guage they understood. But it found the more opposition with the priests. The whole jealousy of the Roman church seems to have been awakened by Methodius' proceedings. He found however a protector in the pope himself, who feared perhaps an entire alienation of the Slavic population, and their transition to the Oriental church. But he was at the same time desirous to preserve the whole authority of the Latin language. In a letter to the Moravian prince Svatopluk, he enjoins expressly, "that in all the Moravian churches the gospel, for the sake of the greater dignity, should be read first in Latin, and afterwards translated into Slavic for the people ignorant of the Latin."

The question, what part of the Scriptures was translated by Cyril himself, what by his brother, and what supplements were made by their immediate successors, can now hardly be answered in a satisfactory manner. The honour of the invention of the alphabet appears to belong exclusively to Cyril; but in the sacred work of translation, Methodius was not less active, and his merits in respect to the conversion and instruction of the Slavi, were more favoured by a longer life. According to John, exarch of Bulgaria, Cyril translated only selections from the Gospels and the Apostle, as the book of Acts and the apostolic epistles are together called in Slavic; i. e. a Lectionarium, or extracts from those parts of the Scriptures, arranged in such a way as to serve as a lesson for every sacred day through the whole year. The Russians call such a collection Aprakoss, the Greeks εὐαγγελία, ἐκλογαδία. A work of this description is the above mentioned Evangelium of Ostromir, of the year 1056, written out expressly for the domestic use of Ostromir, posadnik30 of Novogorod, a near relation of the grand-duke of Izjaslav. It is however more probable, that Cyril translated at first the whole of the Gospels, as still contained in a Codex of A. D. 1144, in the library of the Synod of Moscow. The Presbyter of Dioclea, who wrote about A. D. 1161, ascribes to Cyril not only the translation of the Gospels, but also of the Psalter;31 and at a later period that of the whole Old and New Testaments, as well as of the "Massa," i. e. the Greek liturgy of Basilius and Chrysostom. This opinion has since been generally received. In respect to the Old Testament, however, it is much to be doubted;

30 Posadnik is about the same as Mayor.

31 In the Slavic version of the Chronicle of Dalmatia, discovered in the sixth century, the Epistles instead of the Psalter are named.

since no ancient Codex of it exists, or has ever been proved to have existed. As to the New Testament, the Apocalypse must at any rate be excepted.

What part of the translation was performed by Methodius does not appear. John, exarch of Bulgaria, who lived in the same century, translated the books of Johannes Damascenus into Slavic. In the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Russian and Servian princes called many learned Greeks, versed in the Slavic language, into their empires, that they might continue the holy work of translation. From the historian Nestor it appears, that the Proverbs of Solomon existed in the twelfth century in Slavic. The book of Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and Job were translated in Servia in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the Pentateuch in Russia or Poland A. D. 1400, or about that time. It is certain that towards the close of the fifteenth century, the whole Bible was already translated into Old Slavic. According to Dobrovsky, the different parts of it were not collected until after A. D. 1488, when the Bohemian Bible of Prague was printed. This latter served as a model for the arrangement of the Slavonic Bible; what was wanting was at that time supplied, and those books of the Old Testament which had been translated from the Greek, were reviewed and corrected according to the Vulgate. The Codex of Moscow of A. D. 1499, the most ancient existing copy of the whole Bible in the Old Slavic, is probably at the same time the first which was ever wholly completed.

The domains of the Old Slavic language, which seemed at first to be of very great extent, were soon, by the well known jealousy of the Roman church, limited to Russia and Servia. In Bohemia, which owed its conversion to German priests, the Slavic liturgy seems never to have been generally introduced; and the old Slavic church language has therefore exerted only a very inconsiderable influence on the Bohemian. In Poland too, the Slavic liturgy was only tolerated, although the first books with Cyrillic types were printed there. In Moravia, Pannonia, and Illyria, the Slavonic worship was, after some struggle, supplanted by the Latin; the language however was partly saved; and that in a very singular way.

At a synod held at Salona in Dalmatia in A. D. 1060, Methodius, notwithstanding several popes had been his patrons, was declared a heretic; and it was resolved that henceforth no mass should be read but in the Latin or Greek language. From

the decrees of that synod, it appears that they took the Gothic and Slavonic for the same idiom. A great part of the inhabitants of Illyria remained nevertheless faithful to their language, and to a worship familiar to their minds through that language. A singular means was found by some of the shrewder priests, to reconcile their inclinations with the jealous despotism of Rome. A new alphabet was invented, or rather the Cyrillic letters were altered and transformed in such a way, as to approach in a certain measure to the Coptic characters. To give some authority to the new invention, it was ascribed to Jerome himself, who was a native of Dalmatia. This is the so-called Glagolitic alphabet, used by the Slavic priests of Dalmatia and Croatia until the present time.32 Cyril's translation of the Bible and the liturgic books were copied in these characters with a very few deviations in the language; which probably had their foundation in the difference of the Dalmatian dialect, or were the result of the progress of time; for this event took place in A. D. 1220, at least 360 years after the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet. With this modification, the priests succeeded in satisfying both the people and the chair of Rome. It sounded the same to the people, and looked different to the pope. The people submitted easily to the ceremonies of the Roman catholic worship, if only their beloved language was preserved; and the pope, fearing justly the transition of the whole Slavic population of those provinces to the Greek church, permitted the mass to be read in Slavonic, in order to preserve his influence in general. The reader will find more on this subject in the sequel, under the head of Servian, Dalmatian, and Glagolitic literature.

