would be Slavo-Serbian.
57 See the illustrated title page by Zhefarovich in Павић, Историја српске књижевности барокног
доба, 49.
58 Новаковић, Историја српске књижевности, 185.
59 Јован Скерлић, Историја нове српске књижевности, 60-61.
was fused, absorbed, and widely accepted by many of Serbian Orthodox writers, be-
coming a kind of Serbian National Illyrism.60 Apart from Slavo-Serbian writers, the
term “Illyrian” was widely used on the official, administrative level. For example, “In
the report about the Monastery Kovilje, issued on August 13, 1777, made according
to the order of the Court Military Council, among other things, it is said about the
Monastery Kovilje’s Archimandrite, Jovan Rajić (1726-1801) the following: ‘Redet
und schreibt Illyrisch, Lateinisch, Teutsch und Hungarisch (He speaks and writes
the Illyrian, Latin, German and Hungarian languages),’”61 meaning that Rajić had a
good command of all four languages officially used in the Habsburg Monarchy. For
the sake of illustration, I will quote again from Iovine’s concise summary of the use
of the term “Illyrian” among Orthodox writers in Hungary:
A number of leading Orthodox Serbian writers in Vojvodina likewise re-
ferred to the literary language of their usage (i.e., the so-called slaveno-serbski)
as “Illyrian.” One of the earliest, if not the first, incidence of this equation ap-
pears in the title of a 1773 edition published by the press of Josif Kurtzbeck in
Vienna: Josif vtoryi imperatorъ rimskii. Na Illiričesko-slaveno-Serbskij jazykъ
prevedeno... (G. Mihailović, Srpska bibliografija XVIII veka, Belgrade, 1964: no.
111). In 1793 Giorgio Saller suggested in a letter to the Serbian Metropolitan
Stratimirović that his Vengerskaja grammatika be translated into “racki ili ilir-
ski”, a suggestion that was realized in the 1795 translation of Georgij Petrović
na slaveno-serbstěmъ jazycě [...]62
60
As already pointed out, Blažević successfully created the term, “Serbian National Illyrism.” See fns. 45-
49.
61 I quote from Марицки-Гађански, “Jован Рајић о сродности народа”, 121. She refers to Алекса
Ивић’s “Прилози за бијографију Јована Рајића”, Летопис Матице српске 256 (1909), 51-60. Illyrian,
Hungarian and German were the national languages of the Catholic and Orthodox Slavs, Hungarians
and Germans, while only German and Latin were the official literary languages of the Empire. In par-
ticular, German was the most prestigious language within the Empire; and the handbooks for the Serbs
were often written in both Serbian and German. (Cf. П. Ивић and А. Младеновић, О језику код Срба
у раздобљу од 1699 до 1804, in Историја српског народа, vol. IV, part 2, Београд: Српска књижевна
задруга, 1986, 84-5). Throughout entire period with Hungary alone, then together with Hungary with-
in the Habsburg Monarchy (1526-1867), and later within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867-1918),
Latin, as the official language in both Croatia and Hungary, played the role of an ethnicity shield. Later,
it became a nation protector. “Latin became a language of national self-assertion - in Hungary against
German, in Croatia against German and Hungarian.” See: Marianna D. Birnbaum, Humanists in a Shattered
World (Columbus: Slavica Publishers, 1986), 277. Latin also enabled Croatia to withstand the pressures
of Magyarisation. Cf. Hrvatska pisana kultura. Izbor djela pisanih latinicom, glagoljicom i ćirilicom od VIII do
XIX stoljeća, eds. Jospi Bratulić and Stjepan Damjanović (Križevci: Veda, 2007), 236.
62 Iovine, “The ‘Illyrian Language,’” 104.
One should also mention two examples of the identification of the term
“Illyrian” with the popular language of the Vojvodina Serbs. In 1779, a decree
of the Austrian government restricted the use of Cyrillic and Church Slavonic
to the confines of the church and ordered the introduction of the popular lan-
guage and the Latin script into the schools, textbooks and other secular pub-
lications: alii vero libri scholastici et profani dialecto vulgari. illyrica cultiori et
characteribus Latinis typis excudantur (Kulakovskij, Vuk Karadžić, Moscow,
1882: 186). The Vojvodina historian, Jovan Rajić (1726-1801), in the chap-
ter entitled “O dialektě slavenskomъ [About the Slavic dialect]” in his Istorija
raznyxъ slavenskixъ narodovъ, najpače že bolgarъ, xorvatovъ, i serbovъ…
[History of the various Slavic peoples, primarily the Bulgarian, Croatians and
Serbs], (Vienna, 1794-1795) explicitly declares: “Illiričeski, to jestь prostoe
narěčie, ili dialektъ serpskii vъ světskixъ dělěxъ upotrebljaetsja.” Rajić de-
scribes the Illyrian language as “Illyrian, that is the ordinary people’s language
or Serbian dialect or vernacular which is used in secular writings. [...]63 [em-
phasis added]
The “Illyrian Slavs of the Roman rite, since they completely rejected
both Old Slavic and the Slavic letters (jako narěčie drevnee, tako i pismena
Slavenskaja), were left with only the simple speech (dialektъ prostij [i.e., the
vernacular]) which they called Illyrian and… Roman letters.’”64
On the basis of both Rajić’s own statements on current languages among the
Serbs, and existing descriptions of his writing, one can conclude that he was high-
ly aware of the functions of both languages,65 cлавяно-cербский (or cлавяно-
63
Ibid, 105.
64
Ibid, 148. “Rajić 1823, I: 57. (All citations from Rajić’ s History have been taken from the second edi-
tion, Istoria raznyxъ slavenskixъ narodovъ naipače že Bolgarъ, Xorvatovъ, i Serbovъ.... 4 vols, 2nd ed. (Buda,
1823).” Iovine, “The ‘Illyrian Language,’” 150, fn. 6. Cf. also Peter Herrity, “Teodor Mirijevski’s Memorandum
on Variants of Written Serbian (1782)”, 515-17
65
Јовану Рајићу је јасна одређена функционална раздвојеност славенског и српског народног

језика [Rajić never uses the latter without the adjective “прости”: “просто серпско нарјечије или
диалекат”, or “прости сербски језикъ” in order to preserve its relation to the other Orthodox ver-
naculars, the so-called “проста мова” of the Ukrainians, or “простое слово” of the Russians,
etc.] у писаној речи...Ове функционалне подвојености славенског и српског народног језика
(славеносрпског) Ј. Рајић се придржавао у својим текстовима.
Александар Младеновић, “Језик у текстовима Јована Рајића”, Јован Рајић. Живот и дело, 128. I
find the terminology of the last sentence confusing. In my opinion, “српски народни језик” should not
be identified with “славеносрпски.” Mladenović treats the language of Zaharija Оrfelin (1726-1785) in
the same way: “[Орфелин] пише и штампа на сопственом језику који би за Србе требало да буде,
свакако, српски или, како се онда чешће звао, славеносрпски језик.” See his Славеносрпски језик.
Студије и чланци (Нови Сад: Књижевна заједница Новог Сада, 1989), 93. One finds the same iden-
tification of “cлавяно-cербский” with the “српски народни језик” in almost all works of Младеновић.
He insists that “… славеносрпски језик тада није био једини књижевни језик, да је у тој служби био и
народни језик.” Cf., for example, “Стање и проблеми у проучавању књижевног језика војвођанских
Срба у предвуковској епоси”, Књижевност и језик, vol. XVI/ 3 (1969), 228-35, the quotation appears on
233. Speaking about the Slavo-Serbian language in the decades before Vuk Karadžić, Anna Kretschmer
correctly points to the problematic term “narodni jezik”, for which there is no clear-cut definition in
scholarly works on the Serbian pre-national language: “Управо у интерпретацији схватања језика у
прошлим епохама треба да будемо особито опрезни у опхођењу с појмом ‘народни језик.’ Наше
разумевање ’народног језика’ ни у којем случају не смемо да поистовећујемо с појмом ‘наш језик’ и
сличним.” (See her “Српски књижевни језик у деценијама пре Вука. Jезичка анализа славеносрпских
текстова: проблеми и могућности”, in Научни састанак слависта у Вукове дане. Реферати и
саопштења, vol. 17/2 (Београд: Међународни славистички центар, 1987), 145. In order to avoid this
kind of terminological confusion, it seems to me useful to deploy the terminology used by Unbegaun
for describing texts written in Slaveno-Serbian. He astutely and accurately defines the linguistic situa-
tion among the Serbs in Vojvodina as follows:
L’histoire de la langue littéraire des Serbes au XVIIIe siècle se ramène, nous l’avons vu, à la lut-
te entre le slavon et l’idiome parlé ou, plus exactement, entre une langue écrite à base slavonne et
une langue écrite à base serbe. Entre les deux aspects extrêmes, le slavon pur et le serbe des paysans,
qui, l’un et l’autre, sont relativement rares dans la littérature du XVIIIe siècle, il y a toute une gamme
de solutions intermédiaires. Quelque hybrides que soient parfois ces solutions, on ne peut parler de
mélange qu’en partant de la notion du style, car, du point de vue linguistique, on peut discer-
ner presque toujours soit un slavon serbisé, soit un serbe slavonisé, et rares sont les cas où nous
avons affaire à une véritable langue mixte. Ce schéma est troublé par deux facteurs complémentai-
res: d’une part, le slavon n’est pas resté identique à lui-même durant tout le XVIIIe siècle: il nous appa-
raît d’abord comme un slavon serbe qui, plus tard, cède la place au slavon russe; d’autre part, ce qu’on
appelle le slavon russe n’est le plus souvent qu’un russe slavonisé, et certain écrivains ont même tenté
d’introduire dans l’usage le russe pur et simple comme langue littéraire des Serbes...
Ainsi la différence entre le slavon et le serbe, qui est, pour nous, d’ordre génétique, n’etait,
pour les hommes du XVIIIe siècle, que simplement chronologique: le slavon leur apparaissait comme
l’ancêtre direct du serbe, et tel d’entre eux, en se servant du slavon russe, croyait écrire un serbe ar-
chaïsant. [bolding added]
Ungebaun, Les débuts de la langue littéraire chez les Serbes, 14-15.
I would like to clarify Unbegaun’s two literary idioms a little bit further by emphasizing that: 1.
Serbianized Slavo-Russian was not easily comprehensible to Slavo-Serbian authors who did not study
in Russia and did not fully (very often even partially) master it. Therefore, it was exposed to quick chang-
es depending on knowledge, choices and preferences of individual authors. 2. Slavonized Serbian dis-
played a status of a normalized language (its syntax was based on Illyrian, i.e., the Serbian vernacu-
lar). Outside the literary sphere of Slavo-Serbian authors, Slavonized Serbian was used without any of
Slavo-Russian elements. Under the name of the so-called “народни језик”, it existed in the form of the
multifunctional and polyvalent vernacular deployed in all spheres of verbal communication in every-
day private and public life of the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy. The application of Unbegaun’s two
terms, Serbianized Slavo-Russian and Slavonized Serbian, seems to be precise and correct because
they fully clarify the presence of two independent, genetically different, literary languages in texts of
Slavo-Serbian authors, thus accurately describing the linguistic situation among the Vojvodina Serbs.
Slavonized Serbian conveys the exact meaning of the linguistic code for which Mladenović uses inter-
pоссийский or pоссийский)66 and иллирический or the “простоiе наречiе или
changeably “народни језик” or “славеносрпски”. Otherwise Mladenović is absolutely right when he in-
sists on the existence of two types of literary languages among the Serbs in Vojvodina:
С овим делима поменуте двојице писаца [Rajić’s “Бој змаја с орлови” and Emanuil Janković’s
translations of Goldoni’s “Терговци” and his other translations from German] упоређивати,
међутим, текстове писане славеносрпским језиком, био би поступак унапред осуђен на не-
успех, јер су славеносрпски и народни језик у предвуковском периоду код Срба постојали
као два типа књижевног језика чија је употреба сваког од њих била посебно условљена.
[bolding added]
See his “Неколико мисли о српскословенском, рускословенском и славеносрпском језику”, in:
Славеносрпски језик, 144-145. Leaving aside the discussion about two different literary languages,
whose usage depended on literary genres, Mladenović’s conclusion that the Serbs had two literary lan-
guages in the pre-Vukovian period is of crucial importance for the correct understanding of the history
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Serbian pre-national linguistic and literary development.
66 Most scholars agree that cлавяно-pоссийский not only became the language of the Serbian
Orthodox Church, but that it also replaced “српскословенски”, the Srbuljski, i.e. Serbian Church Slavonic.
In the course of an active process of interaction with the “прости сербски језикъ”, cлавяно-pоссийский
gave origin to the linguistic phase well-known under the name of cлавяно-cербский. (See more about
“прости сербски језикъ” and “проста мова” in the third part of this paper.) Specialists of Slavo-Serbian
have described it as a language without “codified forms, its form varied from author to author. Each
writer combined Russian Church Slavonic [= Slavo-Russian] and vernacular Serbian features in accor-
dance with his own knowledge, taste and inclination.” See Herrity, “Teodor Mirijevski’s Memorandum”,
513-514. Slavo-Serbian is perceived as “the amalgamation of heterogeneous elements… combined in
individual word forms, sentences as well as paragraphs.” Albijanić, “The Creation of the Slaveno-Serbski
Literary Language”, 489. Cf. also Costantini, “In merito alla influenza russa sulla lingua letteraria serba nel
XVIII secolo”, Ricerche slavistiche 15 (1967), 165-187; idem, “Sullo ‘Slavjanoserbski’ (Stato della questione e
prospettive di ricerca)”, Ricerche slavistiche 20-21 (1973-1974), 195-203; Ирена Грицкат, “У чему је значај
и какве су специфичности славеносрпског периода у развоју српскохрватског језика”, Зборник за
филологију и лингвистику 9 (1966): 61-66. See also her “Joш нека питања у вези са славеносрпским”,
Јужнословенски филолог, vol. XLIII (1987), 111-117. All these authors are correct in regard to the vari-
able mixture of phonetic, morphological and lexical elements present in both types of languages,
Serbianized Slavo-Russian (or Russian) and Slavonized Serbian. However, both of these languages had
their fixed literary norms and conventions, based on two different types of syntax; both of them func-
tioned as two independent linguistic systems, with their autonomous literary dignity.
Славяносербский in the form of Serbianized Slaveno-Russian, as well as cлавянобългарский,
cлавянороссийский and pоссийский were used in the same function as Church Slavonic, the major lit-
erary medium of the Orthodox Slavs, while Slavonized Serbian was increasingly perceived as the “прости
сербски език”, i.e. “србски народни језик”, in Mladenović’s terminology. Slavonized Serbian found its
best expression already in the works of Orfelin, Rajić and Vasilije Damjanović in 1760s and somewhat
later in Dositej Obradović’s writings (see Mладеновић, “Славеносрпски књижевни језик- почеци и
развој”, in his Историја српског језика. Одабрани радови, 184-202). Diglossia of the Orthodox Slavs was
precisely defined by the two parts of the compound term: cлавяно + cербский, болгарский, российский,
etc. As already pointed out, after the Fall of Byzantium, the Russians became the spiritual leaders of the
Slavic Orthodox community. This explains why, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
renewed form of Church Slavonic, the so-called Slavo-Russian (cлавянороссийский) became an inter-
slavic cлавѣнский. Slaveno-Russian often appeared in the form of a Slavonized Russian, or pure Russian;
дiалектъ сербски.”67 While the first—древни славенски, всiем опшчи, иначе

