Liturgy, Slav

LITUrGY, SLAV. SL usually refers to the celebration of liturgical rites in *Church Slavonic, an artificial literary language codified by Sts *Cyril and *Methodius in the 9th century. Various °recensions of Church Slavonic were employed by all the Orthodox Slavs as their liturgical language as well until recently by some of the Roman Catholic Croats. Slavic vernacular languages are employed by both the Roman Catholic Slavs and by some Orthodox Slavs as liturgical languages, although their use as liturgical languages in both East and West does not antedate very recent times. Eastern and Western ritual traditions. Before the arrival in 863 of Cyril and Methodius, Greek brothers from Thessalonica, in Great Moravia, a western Slavic buffer state extending from the holy Roman Empire and the medieval Kingdom of Bulgaria, para-liturgical texts had already been translated by German missionaries. The Freising Fragments consist of three potential formulae translated from Old high German into Slavonic in Latin script. They date from the end of the 9th century and were copied in Bavaria. Contrary to popular belief, linguistic policies of both the Western and the Eastern Roman Empires were ambivalent regarding the use of a national vernacular other than Greek or Latin in the Christian liturgy. Throughout the 9th century, liturgical and linguistic frontiers between the Byzantine East and the Latin West were likewise fluid, nor had the concept of rite been fixed. Liturgies were still evolving and the Byzantine and Latin rites had not attained the exclusivity which they enjoy today among the daughter Churches of Constantinople and Rome. *Local Churches or even cities were often free to adopt elements of liturgies which originated in either East or West and gradually incorporate them, transforming them by use. Besides the celebration of the Eucharist, liturgical services include the celebration of the other sacraments as well as the Divine Office.

Cyril and Methodius and the Liturgy of St Peter. Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher) and Methodius began translating actual liturgical texts soon after their arrival in Moravia. Some experts believe that this translating activity aimed at the creation of a liturgical hybrid known as the Liturgy of St Peter, a liturgy of mostly Byzantine structure but employing the canon of the Roman Mass as its *anaphora. Its text exists in two mss respectively in Old Church Slavonic (18th cent.) and Georgian. Some point out linguistic similarities (the so-called bohemianisms) between the language of Cyril and Methodius used during the Moravian mission and that contained in the liturgical formularies of the Kievian Leaflets, one of the oldest Slavonic mss believed by some to date from the beginning of the 10th century. They identify the liturgy of the Leaflets with that of St Peter, attributing the Leaflets directly to the pen of either Cyril or Methodius. Apparently, the Slavonic text of the Liturgy of St Peter was translated from a Greek original in use in both Southern Italy and Eastern *Illyricum, Thessalonica being the homeland of Cyril and Methodius. Eastern Illyricum was under the rule of the pope until 732 and open to both Eastern and Western liturgical influences. Others hold the very existence of a Slavonic Liturgy of St Peter to be a literary fiction, a mere misinterpretation of a passage in the Life of Methodius. According to them, the gloss refers not to a liturgical formulary attributed to St Peter but rather to a liturgical celebration held on St Peter’s day. Some Roman Catholic authors (F. Dvornik, M.

Lacko) believe that Cyril and Methodius began by translating the liturgical books of Constantinople and only later, confronted with the unfinished work of Germanic missionaries who preceded them on the territory of Great Moravia, began to experiment with western liturgical formularies. Still other historians hold that the translation activity of the two brothers was confined to Byzantine liturgical material. The Byzantine Slavonic liturgical tradition. Cyril and Methodius were Byzantine missionaries and best acquainted with the liturgy of Constantinople. Moreover, the Life of Cyril names the liturgical books translated by him in their Byzantine form. These included the Gospel, Apostle (book of Epistle readings), Psalter, *Euchologion (fixed parts of the eucharistic liturgies and other *sacraments), *Horologion (Breviary), *Triodion (liturgical texts of Lent), *Pentekostarion (liturgical texts of the Paschal season), Parakletikaē, (*Octoechos, texts of the hymns of the eight liturgical tones), *Menologion (Liturgical texts in honour of the saints), *Acolouthia (hymn Book), and finally the *Typicon (liturgical Ordo or handbook), which was translated only after Cyril’s death. Cyril began with the Gospels. Evidence indicates that he used the Byzantine Aprakos version (an abridged version of liturgical Gospel readings today used by the Greeks) rather than a Tetraevangelion (the complete version of the Gospels today favoured by the Slavs) as the basis of his translation. he started translating in the order of the Aprakos version, with the first verse of the Gospel of St John, the reading for Easter Sunday.