According to Vostokof, a modern Russian writer of distinction,33 the history of the Old Slavic or Church language and its literary cultivation, divides itself into three periods:

1. From Cyril, or from the ninth century, to the thirteenth

32 It must be mentioned here, that by all old writers a more venerable, and mostly a very ancient origin, has been claimed for the Glagolitic alphabet. By some it has been derived from the Runes of the Goths and Geta; by others from the Thracians and Phrygians, etc. Dobrovsky has however proved by irrefutable arguments, that it is not older than the thirteenth century. The above narrative rests on his authority. See his Glagolitica, Prague, 1807. Schaffarik's

Geschichte, etc. p. 240.

33 In his essay, "On the Old Slavic Language;" see the Russian periodical Treatises of a Society of friends of Russian Literature, No. XVII. Mosc. 1820.

century. This is the ancient genuine Slavonic; as appears from the manuscripts of that period.

2. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. This is the middle age of the Slavonic, as altered gradually by Russian copyists, and full of Russisms.

3. From the sixteenth century to the present time. This comprises the modern Slavonic of the church books printed in Russia and Poland; especially after the so-called Improvement of those writings.

The most ancient documents of the Old Slavic language, are not older than the middle of the eleventh century. There has been indeed recently discovered a manuscript of the translation of John of Damascus, written by John, exarch of Bulgaria, in the ninth century. Vostokof however proves on philological grounds, that it cannot be the original, but is a later copy. The abovementioned Evangelium of Ostromir (1056) is the earliest monument of the language, as to the age of which no doubt exists. It is preserved in the imperial library at St. Petersburg. According to Vostokof this is the third, or perhaps the fourth copy of Cyril's own translation. This latter is irretrievably lost, as well as the copy which was made for Vladimir the Great, a hundred years afterwards.

Only a few years younger is a Sbornik, A. D. 1073, or a collection of ecclesiastical writings, discovered in the year 1817, and a similar Sbornik of 1076; the former in a convent near Moscow, the other now in the library of the imperial Hermitage of St. Petersburg. Farther: the Evangelium of Mistislav, written before the year 1125, for the prince Mistislav Vladimirowitch; and another Evangelium of the year 1143, both at present in ecclesiastical libraries at Moscow.

Besides these venerable documents, there are several inscriptions on stones, crosses, and monuments, of equal antiquity; and a whole series of political documents, contracts, ordinances, and similar writings; among which one of the most remarkable is the oldest manuscript of the Pravda Russkaya,34 a collection of the laws of Jaroslav, A. D. 1280. The libraries of the Russian convents possess a large number of manuscripts, some of which

34 This remarkable manuscript was not known before 1738, when it was discovered in the chronicles of Novogorod. It has since been published in six different editions, the first prepared by Schlözer 1767, the last by the Polish scholar Rakowiecky, enriched with remarks and illustrations. See note 29.

are of great value. The Synodal library at Moscow alone, has a treasure of 700 Old Slavic Codices. Many of them are out of the earliest period. The Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg possesses 250 Slavic manuscripts; and what treasures are buried in the convents of Servia, Bulgaria, and Mount Athos, has never yet been investigated. Among the libraries of foreign countries, those of Vienna and the Vatican are rich in Old Slavic manuscripts; and there is hardly any large collection of books in Europe, which has not some of more or less value to exhibit. The number of these monuments of the Old Slavonic augments considerably in the second period; and we find ourselves the more obliged to be satisfied with mentioning only the most important among them. At the head of these, stands undoubtedly the Laurentian Codex, or the oldest existing copy of Nestor's Annals, A. D. 1377, now in the imperial library at St. Petersburg. Nestor, a monk in a convent near Kief, born A. D. 1056, was the father of Russian history. He wrote Annals in the Old Slavic language, which form the basis of Slavic history, and are of importance for the whole history of the middle ages. They were first printed in A. D. 1767, and subsequently in four editions, the last in 1796. Schlözer, the great German historian, who published them anew in 1802-9, with a translation, added considerably to their original value by a critical and historical commentary upon them.

The third period begins with the sixteenth century. In the course of time, and after passing through the hands of so many ignorant copyists, the holy books had of course undergone a change; nay, were in some parts grown unintelligible. The necessity of a revision was therefore very strongly felt. In A. D. 1512, the Patriarch of Constantinople, at the request of the Tzar Basilius Ivanovitch, sent a learned Greek, monk of Mount Athos, to Moscow, to revise the church books, and to correct them according to the Greek originals. As this person some years afterwards fell into disgrace and could not accomplish the work, it was taken up repeatedly in the course of the same and the following century, until the revision of the liturgical books was pronounced to be finished in A. D. 1667; but that of the Bible not before A. D. 1751. The principles on which this revision, or, as it was called, Improvement, was made, were in direct contradiction with the reverence due to the genius of the Slavic language. The revisers, in their unphilosophical mode of proceeding, tried only to imitate the Greek original,