називаiеми церковни” in the form of славяно-российский, российский or славяно-
сербский—prevailed in Rajić’s theological and historical works,68 he used the sec-
ond—which he unmistakably designated as “сербски прости језик” or “простоiе
серпскоiе наречiе”—to clarify his ПроповҌди на цҌлы годъ сербскимъ простимъ
и валахїйскимъ језикомъ (Sermons [preached] in the Simple Serbian and Romanian
Vernaculars, Беч, 1793) just as Venclović had done fifty or more years before.69 Both
all three varieties performed the function of славѣнский in the same way as classicizing Greek, the so-
called ‘Byzantine Schriftkoine’ and some other languages of learned texts had the function of a high
variety used interchangeably in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine diglossic texts. (See the literature about
Byzantine diglossia in fn. *). Thus, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, российский was used in
parallel to славянороссийский among the Serbs and Bulgarians in the same function of славѣнский (cf.
Karl Gutschmidt, “O роли церковнославянского языка в формировании современных болгарского
и сербского литературных языков”, Вопросы языкознания, vol. VI, 1969, 73).
The second part of the above mentioned compound term, сербский, болгарский, российский,
etc., marked the introduction of elements of the common people’s speech, which were mixed with
славѣнский, as Unbegaun has cogently pointed out, only on a stylistic level (see his full explanation in
fn. 63). There is no synthesis between these two linguistic forms. It is rather a kind of the Slavo-Serbian
cohabitation (in Serbianized Slavo-Russian texts), a specific phase of linguistic diglossia which was in-
troduced within the traditional system of the supranational cлавѣнский that remained the sole literary
language of all the Orthodox communities, except among the Serbs who had the two distinct literary
languages at the time: Serbianized Slavo-Russian and Slavonized Serbian, i.e. Slavonized Illyrian. (see the
explanation in fn. 63). The language problem among the Serbs in Vojvodina cannot be fully addressed
in this study, but also cannot be avoided. My further analysis should reveal why the common people’s
language was introduced in the still-medieval, ecclesiastical texts of the Orthodox peoples.
67
See the explanation in the previous paragraph and fns. 61 and 62.
68 Clearly, Jovan Rajić’s language—which includes his theological, historical, and literary writings—is
not the subject of my study. I quote here his accurate description of Illyrian in order to corroborate my
explanation of the Illyrian language, whose presence has been ignored for the most part by the special-
ists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Serbian literature and language. See, for example, the col-
lective work: Јован Рајић. Живот и дело, which contains several articles devoted to Rajić’s language.
69
The title is quoted from Скерлић, Српска књижевност у XVIII веку, 155. Novaković correctly inter-
prets Rajić’s intentions:
Без сумње је његова [Рајићева] мисао била, да се мимо све остале црквене књиге проповеда
у црквама народним језиком, онако исто, како је пре њега јеромонах Гаврило у почетку века
оглéдао. Још у двема беседама његовим, преведеним с руског 1764. и штампаним исте године
у Млецима, језик је доста народни, а много више у великом зборнику Собранiе разныхъ
недѣлныхъ поученiй въ трехъ частехъ по особъ состоящиее штампаном у Бечу 1793. год.,
који је опет покупљен из разних руских писаца.
Новаковић, Историја српске књижевности, 189.
authors used the same type of diglossic language, and both perceived “славенски”
as the sole literary language.70
Last but not least, before discussing the synchronic linguistic situation among
the other Orthodox nations, the stunning appearance of Venclović’s “ср’бскы”—in
the form of contemporary Serbian only three decades after the Great Migration of
the Serbs to southern Hungary in 1690—must be addressed. Many of the scholars
who have investigated Venclović’s writings have admired the tight organization and
thorough homogeneity of his literary language. It emerged fully developed in his
translations of East-Slavic original texts side by side with Serbian versions of Slavo-
Russian or Slavo-Ruthenian.71 Venclović’s “ср’бскы” represents a real puzzle, which
requires additional elucidation.
Venclović used his “ср’бскы” extensively in his numerous manuscripts in an ex-
ceptionally elaborate form. Such a sophisticated idiom could not have emerged over-
night. The introduction of a new type of language, the so-called “прости ср’бскы
iезикъ”, into the Serbian liturgical and ecclesiastical literature of the 1730s and 1740s
presupposes previous canonization based on written or translated texts. There must
have been a preexistent feeling of identification on the part of a sizable speech com-
munity of Serbs of ethnic or political cohesion. The formation of a new literary lan-
guage must also have included a combination of factors including economic pressure
from an emerging middle class or intelligentsia, cultural prestige, and monarchic or
religious authority.
70 A hundred years ago, Vladan Јovanović accurately described the “ср’бскы” in Venclović’s sermons as
follows: “И ако у овим његовим беседама језик није потпуно чист народни него је јако измешан са
црквеним, будући да је он био црквени човек...ипак је његов језик први покушај да се и народном
језику да право да уђе у књижевност.” In: Дијалектолошки зборник С. К. Академије, vol. 2 (1911), 113.
In my opinion, Venclović’s language clearly belongs to Slaveno-Serbian, and, in its essence, does not dif-
fer from Rajić’s Slaveno-Serbian. I would like to use this opportunity to thank Dr. Boris Bulatović for pro-
viding me with copies of Јоvanović’s work that represents a bibliographical rarity today.
71
For example, Ivić praises Venclović’s “ср’бскы” as follows:
Својим огромним познавањем српског народног говора, он је далеко надмашио све друге
писце пре Вука Караџића. Када би му затребало, он је очигледно и сам стварао речи, али је
то чинио са толико језичког дара да је данас често немогуће поуздано одвојити његове кова-
нице од израза које је могао чути у народу. Имамо разлога да зажалимо што се у данашњем
књижевном језику не налазе многе од Венцловићевих речи. Уосталом, и његова реченица је раз-
новрсна и нијансирана, кадра да понесе и сложене мисаоне садржаје. Наравно, и снага његовог
израза много дугује Светом писму, а осим тога, и нарочито, великим црквеним беседницима,
изворним ауторима његових списа. Ипак, изнад свега тога стоји његов сасвим изузетан та-
ленат за реч. Као градитељ књижевног језика, он је један од највећих међу српским писцима.
Преглед историје српског језика, 112.
The majority of these factors were not yet present in the first decades of the eigh-
teenth century among the Serbs living in Vojvodina. First of all, they had to adjust to
the local customs and cultural preferences of the other nationalities of the Monarchy.
The Serbs of Vojvodina (or any other western Balkan province) never had political
independence, before or after the migration of 1690. Nevertheless, despite the fact
that they had no possibility of uniting in a single, autonomous and political entity
within the multinational Habsburg Monarchy, they embarked on a new course of lin-
guistic and cultural development. As mentioned above, the Serbian Church did foster
Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Serbian in its schools, however, the local, pre-national culture
of the Serbs in Vojvodina had no literary language sui generis.72 There was no literary
language for whose cultivation and exploration the Serbs as a whole, through their
schools and publicly supported institutions, assumed moral and fiscal responsibility.
Even taking into consideration exceptional individual interventions—for example,
those of Dositej Obradović or Vuk Karadžić—the full consolidation and introduc-
tion of a Serbian literary language based on an exclusively Serbian vernacular in a
socio-linguistic context wherein cultural, literary, religious, political, social and eco-
nomic forces at play loomed large would have taken much longer than was the case
with the development of the Serbian literary language in Vojvodina.
The Serbs, in fact, used Slavo-Serbian for only a brief period of time—approxi-
mately 70 years. During that time, they not only progressively Serbianized Slavo-
Russian texts, but also increasingly implemented a wide range of vernacular forms
in Slavonized Serbian texts, reducing Slavonized elements to a minimum or writing
almost without them.73 There is no doubt that the introduction of Slavo-Russian
72
Here I have in mind a potential literary language based on an exclusively Serbian vernacular—a kind
of Serbian Schiftsprache—which as such did not exist among the Serbs in southern Hungary in the eigh-
teenth century. By definition, the literary language of any nation is always written in contrast to dialects,
which can be either spoken or codified in the form of a dialectal literary or written language. The latter is
usually called a standard variety of a major, national Standard language (for example, Standard French,
German, Serbian etc.). A literary language is spoken on the basis of the way it is written. It functions in
both written and spoken form and is always the result of collective creative activity. See, for example,
Ulrich Ammon, “Language - Variety, Standard Variety - Dialect”, Sociolinguistics 1 (1987): 316-35. Cf. also:
John H. Fisher, “European Chancelleries and the Rise of Standard Written Languages”, http://www.illino-
ismedieval.org/ems/VOL3/fisher.html (accessed June 29, 2011)
73
Of literary works written in the same Illyrian vernacular in Slavonia and their obvious influences upon
Serbian works written in the so-called “простo-сербскiй езыкъ”, i.e. Illyrian, Unbegaun writes:
N’oublions pas qu’il y avait à la même époque dans les limites du Saint Empire et au voisinage de
la Voivodina, une littérature importante en serbo-croate populaire: la littérature de Slavonie, dont
l’oeuvre principlale, le Satir de Reljković, a vu le jour en 1762 pour être rééditée en 1779. Il est a priori très
vraisemblable que cette littérature a pu exercer son influence, au moins quant à la langue, sur l’oeuvre
into Serbian literature in southern Hungary slowed to some degree the developmen-
tal trend based on the official and common vernacular of all the South Slavs in the
Habsburg Monarchy already underway in Serbian literature. Furthermore, the diglos-
sic character of Slavo-Russian, which found its strongest expression in its macaronic
structure (always of mixed language, consisting of elements of the spoken vernacular
and the renewed type, either Russian or Ukrainian of Church Slavonic, with propor-
tions varying from one author to another, and even from one work of an author to
another), seems to have complicated pervasive influence of Illyrian upon the emerg-
ing literary language among the Serbs in southern Hungary.
After 1690, with the new political and cultural conditions of life and daily
contact with Illyrian, the Serbian literary language began to incorporate an in-
creasing number of Illyrian syntactic features, along with its grammar and vo-
cabulary. Thus, Illyrian syntactic structures gradually created the basis for the
modern Serbian literary language...[which] eventually became a qualitatively
new entity not only as compared to the “српскословенски” but also as com-
d’Obradović (et sur celle de ses contemporains), surtout si l’on pense que la tendance moralisatrice et
didactique est la même dans les deux littératures.
L’évantualité de cette influence mériterait mieux que de vagues assertions... En particulier, le ray-
onnement du Satir de Reljković devait être considérable, puisque, en 1793, un certain Stefan Rajić,
instituteur à Osijek, a cru opportun de rendre plus accessible cette ouevre aux Serbes de l’Empire en
l’éditant en caractères cyrilliques (slavons) et avec quelques modifications de la langue: ékavisation
du texte ikavien et introduction d’un certain nombre de dialectismes serbes et aussi de sla-
vonismes, ce qui devait, sans doute, à ses yeux, transformer la langue de Reljković en простo-
сербскiй езыкъ. [bolding added]
D’ailleurs, l’influence de la littérature proprement dite de Slavonie a été préparée de longue date
par celle de la poésie semi-savante (ou semi-populaire) dont le répertoire semble avoir été en grande
partie commun à tous les Serbes et Croates de l’Empire, y compris même les Kajkaviens: il suffit, pour
s’en rendre compte, de parcourir les recueils manuscrits du XVIIIe siècle, ces recueils où l’on trouve pêle-
mêle des chansons religieuses, militaires, populaires, pornographiques, etc On ne saurait perdre de
vue non plus le rayonnment, par voie orale et écrite, du Razgovor ugodni naroda slovinskoga (Venise,
1756; 2e éd., 1759) de Kačić Miošić, qui s’inspire directement de la chanson populaire et appartient
égalment à la littérature semi-savante.
See: Unbegaun, “Les débuts du serbe littéraire” in his Les débuts de la langue littéraire chez les Serbes,
56-74, quotation appears 68-70. Speaking about administrative and other documents written in the
vernacular, Ивић says:
У актима из Горње Угарске има понекад и икавских облика. Очито је међу писарима било и
појединаца из круга католика икаваца, којих је тада било доста насељених у будимпештан-
ском пределу. Постоје, уосталом, и други подаци о њиховим додирима и везама са Србима
у том крају.
Преглед историје српског језика, 110.
pared to its contemporary expression, i. e., Slavo-Russian, whose syntax was

significantly different from Illyrian syntax.74
In addition to being an obstacle for the steadily evolving literary language of
the Serbs, Serbianized or purely Slavo-Russian linguistic norms were challenged by
the elastic stability of the elaborate and dynamic Illyrian norms capable of absorb-
ing new and old elements in a flexible and stable whole, and thusly creating a new
synthetic language. From a sociolinguistic and sociocultural point of view, Illyrian
was a polyfunctional formation, serving its users in all spheres of public and private
communication. From the grammatico-linguistic aspect, it was a normalized and
stylistically differentiated, i.e. polyvalent, linguistic code. The Serbian vernacular, i.e.
Illyrian, had already developed into a written language, and, as such, fit into the lin-
guistic, political and ideological infrastructure of the Habsburg Monarchy. As such,
Illyrian had an advantage over Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Serbian, a language not even
fully understandable to the majority of Slavo-Serbian writers.75 Thanks to its stable
and dynamic norms, the Serbian vernacular or Illyrian displayed a strong tendency
to replace Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Serbian (in Serbianized Slavo-Russian texts) and
completely detach itself from that diglossic relationship with Slavo-Russian. In that
way, Venclović’s and other Slavo-Serbian writers’ “ср’бскы” or Illyrian differed from
all other Orthodox ordinary people’s languages which did not possess their indepen-
dent linguistic norms. Victor Zhivov accurately describes the linguistic status of the
74 Nedeljković, “Josef Dobrovský and the Serbian Literary Language”, 9.

75
Not all of the Slavo-Serbian authors mastered Slavo-Russian equally well. It is well known, for exam-
ple, that Rajić, Gligorije Terlajić and Atanasije Stojković who studied and lived for a while in Russia knew
Slavo-Russian better than their contemporaries. The majority of the Vojvodina Serbs, however, studied in
Catholic and Protestant Austro-Hungarian schools in which the major languages were Latin, German and
Hungarian. For example, Teodor Janković Mirijevski was a Serb born in Sremska Kamenica. He attended
Latin High School in Sremski Karlovci, spent two years studying philosophy in Bratislava, and then went
to Vienna. Later, he became the superintendent of Serbian public schools in Banat. Empress Catharine
the Second invited him to Russia to reorganize and reform Russian schools according to Felbiger’s meth-
od. Cf. Ристо Ковијанић, Српски писци у Братислави и Модри XVIII века (Нови Сад: Матица српска,
1973), 8-94. Hadrovics briefly speaks about the Serbian inteligentsia:
Budući da u XVIII stoljeću Srbi još nisu imali višega školstva, časnici, gradjani i plemići upisivali su
svoju djecu na ugarske škole. Mladi su Srbi radije studirali na protestantskim učilištima, gdje nije bilo
opasnosti od pokatoličavanja, što im je često prijetilo u samostanskim školama. U tim školama Srbi
su učili latinski jezik i stjecali svjetovnu kulturu zapadnoga i humanističkog obilježja, kulturu koja se
korjenito razlikovala od kulurnog i religioznog ideala srpskog svećenstva. Taj ideal ostajao je vjeran
skučenu intelektualnom konzervatizmu. Tada je nastala srpska intelektualna elita, koja je postala ne-
ovisna o tradicionalnoj premoći Srpske crkve na intelektualnom području. Ta svjetovna elita, obra-
zovana u zapadnjačkoj civilizaciji, po svojoj je naravi postala sposobna da usvoji sve nove duhovne
tokove. (Op. cit., 122)
so-called ordinary people’s languages, in his terminology “simple written languages”,

as follows:
Hence, the ‘simple’ language [i.e., российский] of the Petrine era was char-
acterized by variability, and variability required normalization [...] The consis-
tency of using hybrid variants in the capacity of a “simple” or “comprehen-
sible” written language was directly related to the strong desire of the given
social group to retain ties to traditional culture. It was precisely the determi-
nation not to break with centuries’-old cultural and linguistic tradition that
imposed limitations on the development of literary languages of the new type;
“simple” languages were either compromises in terms of their structural or-
ganization (hybrid languages seen as ‘simple’) or they remained secondary
citizens in the functional regard.76
This is the major difference between Venclović’s “ср’бскы” and all other
Orthodox vernaculars whose goal was not to gradually displace Slavo-Russian, Slavo-
Ruthenian, Slavo-Bulgarian etc., but to help revive and cultivate its use among the
Orthodox Slavs.
The difference associated with the sociolinguistic status of Venclović’s “ср’бскы”
as one of four standardized languages in the Monarchy found its best and stron-
gest expression in creating Slavonized Serbian texts, based, as already stressed, on
Illyrian syntax and grammatical structure with a variable number of phonetic, mor-
phological and lexical elements taken from Slavo-Russian or Russian. Slavonized
Serbian texts did not have their counterparts in other Orthodox Slavic literatures.
Therefore, Venclović’s “ср’бскы or “народни језик”, i.e. the Serbian vernacular, de-
76
Victor Zhivov, Language and Culture in Eighteenth-Century Russia, Studies in Russian and Slavic
Literatures, Cultures and History, translated by Marcus Levitt (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2009), 121
and 40.
Following in the footsteps of Zhivov, and emphasizing that “Russian could not be polyfunctional out-
side of Church Slavonic”, i.e. Slavo-Russian (Živov, 1996: 267), Ian Press correctly points out:
What was needed now was homogenization of the variants; any unmotivated variation which
had been inherited from the hybrid language by the simple language had to be removed. So the sim-
ple does come from the hybrid, there is continuity (Živov, 1966:156-7) .[...] Normalization would be
worked on by philologists over the years. This is connected with the activities of the Akademija nauk
((Živov, 1996: 159)...It seems that V. E. Adodurov put together the first aid for Russian themselves to
study Russian orthography... Živov 1996: 160 notes that Russian courses for Russians probably started
only in the late 1730s, after such courses for foreigners... Glück’s own grammar paved the way for I. V.
Paus’s Slavjano-russkaja grammatika of 1729, which leads to Schwanwitz’s of 1730 and Adodurov’s
outline of 1731.
Ian Press, A History of the Russian Language and its Speakers (Munich: Lincom Europa, 2007), 176-177.
As far as grammar is concerned, it is worth mentioning that the first Serbian grammar appears only in
1814, Писменица сербскога језика по говору простога народа написана, by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.
ployed in Slavonized Serbian texts, was not in a classical diglossic relation to the ma-
jor “славенски”, i.e., Slavo-Russian, but it displayed rather a kind of “extended” diglos-
sia.77 The different diglossic relation of the Serbian vernacular to the major literary
language of the Orthodox Slavs, i.e. Slavo-Russian, was conditioned by its specific
characteristics. The Serbian vernacular was genetically different from Slavo-Russian
or Serbianized Slavo-Russian. As already stressed, it was an independent linguis-
tic code based on the Illyrian linguistic standard broadly used in Habsburg society.
In this regard Slavonized Serbian texts were a notable exception in comparison to
texts written in other Orthodox vernaculars which were in a diglossic relation to the
“славенски”, i.e.”,славяно-pоссийский”, as the latest form of Church Slavonic.
Within a sociolinguistic perspective, Slavonized Serbian in its pure form of
Illyrian, i.e., the Serbian vernacular, possessed a social dominance and discourse pow-
er potentials in the Empire, the qualities that Serbianized Slavo-Russian clearly did
not have and could not have had under any circumstances. In contrast to Serbianized
77
For diglossic situations involving two different, genetically unrelated linguistic codes, sometimes re-
ferred to as “extended” diglossia, cf. Joshua A. Fishman, “Bilingualism with and without diglossia, diglos-
sia with and without bilingualism”, in Journal of Social Issues, vol. 23/2 (1967), 29-30; idem, The Sociology
of Language: An Interdisciplinary Social Science Approach to Language in Society (Rowley, Mass.: Newbury
House Publishers, 1972). In this regard Costantini has unmistakably defined the linguistic situation in
Venclović’s texts as follows: “in una chiara dichiarazione programmatica, si riconosce al ‘volgare’ pieno
diritto accanto alla lingua liturgica, si proclama una situazione di biliguismo, nella quale i due ter-
mini si pongono non già esclusivi l’uno dell’altro, ma correlativi, attuando un rapporto ‘sinfonico.’” See
his “A proposito della lingua di Stefanović Venclović”, 75; see Costantini’s full quotation translated into
English in the first part of this article. A more detailed analysis of a special type of bilingualism or “ex-
tended” diglossia exceeds the scope of this study.
Speaking about the linguistic situation in Austro-Hungarian Ukraine, Andrii Danylenko accurately
describes it as diglossia:
In Galicia, Transcarpathia, and Bukovina, the Greek Catholic clergy, who found themselves unex-
pectedly the only defenders of a separate ethnoreligious Tuthenian regional identity, advanced the
idea of one literary language, based on Church Slavonic, though with a wide range of admixtures. For
the 17th and 18th c., this was an anachronistic solution to the language question in the Ruthenian
lands. As a result, this part of Ukraine did not break through the cultural confines of the 17th c. with the
free interplay of styles, genres, and language standards typical of the Baroque period. Unlike Russian-
ruled Ukraine, where Great Russian was treated as a new member of the ‘old’ bilingualism [I treat it
as the latest form of Church Slavonic of “old diglossia” in which both Slavo-Russian and Russian rep-
resented High variety and Ruthenian or Ukrainian Low variety], Austro-Hungarian Ukraine intro-
duced diglossia, triggering the identification of ‘jazўk’ russkij” with “jazўk’ slavenskij”, lead-
ing to the emergence of a regional mixed (Slaveno-Rusyn) language, a hybrid labled ‘jazyčije.
(Emphasis added)
Danylenko, “The Formation of New Standard Ukrainian. From the History of an Undeclared Contest
Between Right- and Left-Bank Ukraine in the 18th c.”, in Die Welt der Slaven, vol. LIII (2008), 82-115, the
quotation appears on p. 111.
Slavo-Russian, Slavonized Serbian represented the greatest challenge to the former,

pushing it into the background. Therefore, no one should overlook the narrow soci-
olinguistic dimension of Slavo-Russian among the Vojvodina Serbs.78 The superior-
ity of the literary language based on the Serbian vernacular, i.e., Slavonized Serbian,
over Serbianized Slavo-Russian found its best expression in the acceleration of the
linguistic and cultural development in the pre-national period of the Vojvodina Serbs
in comparison, for example, with the same period among the Bulgarians. It suffices to
mention that already during the second half of the eighteenth century, the Serbs had
quite a number of printed works and periodicals, while the first Bulgarian printed
book appeared only in 1806.79
78 Dimitrije Kirilović convincingly describes unintelligibility of handbooks written in Slaveno-Serbian
for Serbian children in his book:

Њиме [школским уставом] је била загарантована употреба народнога језика у српским
школама. Тај “народни језик” био је, са изузетком у Катихизису, славено-српски језик, који је
био уведен у употребу међу Србе из руских књига. Због тога што су деца тек имала да га на-
уче када су долазила у школу, стварао је овај језик велике тешкоће самоме успеху у наста-
ви. Петар Руњанин, свештеник из тога доба, описује то тешко стање у ком се као ђак на-
лазио због непознавања језика овако: “Кад изиђем из школе скорбан узмем лекцију читати
а ни речи не разумевам, те помислих у себи, какав је то језик? То се никад не научи.” А Урош
Несторовић...је замерио што је у српске школе дошао у употребу словенски језик, који је исто
тако мртав као и словенски народ, а хвалио Чехе, Пољаке и Русе што се не служе старосло-
венским језиком већ оним којим сами говоре. И сама Марија Терезија је била за употребу на-
роднога говора у школским књигама световног садржаја, ради чега је 1779. и једну наредбу из-
дала. (Op.cit., 75-76)
79
See, for example, for Serbian published books in Лаза Чурчић, Српске књиге и српски писци 18.века
(Нови Сад: Књижевна заједница Новог Сада, 1988), pp. 346; for early Bulgarian publications, cf., for
example: “Classical Library for Bulgarian Studies, 1823-1878/ Brill.” http://www.brill.nl/classical-library-
bulgarian-studies-1823-1878 (accessed July 9. 2011). At this point, it is interesting to quote Tolstoj’s eval-
uation of the eighteenth-century Serbian literary development in comparison with the Russian one in the
same period:
Сербская литература XVIII в., подобно некoторым другим славянским и неславянским
литературам, переживала период ускоренного развития. Эта ускоренность у сербов была
весьма значительной. Сам момент ускоренности, а также степень ее интенсивности мо-
жет служить существенным, релевантным показателем при типологических или сравни-
тельно-типологических исследованиях литератур и литературных языков. Сербский ли-
тературный язык развивался в XVIII в. значительно более быстрыми темпами чем
русский литературный язык той же эпохи. [bolding added]
(Толстой, “К историко-культурной характеристике славяно-сербского литературного языка”, in
his Исстория и структура славянских литературных языков (Москва: Наука, 1988), 179.
In spite of his criticism of Slaveno-Russian, Skerlić characterizes the entire eighteenth-century peri-
od of the Serbs living in southern Hungary as a transition “из средњег века у модерно доба, улажење
у западну европску културу, почетак живота у модерној цивилизацији и стварање нове, праве
књижевности српске.” See his Историја нове српске књижевности, 15.
With the penetration of Enlightenment ideas in the second half of the eigh-
teenth century, and with the growing self-consciousness of the Serbian people, the
language question took on new forms: the method and content of education, book
printing, the language of the Serbian nation and eventually the Serbian state. A broad
division in Serbian society on the language question came to the fore. This is the well-
known polemic or “war”80 between the defenders of the Slavo-Serbian language (i.e.,
Serbianized Slavo-Russian) and advocates of pure Serbian vernacular without any
elements of Slavo-Russian or Russian.
There were actually two different linguistic codes involved in this situ-
ation, one was Serbianized Slavo-Russian and the other “prostonarodni” or
Illyrian. Illyrian was gradually becoming Serbian literary language and had no
longer any direct connections with Serbianized Slavo-Russian. It was impos-
sible to combine the two different codes… The period during which the mix-
ture of the two codes was practiced in writing did not produce the desired re-
sult, namely the codification of the Serbian language in the terms of “middle
style.” It only produced the so-called “macaronisms” which were rightly ridi-
culed by Kopitar. Earlier or later, the elements of one code had to be eliminated
and Slavo-Russian, whose elements remained mainly on the surface (phonetic-
morpholgical-lexical) level and never seriously affected by the syntactic base
which was Illyrian, had to be the victim.81
Before Skerlić, Novaković also expresses almost identical opinion:

Што су се после 1718 године толика пространства српских земаља нашла под аус-
тријском владом, и што се још пре тога толики народ и читаво тадашње интелектуал-
но средиште стави под аустријску управу и власт - имало је знатна утицаја. Прво и прво
тим су Срби непосердно дошли у додир са западнојевропским државним редом, начином
живота и мишљења; друго су тиме сукобили се са западним школовањем, образовањем и
књижевношћу.
See his Историја српске књижевности, 176.
80 Ђуро Даничић, Рат за српски језик и правопис (Буда: Штампарија Пештанског универзитета,
1847); Thomas Butler, “The Origins of the War for a Serbian Language and Orthography”, Harvard Slavic
Studies 5 (1970): 1-80; Tолстой, “Конкуренция и сосуществование норм в литературном языке XVIII
века у сербов”, 186-94; Владимир Гудков, “Борьба концепции ‘славенского’ и ‘простого’ языка в
истории литературного языка у сербов”, in Славянское и балканское языкознание. История
литературных языков и письменность (Москва: Наука, 1979), 198-211.
81 Nedeljković, “Josef Dobrovský and the Serbian Literary Language”, 15-16. Here I have neither time
nor intention to go into the problem of the so-called middle style, whose major creator and proponent
was Teodor Janković Mirijevski (see Herrity, “Teodor Mirijevski’s Memorandum on Variants of Written
Serbian (1782)”, 513-521). Although Aleksandar Belić and other Serbian linguists do not consider that
“српски прости iезик” enjoyed an ever-growing sociolinguistic status until it became the written liter-
ary language of the Vojvodina Serbs, it seems to me important to quote Belić’s correct remark about
By the second decade of the nineteenth century, Vuk Karadžić had already begun
his linguistic Reform. Altogether, the full implementation of Illyrian as the Serbian
literary language in southern Hungary lasted less than a century.82
the introduction of “српски прости iезик” and Latin alphabet to the school system in Vojvodina in the
second half of the eighteenth century:
За духовне власти у Војводини—латиница и простонародни језик постали су
највећи непријатељи православља и, према томе, и наше националности. Може се
рећи да се у то време, око 1780 год., то двоје, латиница и народни или простонародни
језик, изједначило у свести наших одговорних фактора у Војводини као две подједнако
велике опасности за наш народ. Зато Теодор Јанковић, директор српских школа у Банату,
који је добро познавао све скривене разлоге оваквога рада аустриске владе, поред ћирилице
тражи грађански језик, а устаје привидно против црквеноруског (или словенског) језика,
додељујући му место у цркви и тражећи да се и даље у школи учи. [bolding added]
После извесне борбе, најзад, ћирилица остаје и грађански језик. Тај грађански језик наше
школске и духовне власти ставиле су насупрот аустриском захтеву о простонародном
језику, док су латиници ставили насупрот ћирилицу.
Та и друга питања, која су у вези са њима, могу се разумети тек онда ако се узму у обзир
сви културни и политички моменти—поред чисто књижевних—који су били од значаја за
наш народ у Војводини у XVIII в. Тада ће нам бити јасно и много штошта друго што је овако
остало у излагању Унгебауна у тами...
Александар Белић, a review article on Boris Unbegaun, Les débuts de la langue littéraire chez les Serbes,
Travaux publiés par l’Institut d’études slaves, vol. XV (Paris, 1935), pp. 83, published in Јужнословенски
филолог, vol. XIII (1933-4), 194-5.
Tolstoj has a more realistic approach to the situation of the Serbs in the Habsburg Monarchy than
the majority of Serbian scholars, by emphasizing the following point:
И, наконец, при всем стремлении сербского народа противостоять унии, католицизму,
ассимиляторской политике габсбургского и оттоманского абсолютизма, контакты с запад–
ным миром и особенно с миром Slavia Latina усиливались, расширялись и крепли. С западным
миром они были прямыми (прежде всего с германцами) или идущими через Россию (более всего
с французами), а с миром Slavia Latina оказывались непосредственными, ибо буквально рядом
существовала далматинская, боснийская и хорватская литература на языке, диалектная
основа которого была очень близка или почти идентична диалектной основе сербского го-
родского разговорного койне XVIII в.
Толстой, “Литературный язык сербов в XVIII в. (до 1780 г.)”, 157.
82
One should bear in mind that, for example, in Germany, England, France and other European coun-
tries, the gradual process whereby respective regional dialects were shaped into a common written lan-
guage took centuries to complete. Therefore, Unbegaun’s conclusion would seem to support my expla-
nation of the origin of the modern Serbian literary language:
… et les Serbes de Hongrie, comme ceux de la principauté, se tournant vers l’Autriche et triomphant
du particularisme étroit, retrouvaient leur orientation naturelle, celle qui les reliait à leur voisins serbes
et croates de l’Ouest, orthodoxes et catholiques. Dans l’espace de cent ans, le mouvement en faveur
d’une langue littéraire, commencé par l’adoption du slavon russe, aboutissait à la création dé-
finitive du serbocroate littéraire. [bolding added]
Unbegaun “Les débuts du serbe littéraire”, in op. cit., 74.
In this light, the presence of the Serbian vernacular used in parallel with
Slaveno-Serbian in Venclović’s texts, just three decades after the Great Migration
of 1690, marks a real break or a revolutionary change in regard to its predecessor,
“српскословенски.”83 A “revolution” is any combination of events that produces a
radical shift in consciousness or behavior over a relatively short period of time. In the
context of a language, they do not appear very often because languages do not toler-
83
Црквене су власти знале оно, што нама на радост сви cпоменици из XVII и почетка XVIII
века сведоче, да се језик старе цркве и књижевности, словенски [=српскословенски],
заборавио. У општој тежњи за поправкама и просветом, која се у свему народу одмах за
пресељењем јавила, сви су осетили да је ту недостатак, па су учинили две погрешке. Једна је
погрешка, што већ нису знали како је стари словенски језик имао свој српски и руски изговор,
него су словенски језик рускога изговора по рђавим граматикама првих недотупавних мало-
руских граматичара [Meлетiй Смотрицький’s Grammar of 1619 (see fn. 126)) was republished
in the Romanian printing house in Rimnik in 1755; Адам Мразовић, Руководство къ славенстѣи
граматицѣ, Vienna, 1794, Budim, 1800 ] увели место свога старинског српскословенског, који
је мало после проглашен сасвим за погрешан. Друга је погрешка, што бар у делима за народ
писаним, нису усвојили већ обичајем и поступним развитком у употребу уведени на-
родни језик. Између два отворена и у то време још употребљавана пута, у оба случаја
је изабран рђавији и противан правилноме развијању. [bolding added]
Новаковић, Историја српске књижевности, 186. Novaković’s quotation clearly indicates on the
one hand a clean break with the previous literary tradition, and on the other, that the Serbs in Vojvodina
had two choices: either Slavo-Russian or the relatively recently introduced Serbian people’s language,
which was Illyrian, the official language of the Catholic and Orthodox Slavs in the Monarchy. Clearly,
Novaković perceives Slavo-Russian mixed with spoken Serbian as an obstacle in the development of
new Serbian literature in Vojvodina. Skerlić correctly describes the newly emerging literature among
the Serbs in Vojvodina as follows:
Нова српска књижeвност јавља се у XVIII веку, без везе са ранијим књижевностима, и неза-
висно се развија у XIX веку. Оно што карактерише ту нову српску књижевност, то је што је
самостална творевина без традиција, потпуно независан организам.
Историја нове српске књижевности, 1. Here, Skerlić has in mind the previous literary tradition, writ-
ten in “српскословенски.”
In a similar way, Irena Grickat conveys the same sense of independency in the development of the
eighteenth-century Serbian language by saying:
Догађаји који су на српској страни наступили у првој половини 18. века—испрва русифици-
рање а затим несистематисано али обилато “славјанизирање” писане речи—дали су одли-
чну потврду да се структура једног језика не може насилно померити у правцу неког
другог, без дуготрајног, спонтаног и комбинованог, тј. и писменог и још више говорног
прожимања туђом структуром. Ефекат ових догађаја доказао је да се наш језик није мо-
гао ни русифицирати ни “славјанизирати”,—ни у фонетици ни у морфологији ни у синтакси.
Лексичка одн. лексикотворна пријемчивост се показала тамо где није било противљења
од стране домаћих језичких принципа а где су додири с другим народима и нужда терали на
позајмицу. [bolding added]
See her “Језик књижевности и књижевни језик, 23-24.
ate revolutionary changes that might endanger comprehensibility among its speakers
and users. Language revolutions occur during times of war, after massive migrations
or political revolutions that cause substantial social (and thus linguistic) change. In
regard to Venclović’s “ср’бскы”, one must bear in mind that by the sixteenth century,
southern Hungary already had a sizable Serbian population that had remained after
the Turkish victory at the Battle at Mohács in 1526. During the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, new migrations increased the number of Serbian inhabitants. After
the Great Migration of 1690, southern Hungary became the center of Serbian eco-
nomic and cultural life. For all the Serbs living within the Habsburg Monarchy, the
appropriation of Illyrian was an unavoidable process since Illyrian, as already point-
ed out, was one of the four well-established literary languages in the Monarchy.84
The Serbs must have understood it without difficulty, which was not the case with
Slavo-Russian. Spoken Illyrian and the Serbian vernacular were patently the same
language. With its centuries of literary development, well-elaborated grammatical
norms and spelling, and influx of rich vocabulary, Illyrian had a profound and cu-
mulative impact and standardizing effect on the emerging Serbian literary language
in the works of Slavo-Serbian authors. The true extent of the influence of the Illyrian
language upon the newly-formed Serbian literary language within the Empire is not
well known, but that is a problem that understandably exceeds the scope of this study.
ORTHODOX LINGUISTIC DIGLOSSIA, A DEVELOPMENTAL

PHASE COMMON TO ORTHODOX PEOPLES
Now that I have situated Venclović within the broad context of the eighteenth-
century cultural, literary and linguistic orientation of the Serbs in Hungary, I will try
to explain the most important linguistic innovation Venclović had introduced into
what, to all intents and purposes, was still medieval Serbian literature in the 1630’s and
1640s.85 The time between the migration of the Serbs (1690) and the appearance of
84 See fn. 61.

85 Without going into a textual analysis of Venclović’s language(s), I can say a priori that Venclović’s lan-
guage cannot be defined as traditional Serbian Church Slavic, i.e. Srbuljski. On the basis of short frag-
ments from the Мачъ Духовный (Стојановић, Каталог рукописа и старих штампаних књига, 84-102,
and Новаковић, Примери књижевности и језика старога и српско-словенскога, 180-202 ), I can say
that the original Ruthenian Church Slavic, i.e. Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Ukrainian, has been best preserved
in the titles of the original, or in the titles of biblical quotations; a number of the quoted examples are
written in Serbianized Slavo-Russian, and quite a number of them appear in the form of Slavonized
Serbian with minimal or no elements of Slavo-Russian. The Serbianization of Slavo-Russian seems to be
Venclović’s first texts (1730-1740) was quite short. It is fair to assume that Venclović,
well versed in Church Slavonic literature, made copies directly from East-Slavic orig-
inals. At the same time, he adapted the East-Slavic version (i.e. recension) of Church
Slavonic to the Serbian version. It is important to keep in mind that the East-Slavic
version of Church Slavonic at that time already contained some “проста мова”, which
Venclović translated into the language of the common people. This matter, however,
would require a separate textual analysis that is beyond the scope of this investigation.
The settling of Serbs in Habsburg territory brought about the acceptance of
Illyrian as a ready-made linguistic idiom with a long literary tradition. In fact, the
Illyrian language, as seen in Venclović’s “ср’бскы”, was the most complete and sys-
tematic vernacular language in the entire Orthodox world in the first quarter of
the eighteenth century. One can only guess what kind of Serbian vernacular would
have appeared if the Serbs had not migrated into the territory of southern Hungary,
and whether a codification of Serbian folk language would have ever taken place
on exclusively Serbian Orthodox territory. One could, a priori, assume that such a
Serbian vernacular would have been, in its syntactic structure, much closer to today’s
Bulgarian. Such a language would probably have had many more features character-
istic of the Balkan linguistic league.86
masterfully introduced in the Мачъ Духовный, and could have influenced one of the first investigators
of Venclović’s language to conclude:
У доба када је руски црквено-словенски језик код нас био у највећем јеку у употреби, и када
је био скоро сасвим потиснуо црквено-словенски језик српске рецензије, Гаврило се још држи
старије, србуљске школе писања. Доцније ћемо имати прилике да видимо да у његовим пре-
водима у језику има врло мало и незнатних остатака русизама, и ако је он преводио пропо-
веди и чланке с руско-словенскога језика, те на тај начин био у могућности да као и његови
савременици, буде подложан утицају руском.
Јовановић, “Језик Гаврила Стефановића”, 111-112. Јоvanović’s analysis of Venclović’s language
has not lost its importance and still remains more reliable than recent publications on Venclović. Јо-
vanović’s description of Venclović’s language as Srbuljski has been adopted by scholars such as Мla-
denović in his “Типови књижевног језика код Срба у другој половини XVIII и почетком XIX века”,
40-42; Albijanić, “The Demise of Serbian Church Slavic”, 117; idem, “The Creation of the Slaveno-Serbski
Literary Language”, 485-86; Ивић, Преглед историје српског језика, 107, 112-113; Скерлић, Српска
књижевност у XVIII веку, 142, 171; Деретић”, Последњи процват старе књижевности”, in his Историја
српске књижевности, 165-174; Трифуновић, Стара српска књижевност, 84-5.
86 I only hypothesize here what the Serbian language would have looked like if the development
of Serbian had taken place on exclusively Orthodox territory without interference from the Western
Balkans. In fact, Irena Grickat has carefully and conscientiously analyzed the language of the earliest
Serbian travelogues of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries—the same texts
that Pavić treats as the texts written in the Serbian vernacular, i.e. in contemporary Serbian language—
in her article, “Језик српских путописа из XVII и с почетка XVIII века”, in: Зборник историје књи-
Some scholars have attempted to explain the appearance of Venclović’s “ср’бскы”

through the Turkish occupation that provoked the 1690 migration, however, I am
unconvinced by this theory. The Turkish occupation of the Balkans certainly slowed
the general literary and linguistic development of the Orthodox Southern Slavs (the
Serbs and Bulgarians). However, ideologically, it could not have caused the appear-
ance of the Serbian vernacular in literary practice. The reasons for the introduction
жевности, vol. 10, Стара српска књижевност (Београд САНУ, 1976), 297-322. She has compared the
language of these travelogues to similar ones in Russian and Neo-Greek, and convincingly concluded:
Али је то сад био квалитативно подновљен стандард. Он је био језички освежен у
поређењу са вековним црквенословенским традицијама, подвргнут неогрецистичким
утицајима о којима ће даље бити речи, донекле онарођен, донекле балканизиран, а у
знатној мери и са цртама војвођанских дијалеката, када је реч о списима са те територије...
ствар је у томе, наиме, да се овде, међу знацима помињаног изражајног стандарда, про-
влачи и један укалупљени тип хипотаксе, који ћемо даље показати. Према свему овоме,
наши путописи нису толико објекти за историју живог српског говора, колико објекти
за историју поступања с језиком, у једном пресеку српског писаног стваралаштва.
[bolding added]
Грицкат, “Језик српских путописа”, 298 and 299. See also: Грицкат, “О неким видовима историјско-
језичких истраживања (на српском материјалу с краја 17. и почетка 18. века ), Зборник за филологију
и лингвистику XI (1968): 39-45; eadem, “Језик књижевности и књижевни језик”, 20-22. Speaking about
the aspects of Russification of traditional Serbian Church Slavonic texts, and the presence of the so-
called Medio-Russianisms (“медиорусизми” which differ from the so-called Paleo-Russianisms and Neo-
Russianisms), Grickat remarks:
Русифицирање се примећује у српској црквеној графици пре наиласка великог руског утицаја
у XVIII в. ...термин славеносрпски..се..употребљавао већ много раније него што је наступио
период који данашња наука назива тим именом. У представи о језику било је, рaзумљиво,
уткано име властитог народа, а заједно с њим и придев словенски (славенски и сл.,) чест,
између осталог, у руским књигама и рукописима. [original emphasis]
See her, “Још нека питања у вези са славеносрпском епохом”, 113-114. Through a comparison with
Neo-Greek language patterns, certain typological analogies help explain the specific features present
in the language of the earliest Serbian travelogues. The new linguistic trend already started during the
sixteenth century with the translation of the work of Damaskin Studit by the Bulgarians and the Serbs.
Studit’s Θησαυρός, (several editions appeared in Venice from 1557-1558 onwards), occupies an impor-
tant place in the development of the languages of the so-called Balkan linguistic league. See Giuseppe
Dell’Agata, “The Bulgarian Language Question from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century”, in: Aspects
of the Slavic Language Question, 157-88; Донка Петканова-Тотева, Дамаскините и българската
литература (София: БАН, 1965); eadem, Из гръцко- българските книжовни отношения през XVII-
XVIIIв. (София: Наука и изкуство, 1969); Дамаскини: македонски преводи од 16 до 19 век, ed. Радмила
Угринова-Скаловска (Скопjе: Матица македонска, 2002); Евгения И. Демина, Тихонравовский дамас-
кин. Болгарский памятник XVII в., vols. 1-3 (София: БАН, 1968-1985); Болгарский литературный
язык предвозрожденского периода, ed. Евгения И. Демина (Москва: Институт славяноведения
и балканистики РАН, 1992); П. Динеков, “Дамаскините и езикът на българската възрожденска
литература”, Български eзиk 2-3 (1971): 205-211; E.И. Демина, “Место дамаскинов в истории болгар-
ского литературного языка”, Советское славяноведение, no. 4 (1966): 31-33.
of the Illyrian language, that is, the Serbian vernacular, the so-called “racki ili ilirski”,
into the dogmatic, ecclesiastic, and still-medieval literature of the Serbs in Vojvodina,
rather, must be sought exclusively within the framework of the Orthodox commu-
nity. This community continued to lead the literary linguistic development of the
Orthodox Serbs, including those in the Catholic Habsburg Empire.87 What moti-
vated the leaders of the Orthodox cultural community to officially approve the
use of the vernacular along with Church Slavonic? In order to answer this ques-
tion, we must first examine the linguistic situation among the Orthodox Slavs in the
era in which vernacular idioms appeared.
Despite many stimulating contributions in recent times, the question of the de-
velopment of Church Slavonic over a span of six or seven centuries as the basic liter-
ary language of the Orthodox Slavs is still far from being satisfactorily answered.88
No one has yet analyzed the processes of the Balkanization of the Serbian language of literacy and
literature. As Grickat has accurately described:
Преводилачка делатност на Балкану утврђена је и за турско доба. Постоје наговештаји
да је у то време било извесне “демократизације” језика при превођењу с грчкога; стање у Ср-
бији у том погледу тек треба проучавати; зна се да је писање по угледу на грчке проскинита-
рије, “хожденија”, заиста одавало неки нови тип писаног израза код Срба.
See her Актуелни језички и текстолошки проблеми, 36; eadem, “Језик књижевности и књижевни
језик”, 21-22. In this regard cf. also: Jасмина Грковић-Мејџор, “Синтаксички грецизми у Псалтиру
Гаврила Тројичанина из 1643”, in Псалтир Гаврила Тројичанина из 1643. године,Ћирилске рукописне
књиге Библиотеке Матице српске, ed. Душица Грбић (Нови Сад: Библиотека Матице српске, 1992),
129-137; eadem, “Kорелати грчког темпоралног инфинитива у српским псалтирима XVI века,
Псалтири Ћирилске рукописне књиге Библиотеке Матице српске, eds. Душица Грбић and Вера
Јерковић (Нови Сад: Библиотека Матице српске, 1993), 133-140.
87 All Serbian national movements against Turkish rule began under the leadership of the Serbian
church. In search of allies against the Turks, the Serbian church hierarchy, and leaders of the people, con-
tinuously negotiated with the representatives of the Roman clergy. Roman Catholics were willing to give
their support under the condition that a religious union be formed with the Orthodox “shismatics”, which
the Serbian people and lower clergy were not willing to accept under any conditions or circumstances.
Cf. more about it in Јован Радонић, Римска курија и јужнословенске земље од XVI до XIX века (Београд:
Српска академија наука, 1950); see also the collections of documents: Марко Јачов, Списи Тајног
ватиканског архива XVI-XVIII века (Београд: САНУ, 1983); idem, Списи Конгрегације за пропаганду вере
у Риму о Србима, 1622-1644, ed. Радован Самарџић (Београд: SANU, 1986); Јован Радонић and Мита
Костић, Српске привилегије од 1690 до 1792 (Београд: Научна књига, 1954); Karlo Horvat, “Novi histo-
rijski spomenici za poviest Bosne i susjednih zemalja”, Glasnik Zemaljskog Muzeja Bosne i Hercegovine u
Sarajevu 21 (1909): 1-104 and 313-424; Augustin Theiner, Vetera monumenta Slavorum meriodionalium
historiam illustrantia. Maximam partem nondum edita ex tabulariis Vaticanis deprompta et collecta, vol. 1
& 2 (Romae: Typis Vaticana, 1863 - Zagabriae, 1875).
88 Here I have in mind in particular the existing explanations of Church Slavonic in its latest form of
Slavo-Russian among the Serbs in Vojvodina. The role of Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Serbian in the forma-
tion of the Serbian pre-national cultural and linguistic identity seems to me ill-defined. For example:
У таквој његовој еволуцији [рускословенскoг] која се одвијала у краткотрајном времену

његовог егзистирања у српској култури, није било услова за стручно нормирање тога типа
књижевног језика. Његова норма се тек у њему самом стварала, њу је требало тек описа-
ти, граматички уобличити и кодификовати. Међутим, својим присуством и употребом
у српској средини рускословенски језик је, поред осталог, допринео не само, како смо рек-
ли, стварању славеносрпског типа књижевног језика, већ и писању на српском народном
језику, што су поједини писци и чинили...Рускословенски је допринео, такође, и формирању
схватања о томе какав књижевни језик Срби треба да имају.
Младеновић, “Улога рускословенског језика у формирању српског књижевног језика новијег
времена”, in his Историја српског језика. Одабрани радови, 203-226, the quotation appears on p. 208.
Slavo-Russian must have had its literary norms—(cf., for example: “Гибридные варианты церков-
нославянского, распространяющиеся на славянском Юге... опираются в своей книжной основе
на русский церковнослаавянский, cf. В. М. Живов”, Роль русского церковнославянского в исто-
рии славянских литературных языков”, 77; Ремёва М. Леонтьева, “Характеристика грамматиче-
ской нормы книжно-славянского языка житийных памятников позднего периода - конец XVI-XVII
вв.” and “Характеристика грамматической нормы книжно-славянского языка памятников пове-
ствовательного жанра - конец XVI-XVIIвв.”, in her Пути развития русского литературного языка XI-
XVIIвв. (Москва: Издательство МГУ, 2003), 208-255; see also fn. 94)—and, therefore, it could not have
contributed to the emergence of texts written in the Serbian vernacular, “српски народни језик”, whose
norms differed sharply from the Slavo-Russian ones. Leaving aside the debatable question of continuity
of the Serbian literary language (Младеновић, “О континуитету у развоју српског књижевног језика -
до средине XIX века”, Историја српског језика. Одабрани радови, 518-526), I must respectfully disagree
with another statement that “рускословенски је заправо варијанта старословенског језика какав је
и српскословенски” (ibid. 521), or “сменивши српскословенски, славеносрпски је, заправо, наста-
вио где је онај први стао тако да је књижевно-језички континуитет код Срба продужен без преки-
да, истина у неистоветној језичкој форми и у друкчијим друштвено-историјским условима”, in his
“О неким питањима и особинама славеносрпског типа књижевног језика”, in Славеносрпски језик.
Студије и чланци, 145. See my explanation about the absence of diglossia in old Serbian texts written in
“српскословенски” in fn.*. Slavo-Serbian, or more precisely speaking, the language of Serbianized Slavo-
Russian texts, should be considered to be an organic part of the broader diglossic linguistic system of
the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine periods among the Serbs in Vojvodina. About the diglossic situation
attested to in Slavonized Serbian texts see the last pages of the second part of this study and fn. 75.
At the same time, Mladenović agrees with Ivić’s statement and fully accepts it: “У целини узев, на-
родни језик у српској књижевности XVIII века је шумадијско-војвођански дијалекат са већином
својих данашњих особина.” (Павле Ивић, Преглед историје српског језика,, 142.) Speaking about
Rajić’s language, Mladenović says:
Тај језик је био стално екавски (уз занемарљив проценат појединих лексема са рускосло-
венским јекавизмом) захваљујући својој шумадијско-војвођанској дијалекатској основи, и
у том погледу он еe није мењао. Он је у себе, с временом, примао све више и више народних
језичких црта из поменутог дијалекта, јер славеносрпски није био затворен за такве утицаје.
Cf. Младеновић”, Језик у текстовима Јована Рајића”, in his Историја српског језика. Одабрани
радови, 231; idem, “Развитак и стабилизација екавског изговора српског књижевног језика у другој
половини XVIII и у првој половини XIX века”, Зборник Матице Српске за за филологију и лингвистику,
vol. XXXVI/1 (1993), 79-83; idem, “Славеносрпски језик у Вуково време”, Научни састанак слависта
у Вукове дане. Реферати и саопштења, vol. 17/2 (Београд: Међународни славистчки центар, 1987),
119-125; cf. also П. Ивић and А. Младеновић, О језику код Срба у раздобљу од 1699. до 1804, 69-109.
One special difficulty is rooted in the fact that the middle period of Church Slavonic
development—after the Fall of the Byzantine Empire and the Turkish occupation of
the Balkans—occurred exclusively on the territory of the East Slavs in the Ruthenian
lands, that were first under Polish sovereignty, and later part of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. In an immediate confrontation with the Western cultural and lin-
guistic models, Orthodox activists and writers in Ruthenian lands started glorifying
the Church Slavonic role it played among the Orthodox Slavs.89 In the late sixteenth
century, Orthodox Ruthenians promoted the standardization and correction of the
Slavonic language and wrote quite a number of Slavonic grammars and dictionar-
ies in order to revive the study and cultivation of Slavonic.90 As has already been
The quoted claims in regard to the “шумадијско-војвођанскa дијалекатскa основa” are hypotheti-
cal assumptions that could have materialized only under the condition that the Serbs had had a pre-
existing textual or literary tradition based on the dialects of the Šumadija and Vojvodina regions. As
already pointed out, the conditions for such a linguistic development among the Serbs were unfavor-
able in eighteenth-century Vojvodina. In the Habsburg Monarchy, the Serbs did not have their sepa-
rate and autonomous political territory which, eventually, would have conditioned the emergence of a
corpus of texts as the basis of an exclusively Serbian pre-national literary language. Cf. Skerlić’s opinion
in this regard in fn. 81. An integrated history of the rise of a pre-national language(s) among the Serbs
living in Habsburg territory is rather extraordinarily complex and, it seems to me, still an open ques-
tion in spite of numerous valuable contributions. In this regard Kretschmer’s criticism of the existing
methodological approaches to analyzing literary works of Slavo-Serbian writers seems to be justified
and welcome. Her writings are valuable theoretical guidelines. Cf., for example, “О књижевно-језичкој
традицији до 1800 код Срба и Руса (Размишљања о словенској историјској стандардизацији)”,
in Јужнословенски филолог, vol. 56, nos.1- 2 (2000), 543-59; eadem, “Методологија разрађивања
лингвистичких текстовних модела за предстандардно-језичко доба, Научни састанак у Вукове
дане, vol. XX/2 (1991), 65-70; eadem, “Nekoliko napomena povodom 30-godišnjeg jubileja istraživanja
slavenosrpskog doba”, in Зборник Матице српске за филологију и лингвистику, vol. 33 (1990), 221-31.
89 Bohdan Strumins’kyj writes:
The international character of Slavonic was proudly emphasized by Orthodox writers and publishers. To
Ivan Vyšens’kyj, Slavonic was a language that could redeem a Ruthenian, a Serb, a Bulgarian, or the people
of Great Rhossia. Kopystens’kyj proudly described the geographical extent of Slavonic from the Adriatic to
the Arctic Sea; in his preface to John Chrysostom’s homilies in 1624, he asked all possible Slavic and non-
Slavic nations to accept and embrace that book. When Pamvo Berynda published a Slavonic Triodion in
1627 with synaxaria added in a Ruthenian translation, he entreated his non-Ruthenian readers: “Do not
complain about this, Great Rhosses, Bulgarians, Serbs and others who are akin to us in Orthodoxy.
See his “The Language Question in the Ukrainian Lands before Nineteenth Century”, in Aspects of the
Slavic Language Question, Vol. II: East Slavic, eds. Riccardo Picchio and Harvey Goldblatt (New Haven: Yale
Consilium on International and Area Studies, 1984), 9-47, the quotation appears on pp. 17-18. See the
explanation of the term “Rhossic” in fn. 90.
90 Ibid., 9-20; see fn. 126. Andrii Danylenko stresses: “ A separate place should be reserved for the
Peresopnycja Gospel of 1556-1561, in which Archimandrite Hryhorij and amanuensis Myxailo Vasylijevyč
made an attempt to combine Church Slavonic with the ‘prostaja mova’ (Ruthenian) rather than local ver-
nacular. See his “The new Ukrainian standard language (1798) - between tradition and innovation”, in
pointed out, it was only after the Great Migration in 1690 that the Serbs began to re-
new their literary activities. During the second half of the seventeenth century, the
Bulgarians also began a literary revival. The sole available model for both the Serbs
and Bulgarians was the literature of the Eastern Orthodox Slavs. The East Slavic devel-
opmental middle period has not yet been sufficiently investigated, but promises, in my
opinion, to shed crucial light on the character of the literary revivals among the Serbs
and Bulgarians, and the definitive codification of their modern literary languages.
It was only natural that the Serbs turned to East Slavic literature, which had con-
tinued the development of Church Slavonic without interruption, even after the Fall
of Constantinople in 1453. From the end of the fifteenth century until the second half
of the seventeenth century—the incorporation of the Ruthenian territories into the
Moscovite State took place in 1654—a complex process of development and innova-
tions was taking place in the literary centers of these territories: Vilnius, L’viv, Ostroh,
Kutejno, Kyiv, etc. These developments progressed independently of Moscovite
Russia and brought about changes in the norms of classic Church Slavonic. As early
as 1517, five years before Luther’s translation of the Gospels, Francysk Skaryna com-
pleted a translation of the Gospels, written in a language that is usually thought to
be the earliest codification of Byelorussian.91 In fact, it was the common language of
the Orthodox population in the Ruthenian lands. Skaryna explicitly called the lan-
guage in which he wrote “руський языкъ.” The prefaces to his editions contained
pronouncements that clarified the language in which he wrote. For example:
Книги светога пророка Божия Даниила починяються. Зуполъне вы-
ложены на руський языкъ доктором Франъциском Скориною изъ слав-
наго града Полоцка. Напредъ Богу ко чти, и людем посполитым к нау-
це. (The Books of the Saint Prophet Daniil begin. They are fully presented in
American Contributions to the 14th Congress of Slavists in Ohrid, Macedonia, vol. 1: Linguistics, ed. Christina
Y. Bethin (Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2008), 59-74, the quotation appears on p. 59.
91 E.Ф. Карский, Бѣлорусы, vol. 3, pt. 2 (Москва: Изд-во Академии наук СССР, 1955), 24. Cf. the same
opinion in П.В. Владимиров, Доктор Франциск Скорина, eго переводы, печатные изданїя и языкъ (St.
Peterburg, 1888; Munich: O. Sagner, 1989), 247.
the Rus’ian92 language by Doctor Fran’cisk Skorinа93 from the famous city of
Polotsk. They are set forth in God’s honor and to teach the common people).94
Skaryna’s biblical editions displayed similar explanations in regard to his lan-
guage, for example, the title of the Bible printed in Prague in 1519 reads as follows:
Бивлиia Руска выложена докторомъ Францискомъ Скориною из славнаго града
Полоцька, Богу ко чти и людемъ посполитымъ к доброму научению (The Rus’ian
Bible presented by Doctor Francisk Skorina, from the famous city of Polotsk, in God’s
honor and to [provide] the good teaching to the common people).95 The language
92 The term “руський языкъ” is rendered into English as “the Rus’ian language” in order to differentiate it
from the contemporary term “русский язык”, which designates Russian. Bohdan Strumins’kyj and other
Ukrainian scholars prefer to use the term “the Little Rhossic” for Ruthenian or Ukrainian and “the Great
Rhossic” or simply “Rhossic” for Russian or “россїйскїй, i.e., московскїй”, and accordingly “the common
Slavonic-Rhossic language” for Slavo-Russian = “славяно-россїйскїй” which meant the latest version of
Church Slavonic for all Eastern Slavs (when the eastern Ukraine was unified with Russia in 1654) and as
well as for all Orthodox Slavs, including the Romanians. See the usage of “Rhossic” in fn. 87.
93
In the prefaces to his editions, the first Byelorussian printer and biblicist, Францыск Скарына, wrote
his name in its Russian version—Франциск Скорина—because he intended his editions for all of the
Eastern Slavs. Since he was from the city of Polotsk in Byelorussia, today Byelorussian and Ukrainian
scholars (except the Russian ones) tend to write his name according to the Byelorussian orthogra-
phy: Францыск Скарына. I use the latter as the standardized form in literary criticism. When I translate
Скарына’s quotations, I keep the Russian form of his name that appears in the original.
94
E.Л. Немировский, “Указатель художественного убранства пражских изданий Франциска Ско-
рины,” in: Белорусский просветитель Франциск Скорина и начало книгопечатания в Белору-
ссии и Литве, eds. E. С. Лихтенстейн, E. И. Маркушевич, et al. (Москва: АН СССР, 1979), 223-68, esp.
232; A.И. Журавский, “Язык предисловий Франциска Скорины,” ibidem., 85-93. Cf also: Ігар Жук,
“‘Прадмовы’ Францыска Скарыны як памежныя формы ‘верша-прозы’ ў беларускай літаратуры,” in:
Скарыназнаўства, Кнігазнаўства, Літаратуразнаўства. Матэрыялы Міжнароднага кангрэса белару-
сістаў: Беларуская культура ў дыялогу цывілізацый, ed. У. Канон (Мінск: “Беларускі кнігазбор,” 2001),
5-11; Уладзімір Агіевіч, “Антытытул Скарынавай Бівлии Рускай,” in: Скарыназнаўства, Кнігазнаўства,
Літаратуразнаўства, 11-18.
95
The title page of Skaryna’s Bible appears in Беларуская энцыклапедыя ў 18 тамах, vol. 14, ed. Г.П.
Пашкоў (Мiнск: Беларуская энцыклапедыя, 1996-2002), 444; cf. also: Энцыклапедыя Гiсторыi Беларусi
у 6 тамах, vol. 6 (Мiнск: Беларуская энцыклопедыя iмя Петруся Броукi, 2002), 309-19. E. A. Целунова,
“О церковнославянском протографе Библии Франциска Скорины (на материале Книги Числа)”, in
Slavia, vol. 59, no. 3 (1990), 244-250. Andrii Danylenko convincingly emphasizes that “It is ubiquitously
maintained (Pljušč, Aničenka, Žuraŭski, Pugh, Moser, Rusanivs’kyj) that phonological and grammati-
cal features as found in writings in the ‘rusьkij jazykъ’ and the ‘prostaja mova’, are characteristic of both
Middle Ukrainian and Belarussian, thus not allowing either Ukrainian or Belarussian deviating dialect
features to penetrate into the common language standard... inasmuch as the vernacular koiné used as a
written medium tended to demonstrate rather vague norms from the late 15th through the late 17th c.
Žuraŭski (1967, 58f.) seems right to claim that the ‘rusьkij jazykъ’ should be treated along with the ‘pros-
taja mova’ as constituent parts of a general literary language system, albeit no major grammar or diction-
ary of the ‘rusьkij jazykъ’ has ever been compiled (Martel, 1938, 38-44) [see Martel in fn. 101].” Cf. Andrii
Danylenko, “ ‘Prostaja mova’, ‘Kitab’, and Polissian Standard”, in Die Welt der Slaven, vol. 51 (2006), 80-
of Skaryna’s editions is best described as a hybrid language. It was often a mixture

of developing “руськый” and Church Slavonic. The proportions of the mixture
vary both between different texts and between different linguistic levels.96 All of
Skarynа’s works—including his Малая подорожная книжица (A Little Traveling
Book, 1522), and Апостолъ (Apostles, 1525)—were popular and widely read among
the Orthodox population in Poland and Lithuania. It was Skaryna’s desire to render
the Church Slavonic language of these liturgical books that, in his words, were “not
understandable to the simple people”, accessible to the uneducated masses. In a lin-
guistic sense, he would have a whole series of “Western Russian” activist followers,
including Szymon Budny97 and Vasil’ Cjapinski.98 The latter published the Homiliary
115, the quotation appears on p. 100. Cf. also: В.А. Анiчэнка, Беларyска-украïнcькiя пiсьмова-мoўныя
сyвязï (Мiнск: Iнстытут мовознаўва АН Беларускай ССР, 1969); A. I.Жураўскi, Гiсторыя беларускай
лтературнай мовы (Мiнск: Iнстытут мовознаў- ства AН Беларускай ССР, 1967); S. Pugh, Testament to
Ruthenian. A Linguistic analysis of the Smotryc’kyj variant, in Harvard series in Ukrainian studies (Cambridge,
Mass: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1996); M.
Moser, Die polnische, ukrainische und weißrussische Interferenzschicht im russischen Satzbau des 16. und
17. Jahrhunderts, Schriften über Schprachen unde Texte, vol. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 1998); idem,
“Mittelruthenisch (Mittelweißrussisch und Mittelukrainisch): Ein Überblick”, in Studia slavica hungarica,
vol. 50, nos. 1-2 (2005), 125-142; Вталій M. Русанівс’кий, Історія українскої літературної мови (Київ:
АртЕк, 2001).
96
Tолстой describes Skaryna’s language as follows: “сохранив церковнославянскую базу текста,
он [Скорина] подновил ее на живой народной в основе своей белорусской речью.” Н.И. Толстой,
“Взаимоотношение локальных типов древнеславянского литературного языка позднего перио-
да (вторая половина XVI-XVII вв)”, in: Славянское языкознание, V Meждународный съезд славистов
(Moсква: АН СССР, Советский комитет славистов, 1963), 270 and 241-42. Cf. also: his “Роль древнес-
лавянского литературного языка в истории русского сербского и болгарского литературных язы-
ков в XVII-XVIII вв.”, in his История и структура славянских литературных языков, 89-90; Живов”,
Роль русского церковнославянского в истории славянских литературных языков”, in Актуальные
проблемы славянского языкознания, 74-80.
97 Szymon Budny (Simon Budnaeus, c. 1530-1593) was a Polish sectarian theologian. During the
Reformation in Poland-Lithuania, he led the Lithuanian anti-Trinitarian (“Arian”) wing of the Polish re-
formist camp, which took a radical position in questions of theology though a conservative one in ques-
tions of social order. Budny translated Bible into Polish, using the Hebrew text. See more about him in
Dawni Pisarze, Polscy od początków piśmiennistwa do Młodej Polski Przedwodnik biograficzny i bibliografic-
zny, vol. 1 (Warszawa: WSIP, 2000), 126-28. Cf. also: Stefan Fleischmann, Szymon Budny: Ein theologisch-
es Portrait des polnisch-weißrussischen Humanisten und Unitarieri (ca. 1530-1593), Series A. Slavistische
Forschungen, n.s., vol. 53 (Köln: Böhlau, 2006).
98 Fleischmann, Szymon Budny, 94-102. Васiль Цяпiнскi Амелляновiч (Тяпинский ca.1540-1603)
supported Budny: “Ihm zur Seite [of Szymon Budny] stand Vasil’ Cjapinski, der die drei synoptischen
Evangelien ins Weißruthenische übertrug und sie 1576 in seiner Drukerei auf dem väterlichen Gut
Cjapina druckte (das Lukasevangelium nur unvollständing).” Cf. Norbert Randow, “Die weißruthenische
Literatur”, 2, Камуникат, http://kamunikat.fontel.net/www/czasopisy/annus/01/01_randow.htm (ac-
cessed March 12, 2011). Cf. also: Толстой, “Языковая ситуация в западных пределах восточного и
Gospels with parallel texts in Byeloruthenian and Church Slavonic, heavily mod-
eled on the Antitrinitarian, Szymon Budny’s Bible of 1572 and his New Testament of
1574.99 Furthermore, at the end of the sixteenth century, Lavrentij Zyzanij published
his Грамматика словенська (A Slavonic Grammar, Vilno, 1596). The Grammar was
written in the vernacular (Byeloruthenian from the Vilno region) so as to make the
study and comprehension of Church Slavonic easier. In that same year, his, Азбука
(Alphabet), was published under the title of “Лексис, СирЂчь реченїа, въкратъцЂ
събран(ъ)ны и из слове(н)скаго языка на просты(й) рускі(й) діале(к)тъ истол(ъ)
кованы. (A Leksis of Expressions Briefly Collected and Interpreted from Church
Slavonic into the Ru’sian Vernacular).”100 The “простый русьскый дїалект (the
simple Ru’sian dialect)”, or “русьска мова (the Rus’ian vernacular)”, essentially rep-
resented spoken Byeloruthenian from the Vilno region.101 It became the “western
Russian” literary language, the so-called “рус’кій” (Ruthenian), that in the sixteenth
century was introduced into traditional confessional-denominational literature along
with Church Slavonic. The western Russian writers in the Ruthenian regions used
this language and called it “проста мова” in contrast to “словенскій”, which re-
mained the chief literary medium. It should be emphasized that very early on, this
vernacular was also used independently from Church Slavonic in the function of
“Chancellery Byelorussian or Ruthenian.”102 In the beginning, the language was com-
posed predominantly of Byelorussian elements. Later, it also absorbed Ukrainian and
Polish ones. In the middle of the sixteenth century, проста мова was deployed in
ecclesiastical books—Gospels, homilies, tracts, “Triods”, etc.—as well as the first secu-
южного славянства в XVII веке (опыт сопоставительного рассмотрения)”, in his Избранные труды,
vol. II: Славянская литературно-языковая ситуация, 175-76.
99 Fleischmann, Szymon Budny, 94-104.
100
Strumins’kyj, op. cit., 14-15; Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5, ed. Danylo Husar Struk (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press Incorporated, 1984), 886. See also: Oxana Pachlovska, Civiltà letteraria ukraina (Roma:
Carocci editore S. p. A., 1998) 97 and 99; Moser, “Что такое “простая мова?”, in Studia slavica hun-
garica, vol. 47, No 3-4 (2002), 221-260; B. Wiemer, “‘Prosta mova’—Präliminaria zu einer strukturellen
Beschreibung”, in Beiträge der Europäische Slavistischen Linguistik (POLISLAV) 6, eds. J. Blankenhorn, J.
Błaszczak, R. Marzari (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner, 2003), 227-237; П. П. Плющ, “Русская ‘простая мова’
на Украине в XVI-XVIII веках”, in Начальный этап формирования русского национального языка, ed.
Б. А. Ларин (Ленинград: Издательство Ленинградского университета, 1961), 219-236.
101See more on the various names of the “проста мова” in Andrii Danylenko, “On the name(s) of the
Prostaja Mova in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth”, Studia Slavica 51, nos. 1-2 (March, 2000): 97-121.
102 Strumins’kyj, op. cit., 20-26.
lar works, especially educational texts.103 Speaking about the use of Ruthenian in the
church and in ecclesiastical literature, Bohdan Strumins’kyj says:
The first conscious attempt to introduce local Ruthenian into the religious
literature of the Ukrainian lands was made in the Volhynian Orthodox monas-
tery of Pere-sopnycja by 1556. Archpriest Myxajlo Vasylijevyč, who transcribed
the Slavonic translation of the Gospel into Ruthenian from 1556 to 1561, said
in his preface: “If this has been translated from the Bulgarian language into
Ruthenian speech it has been done for better comprehension by the common
Christian people. Don’t deplore this, dear friend.”104
The intrusion of the people’s language into still-medieval Church Slavonic lit-
erature is well documented in Eastern Slavic Orthodox literature. For example, at the
end of the sixteenth century, the renowned Ukrainian polemicist, Ivаn Vyšens’kyj,
wrote:
Евангелїя и Апостола въ церкви на Литургїи простымъ языкомъ не
выворочайте, по Литургїи же для вырозумѣнья людского попросту тол-
куйте и выкладайте, книги церковныѣ всѣ и уставы словянскимъ язы-
комъ друкуйте. (In church, during the Liturgy, do not distort the Gospels and
the Acts of the Apostles; after the Liturgy is over, interpret and expound in a
simple manner (po prostu) in the language of the people, so that the people
may understand it; and print all Church books and its constitutions and laws
in Church Slavonic).105
Many of the topoi explaining when and why the vernacular should be employed,
such as the example above, are nearly identical with Venclović’s writing, except the
language referred to by the East Slavs is “русьскїй” or “российский”, while Venclović
103
A. Martel, La langue polonaise dans les pays ruthènes: Ukraine et Russie blanche 1569-1667 (Lille, 1938),
97-160; Толстой, “Взаимоотношение локальных типов”, 241-45; G.Y. Shevelov, “Ukrainian”, in: The Slavic
Literary Languages: Formation and Development, eds. Alexander M. Schenker & Edward Stankiewicz (New
Haven, 1980), 143-60; A. McMillin, “Belorussian”, in: The Slavic Literary Languages, 105-17.
104 Strumins’kyj, op. cit., 26.
105 Quoted from Martel, La langue polonaise, 99, fn 2. (Акты относящиеся къ исторїи Южной и За-
падной Россїи, II, 220); I. Ogijenko, “Język cerkiewno-slowiański na Litwie i w Polsce w ww. XV-XVll”,
Prace Filologiczne V, no. 14 (1929): 524-43, esp. 536-37; І. Огієнко, Українська літературна мова XVI-
го століття і Крехівський Апостол (1560) (Warszawa: Druk. Sinodal’na, 1930), 57-58; А. Н. Робинсон,
Борьба идей в русской литературе XVII века (Моcква: Издательство Наука, 1974), 319-332; Strakhov,
“Attitude to Greek Language and Culture in Moscovy”, 130; Bernard Gröschel, Die Sprache Ivan Vyšens’kyjs.
Untersuchungen und Materialien zur historischen Grammatik des Ukrainischen (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1972);
cf. also Pachlovska, op. cit., 348-352. For a different interpretation of Vyshens’kyj’s quoted fragment see
Harvey Goldblatt, “On the Language Beliefs of Ivan Vyšens’kyj and the Counter-Reformation”, in Harvard
Ukrainian Studies, vol. 15, (1991), 7-34.
speaks of “ср’бскы.” For the sake of comparison, I will give a few examples. In the
epilogue of his translation of Мачь Духовны (Spiritual Sword), composed by the
Ruthenian writer, Lazar Baranovyč, Venclović wrote:
И се же вѣдомо буди, iaко не въса проста сут, понieже iaже къ Богу
глаголют се сia по писанїю книжном въмѣщено ieст, а iaже къ людем сia
по просту. Нъ и таia недостиженїем oум’ным и невѣждаством не възмо-
гох въса ни изредно протл’ ковати, нъ емуже от вас чатущих даiет Богъ
бистрооумїе достодл’жно может извѣствовати… (And, let it be known
that all writings are not simple and clear simply because they refer and speak
to God and are written according to the literary models [of Church Slavonic].
When they [writings] are addressed to the people, they are written in the ver-
nacular. However, even those [texts written in the common people’s language]
that I could not interpret in their entirety, due to my ignorance and the imper-
fection of my intellect; but those of you, readers, whom God endowed with a
clever mind, should be able to understand them correctly.) 106
Even though Venclović interpreted Мачь Духовны “по просту (in the vernacu-
lar)”, according to his own admission, he was not able to interpret it very well because
he did not have an adequate command of the people’s language. Such a pronounce-
ment might suggest that Venclović was only a scribe, but more likely represents the
adoption of one of the popular loci communes of Orthodox literature.107 In another
example, Venclović called the language of the people “ср’бскы”:
Поученїе избран’ное от светаго ев(аг)гелїа и от многїих божаств’ных
писанїи, от Москов’скога поученїа щампатога оу Москви при цару Петру
и Адрїану тамош’нieм, тогда бив’шем патрїар’сe … здѣ же преведенїе
быст ему на ср’бскы ieзыкъ ради разуменїа простым чловѣком, … (This
is a selected homily from the Holy Gospel and from many other sacred writ-
ings [taken] from the Moscow Teaching [which was] printed in Moscow dur-
ing the reign of Peter and Adrian, who was the Patriarch at that time… [which]
is translated into the Serbian language in order that any ordinary person can
understand it…108
106
Стојановић, Каталог рукописа и старих штампаних књига, 86, (see fn. 4).
107Already in 1911, discussing the originality of Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović’s writings, Јоvanović
correctly remarked: “… Гаврило нема ни једнога свога оригиналнога рада, него су му све или пре-
писи, или прераде, или преводи. Он сам није написао ништа, сем уметака и објашњења у беседа-
ма црквеним, о чему ћемо мало доцније говорити.” “Језик Гаврила Стефановића”, 109. More about
Lazar Baranovyč cf. Pachlovska, op. cit., 418-428, 451.
108 Стојановић, Каталог рукописа и старих штампаних књига, 146.
Or, in another example:

Просто вам ово говорим вашим ср’’бским ieзиком а не по книжкы
съкривено, ни по лѣш’кiи, полiaч’ки лы шлiaпам, да се коме ругам за ieзык
и мегю вама у цръкви шпоту да збiам и чиным. (I am talking to you about
it in your own, simple language and not in the learned one which expresses
ideas in an obscure way, nor do I prattle to you in the Polish language with an
intention to mock your language and create and sow dissension among you in
the church.) 109
This last sentence unequivocally indicates that Venclović’s texts were copied
from Ruthenian originals, where “по лѣш’кiи, полiaч’ки” (in the Polish manner)
played an important role in the everyday life of the Orthodox Slavic population in
the Polish-Lithuanian state.
Venclović also pointed out how Church Slavonic texts were unintelligible:
Преводъ от прикр’вен’ныхъ писанїи на просто(e) и уразумител’ное
знанїе ср’бское, за селiaне и просце люде ... Събери къ мнѣ людъ и да слы-
шетъ словеса моia, и въложи словеса сїа, iaже азъ глаголю тебѣ, людемъ
моимъ въ оуста ихъ, и да разумеютъ ie и сыни свое да научетъ; а не въ
маг’лѣ и чрезъ облакъ оучити и глаголати невѣштїе въ писмѣ, нь просто
имъ ieзыкомъ ихъ вѣштати, iaко да вьса разумѣютъ людїе… (The trans-
lation from the obscure writings [in Church Slavonic] into the simple and un-
derstandable spoken language of the Serbs, [made] for peasants and other or-
dinary people… gather people together to listen to my preaching and put the
words I am telling you into the mouths of my people; let them understand my
words and let them teach their sons properly, rather than teaching them and
talking to them through fog and clouds; one has to talk to them in the spoken
language which ordinary people can [easily] understand.)110
Almost an identical pronouncement can be found in the foreword to the
Евангелїе учител’ное (The Teaching Gospel) of 1569: “Помыслилъ же былъ есмы и
се, иже бы сию книгу выразумѣнїя ради простыхъ людей, преложити на простїю
молву, и имѣлъ есми о том попеченїе великое… (I [had] thought to translate this
book into the people’s language in order to make it understandable to the ordinary
people speaking the Rus’ian vernacular, and had a great concern about it…)”111 In
the Nesvižskij Catechism of 1562, written in a mixture of Byelorussian and Ukrainian
109 Новаковић, Примери књижевности и језика старога, 184, (see fn. 4).
110 Новаковић, Примери књижевности и језика старога, 181.
111 Огієнко, Українс’кая литерарная мова, 99.
elements, one reads that it is “для простыхъ людей языка руського (for the ordinary
people speaking the Rus’ian language).”112
Venclović and the western Russian writers who used both Church Slavonic and
the vernacular kept underscoring the fact that they did not know, or did not have a
sufficient command of словенски (i.e. Church Slavonic). Thus, in the foreword to the
Хомилиарное Евангелїе (Gospel with Homilies) of 1616, we read:
Тепер зась (през незнаемость и неумѣетность языка Словенсково
многих) многим мало потребен и непожиточен ставшися, знову перело-
женемъ его на языкъ наш простый Русскїй, якобы змертвых вскрешон, а
выданем з’друку на всѣ широкїи славного и старожитного народу Росїйс-
кого краины розослан будучи; всѣми потомными вѣки, всѣхъ, а иле прос-
тѣйшихъ, а языка Словенского не умѣючих… (Therefore, at the present time,
because of wide-spread ignorance and a lack of knowledge of Church Slavonic
by many, having become unnecessary and useless to many people, it [the text
in Church Slavonic] has been translated again into our ordinary Rus’ian, as if it
were resurrected from the dead, and through printed editions, it [the text] has
been broadly spread among the glorious and ancient people of the Moscovite
state, and in the coming centuries, will reach everyone, especially many ordi-
nary people who do not know Church Slavonic.) 113
All of the above-cited texts belong to one and the same phase of the continuous
evolution of Church Slavonic, during the time when the people’s language was grad-
ually being introduced as a medium parallel to it. The reasons for this phenomenon
are, on the one hand, the unintelligibility and rigidity of archaic forms and construc-
tions, and, on the other, simple ignorance of the language on the part of its users. The
introduction of the vernacular as a medium parallel to Church Slavonic was intended
to make the latter more accessible to the masses, that is, to the Orthodox Slavs on the
territory of Catholic Poland and Lithuania.
This innovation in the Ruthenian territories of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries had nothing in common with what occurred in neighboring Poland. At
first glance, many scholars are inclined to see analogies. However, the alleged analo-
112 Tолстой, “Взаимоотношение локальных типов древнеславянского”, 245.

113
Martel, La langue polonaise, 76-79, esp. 77; see also V. Negalevs’kyj’s pronouncement in his introduc-
tion to the Gospels, published in 1581:
многихъ учоныхъ, богобойных a слово божее милуючихъ, людей, которые писма полского
читати не умѣют, a языка словенского, читаючи писмом руским, выкладу з словъ его не ро-
зумеют; отже виходитъ, шчо, навитъ вчени люде не знали своей церковной мови.
Cited from Огієнко, Українська літературна мова, 95.
gies are, in fact, deceptive because one deals with two different worlds in one and the
same state. As Picchio has noted, it is true that:
the Ukrainian-Byelorussian territories were directly exposed to the influ-
ence of the sixteenth-century Western European intellectual revival. In partic-
ular, the intellectual life of the Ukrainian and Byelorussian lands was brought
into contact with both the partisans of the vulgar tongue and their Latinophile
opponents, that is, with theories which echoed the ideological conflict between
the Reformation and the Counter reformation. 114
On the other hand, the Orthodox population in the Ruthenian lands struggled
with Western trends. Thus, instances of the acceptance of certain models, which were
extremely limited in scope—for example, Latin-Polish Poetics and Rhetorics in the
second half of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries—could
be found in competition with these western Latin trends. In an act of self-defense,
the educational models of the Jesuit schools were employed, particularly in the era
of Peter Mohyla (1596-1647).115
114Riccardo Picchio, “Introduction à une étude comparée de la question de la langue chez les Slaves”, in:
Etudes littéraires slavo-romanes (Florence: Licosa Editrice, 1978), 159-96; the quotation appears on 167.
After the unification of the eastern part of Ukraine with Russia in 1654, the language situation consider-
ably changed:
A more dispassionate and comprehensive treatment of new standard Ukrainian must be placed
in the context of the formation of literary genres and styles in the 18th century in two different stan-
dard languages. They are Church Slavonic of the Meletian version [based on Meletij Smotryc’kyj’s
Grammar, see fn. 126] and the prostaja mova (Ruthenian), both influenced by Great Russian and, to
a much lesser extent, Polish [...]
From the late 17th century onward, the prostaja mova was losing its position in almost all genres
where it had flourished before, although it was largely retained in administration until the abolition of
the Cossack regimental system and the introduction of the imperial social structure in the Hetmanate
by Catherine II in 1781-85. In contrast, Church Slavonic strengthened its status in ecclesiastical and
secular genres, and revived many archaisms [...]
Trying to participate in the main stream literary process of Great Russia, graduates of the Ukrainian
schools were compelled to switch to Russian Church Slavonic in conjunction with secular Russian,
which was becoming indispensable at that time in public domains. Under pressure from the imperial
center, Samuel Myslavs’kyi, metropolitan of Kyiv (1783-96), promoted the status of Russian by intro-
ducing its literary standard—spelling and pronunciation—into the classes of poetry and oratory at
the Kyiv Academy, Kharkiv College, and other schools.
Danylenko, “The new Ukrainian standard language (1798) - between tradition and innovation”, 60-62.
115Г.М. Сивокінь, Давні українські поетики (Харків: Акта, 1960); В.І. Крекотень, “Київська поетика
1637 року”, in: Літературна спадщина Київської Русі і українська література XVI - XVIII ст., ed. О.В.
Мишанич (Київ: Наукова думка, 1981), 118-154; Д.С. Наливайко, “Київські поетики XVII — початку
XVIII ст. в контексті європейського літературного процесу”, in: Літературна спадщина Київської
Русі, 155-95; І.В. Іваньо, “Естетична концепція і літературна творчість Феофана Прокоповича”, in:
Літературна спадщина Київської Русі, 223-49; cf. the other articles in the same book; Iaroslav Isaievych,
The Latin-Polish models were never completely or correctly understood. Still

less did they influence the actual development of the language and literature of
the Orthodox Slavs. I believe that one comes closer to the true development of the
Orthodox Slavs when one recognizes that Polish cultural and literary models were
never consciously accepted as models to be imitated in literature or in other cultural
spheres, either in Moscovite Russia, or by the Orthodox populace in the Ruthenian
territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. This statement is not meant to exclude the influence of the Polish
language as an official state language, because its influence was strong and indeed
inevitable. It has left many indelible traces in the modern literary languages of both
the Ukrainians and the Byelorussians.
The linguistic situation described by Ruthenian writers during the sixteenth cen-
tury and attested to in Orthodox texts cannot be compared with the synchronic stage
of linguistic-literary development in Poland. It has its parallel rather, in the literature
of the neighboring Orthodox territories in Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia.
Together with the Orthodox Slavs, the Romanians were integrated into the
“Byzantine Commonwealth”, and adopted the common Orthodox Slavic literary lan-
guage (i.e. Church Slavonic). They created their medieval literature in this language.
Though not occupied by the Turks, the Romanians were able to follow the general
cultural development of the Orthodox community during the Turkish occupation
of most of the Balkans. Thus, as early as in the first half of the sixteenth century,
Slavo-Romanian diglossia116 can be attested to in texts written in regions that, al-
though allied in their resistance to the Turks, represented rather independent princi-
“Between Eastern Tradition and Influences from the West: Confraternities in Early Modern Ukraine and
Byelorussia”, in Ricerche slavistiche, vol. XXXVII (1990), 269-294; Рышард Лужны”, Украинские писатели
эпохи барокко и традиции отечественного средневековья”, ibid., 295-306; Paulina Lewin, “The School
Theater in the Ukraine and Its Relation to the Middle Ages”, Ibid., 307-321; eadem, Wyklady poetyki w uc-
zelniach rosyjskich XVIII w. (1722-1774) a tradycje polskie (Wroclaw, Warszawa, Krakow: PAN, 1972); eadem,
“Polish-Ukrainian-Russian Literary Relations of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries: New Approaches”,
Slavic and East European Journal 24, no. 3 (1980): 256-69; eadem, “Literatura staropolska a literatury
wschodniosłowiańskie, Stan badań i postulaty badawcze”, in: Literatura staropolska w kontekście europe-
jskim (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1977), 139-68; Ihor Ševčenko, “The Many Worlds of
Peter Mohyla”, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, vol. 8, nos. 1-2 (1984), 9-40, just to mention several important
studies concerning the new challenges from the West which forced the Ruthenian intellectuals to in-
troduce the new cultural patterns beginning with the second decade of the seventeenth century and
especially after the founding of the Kiev Mohyla college.
116 The Romanian language, which was incorporated into the Orthodox Balkan league of languages,
largely freed itself, in a most striking way, from dependence on its inherited Latin substance. Romanian
can hardly be thought of as belonging to the Romance languages.
palities. In their religious manuscripts—the Psalter, the Gospels with Commentaries,

the Catechisms, etc.—the Romanians closely followed and embraced the common
Orthodox Slavic linguistic innovation. Thus, Romanian was used for private reading
while Slavonic was used for religious services, and the difference in language was of-
ten graphically palpable: the two sat side by side on the page, with Romanian writ-
ten in red ink, and Slavonic in black. The first Romanian printer, Deacon Coresi, in
addition to his Gospels of 1561, began to publish religious works in Romanian, or in
Romanian and Slavonic together.117 The introduction of a Romanian people’s lan-
guage into Romanian texts is well documented in Orthodox Slavic literature. The
Bulgarian monk, Paisy of the Hilendar monastery, accurately described the situa-
tion in the Romanian lands in his, История Славѣноболгарская (Slavo-Bulgarian
History) of 1762:
Тако ωт то време власи ωбратилисa паки вь православїю и читали
по словенски. до скорое време паки извадили им’ руси на влашки iaзикь
прости писаниемь. (Thus, from that time, the Romanians were also convert-
ed to Orthodoxy and read Old Bulgarian [i.e. Church Slavonic]. Recently, fol-
lowing the Ruthenians [i.e., their writing practices], they [the Romanians] have
introduced the Romanian vernacular into texts intended for the ordinary peo-
ple.) 118
Paisy’s statement unequivocally indicates that the center of linguistic and literary
innovations among the Orthodox of that time, i.e. after the Fall of Constantinople,
was in the Ruthenian territories, in so-called South-Western Rus’, where the condi-
tions for such developments were most propitious and challenging within the joint
Catholic state of Poland and Lithuania.
117Alexandru Rosetti, Brève histoire de la langue roumaine des origines à nos jours (The Hague: Mouton,
1973), 96-98; Т.А. Репина, История румынского языка (СПб: Издательство С-Петербургского универ-
ситета, 2002); Neculai Iorga, A History of Roumania. Land, People, Civilization (New York: Dodd, Mead &
Company, 1970), 131-46; see also Testi romeni antichi (secolo XVI-XVIII), eds. Alexandra Niculescu and
Florica Dimitrescu (Padova: Antenore, 1970), xv-li. Cf. also: Elizabeta Negrău, “Byzantine Legacy and Mo-
dern Greek Influences in the Wallachian Culture of the 17th - 18th centuries”, in Revue des études sud-est
européennes, vol. 47, nos. 1-4 (2009), 89-100.
118 Quoted from Пайсий Хилендарски, История славяноболгарская, Първи Софрониев препис от
1765 година (София: Наука и изкуство 1972), folio 35а. I would like to thank Dr. Predrag Matejić, Director
of the Hilandar Research Library, Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies (Ohio State University,
Thompson Library) for providing me with a copy of this manuscript. Cf. also: “Тако ωτ то врем[e] власи
ωбратили се паки въ православие и читали по болгарски iaзикъ до скорае време. Ніна паки извадили
имъ руси на влашки iaзикъ про[с]ти писание.” Божидар Райков, Паисневият ръкопис на “История
славяноболгарская” 1762 (София: Наука иизкуство, 1989), 77.
This people’s language, documented in Moscovite Russia at approximately the

same time, or somewhat earlier, under the similar designation “простое слово”,119
known in the Ruthenian regions of the sixteenth century as “рус[ь]скїй”, “простый
рускїй дїалектъ (simple Russian dialect)”, “руски речи прости (simple Russian
speech)” or “проста мова” was quickly adopted in the Romanian territories and
translated as “влашки iaзикь прости (simple Romanian language).” Similarly named
vernaculars would eventually appear in all the Orthodox Slavic nations, with a great-
er or lesser time lag. “Рус’кїй” or “простый рускїй дїалектъ” remained the major
source in the development of other vernaculars among the different Orthodox peo-
ples. Paisy of the Hilendar monastery followed the Ruthenian tradition, and clearly
referred to it:
азь Паисїа іер(о)монахь и проигумень хиландарски сьвокупихь и на-
писахь ωт руски речи прости ωбратихъ на болгарски прости речи и
словенскї. (I, Paisy, a hieromonk and deputy-abbot of the Hilendar monastery,
collected the Rus’ian simple speech, and from it translated and wrote [texts] in
the Bulgarian common people’s language and Church Slavonic).120
Two examples stand out among the numerous loci communes Паисий adopted
from his original text and copied in his История (History):
... прилучи се намь много крать прочитати различни исторїи ру-
кописнихь и печатни(х), що извадили руси и москов’ци ωсобно рaди сло-
вѣнскаго народа… (It happened to us to read various histories, in manuscripts
as well as printed, which the Ruthenians and Moscovites [i.e. Russians] trans-
lated into their own language to the special benefit of the Slavonic people...)121
119
See fn. 3.
120Хилендарски, История славяноболгарская, folio 82b. Already half a century ago, Ljubomir
Andrejčin correctly discribed the concept of Паисий’s language as follows:
От някои изрази в неговата история може да се съди, че той не поставя граница между
български и “словенски”, не ги схваща като два отделни езика. Българският език образува
за него някакво единство с черковнославянски и това единство той противопоставя в
известен смисъл на руския език. (срв. в “Послесловието”: “от руски речи прости обратихъ
на болгарски прости речи и словенски…”)
See: Любомир Андрейчин, “Езикът на Паисиевата ‘История Славеноболгарская’ и началото на
новобългарския книжовен език”, Български език 12, no. 6 (1962): 481-90; the quotation appears on
482.
121Хилендарски, История славяноболгарская, folio 7a. Cf. also: “...прилучи се намъ много кратъ
прочитати различнї истории рукописни и щамби, что извадили руси и москове ωсобно ради
словенскаго народа...” Райков, Паисневият ръкопис, 53.
And: “По руски и московски печатни исторїи показуют… (Printed his-

tories in Ruthenian and Moscovite languages show that...)”122 The constant men-
tioning of “руски” and “московски” in Paisy’s History indicates that Ruthenian and
Moscovite were two separate idioms representing the vernaculars of Ruthenia and
the Moscovite state.123
Orthodox vernaculars cannot be treated in the same way that Western European
vernaculars have been treated in scholarship. The goal of the Western European ver-
naculars was to achieve fully equal status with the Latin that they would gradually
displaced. In contrast, the vernaculars of the Orthodox Slavs from the sixteenth cen-
tury onwards—“русскїй”, “россїйскїй”, “влашки”, Venclović’s “ср’бскы”, and Paisy’s
“болгарски” in the eighteenth century—never intruded into the sphere of the tradi-
tional uses of “словенски.” It was not their goal to gradually displace Church Slavonic.
On the contrary, vernaculars were introduced to revive and renew “словенски”
among all the Orthodox. The language of Church Slavonic was seen as the sole,
powerful weapon against the “infectious heretical tongue”, a phrase which in the
Ruthenian regions at the time signified the use of the Polish language, and the danger
of conversion to Catholicism or Protestantism. In 1592, the Orthodox Metropolitan
of Kiev, Myxajlo Rahoza, wrote:
Ученїе святыхъ писанїй зѣло оскудѣ, паче же словенского-россїйского
языка, и вси человѣци приложишася простому несъвершенному лядскому
писанїю, и сего ради въ различныя ереси впадоша, невѣдущее въ богословїи
силы съвершеннаго грамматическаго словенского языка. (The teaching of
the Holy Gospel has become very scarce and insufficient, except for the Slavo-
Russian language, all people have embraced a simple, imperfect way of the or-
dinary people’s writings [i.e.emulating writings in the Polish vernacular], and,
122Хилендарски, История славяноболгарская, folio 55a. Cf. also: “… но руски и мо[с]ковски печатени
їстории показуютъ…” Райков, Паисневият ръкопис, 95.
123
Ruthenian writers well differentiated “рускїй” (the Ruthenian language) from “россїйскїй” or
“московскїй” (the Russian vernacular that was the people’s language in the Muscovite state). See a
slightly different interpretation of these terms by Martel:
D’une manière générale les écrivains ruthènes, quel que soit leur lieu d’origine, ne distinguent pas
les dialectes divers et ils désignent, nous l’avons dit, la language parlée d’un terme général russkij ou
rossijskij jazyk, tout comme ils appliquent d’ordinaire le mot Rus’ ou Róssija à l’ensemble des terres
qu’ils occupent dans la République.
Martel, La langue polonaise, 91, fn. 1. Martel’s interpretation is acceptable if we take into consider-
ation the linguistic function of both the “русскїй” and “россїйскїй” vernaculars in their relationship to
“славенски.” From this point of view, Ruthenian writers did not distinguish between them, but perceived
“славенски” and these vernaculars as one and the same language.
therefore, lacking the knowledge and power of the perfect Church Slavonic
grammar in theology, they have fallen into various heresies.)124
Western Russian writers exhibited a great love and veneration for “словенски”:
А за тым тот который тых часов хот в’зацнѣйшом, пенкнѣйшом,
звязнѣйшом, суптелнѣйшом и достаточнѣйшом языку Словенском, през
неспособность слухачов, не многим пожиточен был: тепер тот в’ по-
длѣйшом и простѣйшом языку, многим, албо рачей всѣм Рускаго языка
якоколвек умѣстным потребен и пожиточон быти моглъ. (And then, in
those times, that [person] who [used] the most honorable, the most beautiful,
the most coherent, the most subtle, and the most abundant Slavonic language,
could not be useful to many people [i.e. could not be understood by many peo-
ple] due to the incapability of his listeners. Nowadays, if that [person] uses the
most debased and simplest language, he would be suitably indispensable and
useful for whatever [purposes], not only to many, but rather, to all the people
speaking the Rus’ian language.)125
A general ignorance of “словенски”, the narrow intelligibility of the language,
and the overall low educational level of the Orthodox population in Poland and
Lithuania as compared to their Catholic neighbors, all contributed to provoking
Lavrentij Zyzanij and Melеtij Smotryc’kyj,126 members of the Ostrog circle, and oth-
er Orthodox zealots to undertake a standardization of Church Slavonic and to se-
cure its authority in the social and political order. In this way, a new type of Church
Slavonic was created, the so-called Ruthenian (Ukrainian) Church Slavonic language,
the analysis of which I will leave for another occasion. Presently, I am interested only
in Ukrainian Church Slavonic’s relation to the newly-introduced people’s language.
Sources reveal that the проста мова (vernacular) appeared for the sake of aiding
the study and further development of “славенски;” it’s purpose was to render Church
Slavonic intelligible to the common people, assuring, thereby, its continued use. The
common people’s language (except Venclović’s “ср’бскы” which was an independent
124
Ogijenko, “Język cerkiewno-słowiański”, 535; Martel, La langue polonaise, 76, fn. 2.
125 Martel, La langue polonaise, 77, fn. 2.
126 Meлетiй Смотрицький (1577/8-1633) “was a Ruthenian (=Ukrainian and Belarusian) linguist from
Galicia, author and religious activist. Education in Ostroh (Ostrog) and Vilnius, as well as in Leipzig,
Wittenberg and Nuremberg, later rector of Kiev brotherhood’s school. Smotrytsky is best known for his
Grammar of Church Slavonic (Грамматіки славєнския, правилное Сνнтагма, 1619), which codified what
is now known as ‘Modern Church Slavonic’ or, more specifically, ‘Meletian Church Slavonic.’ It was the
sole handbook for grammar in Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian lands, and had an enormous impact
on the literary usage in Church Slavonic texts throughout the Slavic Orthodox countries.” See: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meletius_Smotrytsky (accessed March 12, 2011).
linguistic code) never challenged Church Slavonic as the sole sanctioned literary lan-
guage of the Orthodox, nor did it cause a crisis for Church Slavonic by competing
with it.127 The people’s vernacular appeared only as a sort of crutch. It functioned as
a parallel Low variety spoken language in harmony with its High variety, i.e., Church
Slavonic, bringing about a situation of diglossia.
***
The comparative analysis of Venclović’’s writings in “ср’бскы” with other

Orthodox texts written in the “проста мова (vernacular)”, demonstrates that both
belong to the same developmental phase of the Church Slavonic language. This
phase, characterized by the gradual introduction of the common people’s language
into literature as a medium parallel to Church Slavonic, was common to the en-
tire Orthodox community. The emergence of the vernacular as an auxiliary idiom
alongside Church Slavonic, i.e. Slavo-Russian or Slavo-Ruthenian, was of decisive
importance for the further development of Orthodox nations, as well as their lin-
guistic unity. This phenomenon first appeared during the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries among the Eastern Slavs in Moscovite Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth. It occurred there first for two reasons: the Eastern Slavs were not
occupied by the Turks, and the Commonwealth, in particular, offered the most favor-
able conditions for this kind of innovation. At the beginning of the sixteenth century,
the Romanian vernacular made its appearance in Wallachia and Moldavia. The same
developmental phase emerged among the Bulgarians in the second half of the sev-
enteenth century and among the Serbs in the first quarter of the eighteenth century
when circumstances were favorable in the occupied Balkans.
Thus, I believe I can conclude with considerable certainty that the linguistic di-
glossia found in Venclović’s texts marks the beginning of a new phase of Byzantine-
Slavic diglossia attested to in Serbianized Slavo-Russian texts.128 This diglossia was
introduced into Serbian literature—a literature that at the time was still medieval—
at least two centuries later than in the rest of the Orthodox world. Furthermore, my
analysis reveals that Venclović’s diglossia was created in the context of conscious ef-
127 A thorough researcher, Martel points out the following: “Ainsi la primauté du slavon n’est pas dis-
cutée; la langue parlée se trouve présentée très humblement, et c’est le malheur des temps qui justifie
l’usage qui en est fait, usage très modeste…” Martel, La langue polonaise, 77-78
128 See the explanation of Serbianized Slavo-Russian and Slavonized Serbian in fns. 63 & 64.
forts to emulate the late, common phase of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine diglossia
when ordinary people’s languages were introduced into medieval, ecclesiastical lit-
eratures of the Orthodox Slavs and Romanians. In fact, Venclović’s diglossia has to
be recognized as illusory (or extended)129 because two separate and independent
linguistic codes are attested to in his texts. Although it was intended to become an
organic part of the broader Byzantine-Slavic diglossic system, Venclović’s diglossia in
its essence would be more accurately described in terms of a certain state of bilin-
gualism. Regardless of its linguistic status and cultural identities, Venclović’s diglos-
sia should be perceived as an impressive expression of a supranational, religious and
linguistic unity of all Orthodox peoples.
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Olga Nedeljković
JEZIČKA DIGLOSIJA GAVRILA STEFANOVIĆA

VENCLOVIĆA I “PROSTA MOVA” U
KNJIŽEVNOSTI PRAVOSLAVNIH SLOVENA
Rezime: Za razliku od Jovana Skerlića i najvećeg broja srpskih lingvista i filologa koji
poistоvećuju Venclovićev “ср’бскы” sa modernim srpskim jezikom i vide u Vencloviću pre-
teču Dositeja Obradovića i Vuka Karadžića, eminentni francuski slavista Boris Unbegaun
tretira Venclovićev “ср’бскы” samo kao pomoćno sredstvo kojim se Venclović služi radi po-
stizanja potpune razumljivosti svojih propovedi. Za Venclovića, kako zaključuje Unbegaun,
jedino “славенски” predstavlja književni jezik u punom smislu toga pojma. Italijanski slavista
i srbista Lionello Costantini dalje razradjuje problem Venclovićevog jezičkog dualizma i, ne
ulazeći u konkretnu komparativnu analizu, sugestivno ga svodi na zajednički izvor, t.j. pridaje
mu vrednost loci communes, uvedenih kao bitne inovacije u pravoslavnu jezičku zajednicu.
Sa čisto lingvističkog aspekta Venclovićev “ср’бскы” je bio nezavisan jezički sistem, kre-
iran u romanskom, katoličkom kulturnom ambijentu renesansnog Dubrovnika i Dalmacije
tokom 15. i 16. veka. Pod jakim uticajem Kontrareformacije posle Tridentskog Koncila (1545-
1563), pod neposrednim rukovodstvom Kongregacije za širenje vere (osnovane 1622), mi-
sionari Katoličke Obnove su izabrali štokavski dijalekat bosanskoga izgovora kao najraspro-
stranjeniji dijalekat najvećeg dela južnoslovenske teritorije za zajednički jezik i katolika i
pravoslavaca na čitavom Balkanu. Dakle, ilirski je postao najvažnije orudje u rukama refor-
mnog katoličanstva za postizanje odredjenih političkih ciljeva, u prvom redu širenja katoličke
vere na Balkanu i unijaćenja pravoslavnih, tj. za postizanje crkvenog jedinstva sa Istočnom
Crkvom. Tokom sedamnaestog i osamnaestog veka katolički kontrareformatori su razvili či-
tavu ideologiju reformnokatoličkog ilirizma, u okviru koje je ilirski postao zajednički jezik
Južnih Slovena u Habsburškoj monarhiji, kako citirani primeri iz dela Hristifora Žefarovića,
Jovana Rajića, Vikentija Luštine i drugih to potvrdjuju. Ilirski je bio u upotrebi i u Srbiji,
Makedoniji i Bugarskoj, pa čak i u Carigradu kao diplomatski jezik. Katolički reformatori su
bili temeljno upoznati sa jezičkim razvojem pravoslavnih Slovena, pogotovo Srba koji su emi-
grirali na teritoriju Habzburške monarhije u stolećima posle pada srpske Despotovine pod
Turke. Ćirilica je bila preferirana azbuka u odnosu na latinicu i glagoljicu. Zato je upotreba
ćirilice bila usavršena i specijalno adaptirana za specifične glasove u štokavskom govoru, (za
neke od njih nalazimo potvrdu u Venclovićevim tekstovima.) Heterogeni elementi славяно-
сербскoг diglosnog jezika, славяно-российский ili slavonizirani ruski, su bili veštački i sasvim
proizvoljno izmešani sa tzv.”простим сербским језиком” na svim jezičkim nivoima, ne stva-
rajući novi homogeni jezik, ili novu sintezu. Takvim veštačkim tvorevinama, славеносрпском
ili srbijaniziranom slavenskom, t.j. slavenoruskom, je bio suprotstavljen mnogo savršeniji mo-
del ilirskog jezika u funkciji “простог сербског језика”, čija sintaksa je postala baza tzv. sla-
veniziranog srpskog. Ovaj poslednji počinje potiskivati tekstove napisane na tzv. srbijanizira-
nom slavenoruskom. U toj neravnopravnoj borbi ilirski је kao najrazvijeniji književni jezik u
to doba medju svim pravoslavnim “простим народним говорима” rаzumljivo odneo pobe-
du nad “славенским”, odnosno славяно-сербским. Usprkos svim naporima Srba da sačuvaju
svoju veru i identitet na teritoriji mnogonacionalne, katoličke Habzburške monarhije, život u
zajedničkoj državi koji je obuhvatao sve oblasti javne delatnosti morao je ostaviti neizbrisiv
pečat na dalji kulturno-književni i jezički razvoj Srba u Vojvodini. Drugim rečima, nastanji-
vanje Srba u južnoj Ugarskoj rezultiralo je u prihvatanju ilirskog jezika ne samo kao preci-
zno oformljenog jezičkog idioma, sa njegovom dugom književnom tradicijom, već kao i jed-
nog od četiri zvanično priznata jezika u sociolingvističkoj praksi u Habzburškoj monarhiji.
Komparativna analiza Venclovićeve upotrebe “ср’бскы”-og jezika sa drugim tekstovi-
ma nastalim u okviru pravoslavne zajednice ukazuje da njegov “ср’бскы” jezik pripada istoj
razvojnoj fazi u neprekinutoj evoluciji crkvenoslovenskog jezika, opštepriznatog idioma pi-
smenosti i književnosti svih pravoslavnih Slovena i Rumuna. To je bila nova, zajednička faza
u književno-jezičkom razvoju ovih pravoslavnih naroda kada su njihovi govorni jezici bili
postepeno uvedeni u religiozne tekstove kao medij paralelan crkvenoslovenskome. Pojava
govornog, narodnog jezika kao pomoćnog idioma, upotrebljenog naporedo sa crkvenoslo-
venskim za njegovo pojašnjavanje i razumevanje, bila je od presudnog značaja za dalji kul-

turni razvoj pravoslavnih naroda, kao i za njihovo jezičko i religiozno jedinstvo. Ova kasna
faza vizantijsko-slovenske diglosije pojavljuje se najranije kod Istočnih Slovena u Moskovskoj
Rusiji i u Poljsko-Litvanskoj Republici. U petnaestom i šesnaestom veku su uslovi za ovo po-
dražavanje vizantijskoj jezičkoj diglosiji bili izuzetno povoljni na spomenutim teritorijama,
jer Istočni Sloveni nisu bili pod turskom okupacijom kao najveći deo Južnih Slovena. Sem
toga kulturna, višenacionalna atmosfera u Poljsko-Litvanskoj Republici je stimulirala ovu
vrstu inovacije medju pravoslavnim stanovništvom koje se nalazilo u stalnoj konfrontaciji
sa katolicima i protestantima. Isto tako na početku šesnaestog veka rumunski govorni jezik
je bio uveden u tekstove pisane na crkvenoslovenskom jeziku u Vlaškoj i Moldaviji. Ista ra-
zvojna etapa pojavljuje se i kod Bugara u drugoj polovini sedamnaestog veka, i kod Srba u
prvoj četvrtini osamnaestog veka posle Velike seobe Srba 1690 pod patrijarhom Arsenijem
III Čarnojevićem. Na osnovu provedene analize sa velikom dozom sigurnosti može se za-
ključiti da jezička diglosija prisutna u Venclovićevim tekstovima predstavlja novu jezičku
fazu kada dolazi do uvodjenja ne samo “рускословенског” u ulozi sakralnog i bazičnog pra-
voslavnog, interslovenskog idioma (koji je zamenio stariji crkvenoslovenski srpske redakci-
je, tvz. “српскословенски”), nego i paralelno s njim “простог сербског iезика” koji je uveden
u liturgijske tekstove napisane na “рускословенском”. “Прости сербски iезик” je trebalo da
obavlja samo dopunske distributivne funkcije kao niža jezička varijanta te zajedničke vizan-
tijsko-slovenske diglosije u kojoj je “рускословенски”, odnosno “словенски”, igrao ulogu više
jezičke varijante. Kao što je već naglašeno, ova diglosna situacija kod Srba je bila preuzeta u
skladu sa identičnim stadijumom zajedničkog razvitka pismenosti i književnosti kod drugih
pravoslavnih naroda. Iako Venclović uvodi “прости ср’бскы” u istoj funkciji koju je imala
“проста мова” u istočnoslovenskim tekstovima, njegova diglosija se bitno razlikuje od di-
glosne situacije prisutne u tekstovima drugih pravoslavnih naroda čiji govorni jezici ne po-
seduju svoje čvrsto uspostavljene jezičke norme, već se oslanjaju na norme славенског odno-
sno славеноруског kao sakralnog i jedno priznatog književnog jezika pravoslavnih Slovena
i Rumuna. U stvari Venclovićevu diglosiju bi trebalo okarakterisati kao prividnu ili pro-
širenu (extended) diglosiju, možda tačnije kao specijalni tip bilingvizma, jer su u pitanju
dva potpuno samostalna i ravnopravna lingvistička koda sa svojim posebnim, specifičnim
jezičkim normama koje Venclović upotrebljava u svojim tekstovima. U ovom pogledu se
Venclovićeva prividna ili proširena diglosija razlikuje od pravih (u klasičnom smislu) diglo-
snih situacija posvedočenih kod drugih pravoslavnih naroda. Svakako Venclovićeva privid-
na diglosija je rezultat velikih napora i težnji Srba u Vojvodini da se ujedine sa svojom sabra-
ćom po veri i pridruže širem, zajedničkom vizantijsko-slovenskom diglosnom sistemu kome
oni religiozno i kulturno pripadaju. Bez obzira na njen lingvistički status i kulturni identitet,
Venclovićeva diglosija neosporno predstavlja impresivan izraz nadnacionalnog, religioznog
i jezičkog jedinstva svih pravoslavnih naroda. Nije isključeno da bi već i Venclovićev jezik
trebalo okarakterisati kao “славеносербски”, ili preciznije govoreći, bilo slavenizirani srpski
ili srbizirani“славенски” (koji variraju u zavisnosti od žanra teksta i njegove namene), kako
je sugerisano u ovoj mojoj analizi. Dok god se ne objavi kritičko izdanje barem jednog dela
Venclovićevih rukopisa, nikakvi sigurni zaključci u ovom pogledu nisu mogući.
Ključne reči: Pravoslavna jezička diglosija, zajednička razvojna faza svih pravoslav-
nih naroda Venclovićeva diglosija: славенски + прости сербски iезикъ= иллирический,
zajednički jezik svih katolika i pravoslavnih u Habzburškoj monarhiji, Kontrareformacijski
Ilirizam i Srpski nacionalni Ilirizam; Pravoslavna crkva u Ugarskoj i njena jezička politika.
Received 30.03.2011 / Accepted 15.06.2011.

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Serbian Studies Research

Vol. 2, No. 1 (2011): 7-80. 7

UDC 821.163.41.08 Venclović Stefanović G.

THE LINGUISTIC “DIGLOSSIA” OF GAVRILO

VENCLOVIĆ’S “СР’БСКЫ” AND ITS RELATION TO

long to an exclusively ecclesiastic, still medieval literature. All of the scholars—from

“српско-словенски” language as it was preserved in the church tradition he

15 Costantini, “La lìngua di Gavrilo Stefanović Venclović”, 75.

ILLYRIAN, THE COMMON LANGUAGE OF THE CATHOLICS

From a purely linguistic point of view, “ср’бскы” was indisputably an indepen-

16 Тоlstoj’s description reads as follows:

Under the influence of the Counterreformation, the Renaissance language of

нопольцев и населения городов Греции.” На сербском языке обычно составлялись грамоты,

pression.31 Having established the evident connection between Venclović’s language

Preobrazba bizantskog pravoslavlja u srpsku narodnu religiju, posebna organizacija Pravoslavne

Investigating Venclović’s language in its socio-historical framework involves the

Venclović’s “ср’бскы” is of crucial significance for explaining the structure

multinational Empire. Participating in the Catholic Habsburg state left an indelible

православни Архиепископ Пекски и всјех Сербов и Болгаров и всего Илирика

the both Orthodox languages—“the просто-сербский езикъ”, i.e. volgare illirico,

56 Вikентie Лустина, Грамматiка Италiанская ради употребленiя Иллирическiя юности, собранна

Јовану Рајићу је јасна одређена функционална раздвојеност славенског и српског народног

pоссийский or pоссийский)66 and иллирический or the “простоiе наречiе или

дiалектъ сербски.”67 While the first—древни славенски, всiем опшчи, иначе

pared to its contemporary expression, i. e., Slavo-Russian, whose syntax was

74 Nedeljković, “Josef Dobrovský and the Serbian Literary Language”, 9.

so-called ordinary people’s languages, in his terminology “simple written languages”,

Slavo-Russian, Slavonized Serbian represented the greatest challenge to the former,

78 Dimitrije Kirilović convincingly describes unintelligibility of handbooks written in Slaveno-Serbian

for Serbian children in his book:

Before Skerlić, Novaković also expresses almost identical opinion:

ORTHODOX LINGUISTIC DIGLOSSIA, A DEVELOPMENTAL

84 See fn. 61.

Some scholars have attempted to explain the appearance of Venclović’s “ср’бскы”

У таквој његовој еволуцији [рускословенскoг] која се одвијала у краткотрајном времену

of Skaryna’s editions is best described as a hybrid language. It was often a mixture

Or, in another example:

112 Tолстой, “Взаимоотношение локальных типов древнеславянского”, 245.

The Latin-Polish models were never completely or correctly understood. Still

palities. In their religious manuscripts—the Psalter, the Gospels with Commentaries,

This people’s language, documented in Moscovite Russia at approximately the

And: “По руски и московски печатни исторїи показуют… (Printed his-

The comparative analysis of Venclović’’s writings in “ср’бскы” with other

Albijanić, Aleksandar. “The Creation of the Slaveno-Serbski Literary Language”. The

129 About “extended” diglossia see fn. 77.

Ferguson, Charles. “Diglossia.” Word 15, no. 2 (August 1959): 325-340.

Moser, Michael. Die polnische, ukrainische und weißrussische Interferenzschicht im rus-

Stojanović, Ljubomir. Katalog rukopisa i starih štampanih knjiga. Beograd: Srpska

JEZIČKA DIGLOSIJA GAVRILA STEFANOVIĆA

venskim za njegovo pojašnjavanje i razumevanje, bila je od presudnog značaja za dalji kul-

Received 30.03.2011 / Accepted 15.06.2011.

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