The earliest Slavonic mss of the Euchologion contain the texts of the three Byantine liturgies (St Basil, St John Chrysostom and the Presanctified Gifts; *Byzantine Rite: Anaphoras), in their 9th century form which closely corresponds to their Gospel originals found in the Barberini Codex gr. 336 – the earliest preserved *Euchologion dating from the 8th or the 9th century. Evidence substantiates the fact that the first Slavonic liturgical translations were undertaken by Cyril and Methodius themselves while still in Great Moravia and before the arrival of their disciples in Bulgaria. The Liturgy of St Basil is placed before that of Chrysostom in the earliest Slavonic mss as it was in their 9th century Byzantine counterparts. On the other hand, the ancient Byzantine offertory rite or *Proskomedia has already been simplified and placed before the Liturgy of the Catechumens. Church Slavonic and its alphabets. The language of the earliest Slavonic liturgical translations was Old Church Slavonic, a southern dialect from the Slavic populated outskirts of Thessalonica, today in northern Greece. Raised to the standard of an artificial literary language which was often written but never spoken by the translating efforts of the two brothers, it became the liturgical language of all Orthodox Slavs. Employed by the various Orthodox Slavic peoples as their written language until modern times, its function resembled in some ways that of Latin in the West. Eventually it acquired some local features and national variants so that the Russians still celebrate the liturgy in a somewhat russified form of classical *Church Slavonic, which is not immediately comprehensible to the vast majority of the faithful. The invention of two Slavonic alphabets, the Glagolitic and the Cyrillic, is ascribed to Cyril and Methodius or their disciples.

Actually only the Glagolitic is probably a direct invention of Cyril, which he adopted from the Greek minuscula in a form of cryptology employed by Byzantine merchants, adding several letters from other languages he knew: hebrew, Coptic (*Coptic Language), Syriac (*Syriac Language) and Sarmatian. The Cyrillic is closer to the Greek, derived from Greek maiuscula and was developed in Byzantine oriented Bulgaria by Constantine of Preslav. Slavonic texts used by the Orthodox Slavs are today written in Cyrillic and Cyrillic liturgical texts were apparently the only ones known in Rus’ (*Kievan Rus’), where there was no Glagolitic tradition. The earliest Slavonic liturgical texts (mostly from the 10th cent.) include the Kiev Leaflets, the Codex Zographicus, the Codex Assemanius, the Psalterium Sinaiticum, the Euchologium Sinaiticum and the Codex Suprasliensis. The Roman Slavonic liturgy among the Croats. The use of the Glagolitic alphabet spread in the western Balkans especially on the territory of the modern Slavic state of Macedonia, but eventually was replaced by Cyrillic. The Roman Slavonic or Glagolitic liturgy developed among the Roman Catholic Croats. This was the eucharistic liturgy of the Latin rite translated into a Craotian form of Church Slavonic and written in Glagolitic letters. Originally, it included the Breviary as well the Roman Ritual, but its use was eventually restricted to the Mass. It was approved by Pope Innocent IV (1248) as well as by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), which permitted the use of divergent rites in the Western Church provided they had been in use for over two hundred years.

It constituted a unique exception in the Latin rite of the Roman Church before the Second Vatican Council, since it was the only case in which Mass was allowed to be offered in any language other than Latin. Its use was confined to eight Croatian dioceses: Poreč-Pula, Rijeka, Senj, Krk, Zadar, Šibenik, Split, hyar. During the Middle Ages, the Roman Slavonic liturgy and the Glagolitic script were attributed to St *Jerome, a native of Roman Dalmatia. Actually, the Slavonic liturgical tradition in Croatia is more likely a product of the school of Cyril and Methodius. Conflict between Slavs and Latins in Dalmatia crystallized around the Slavonic diocese of Nin (Nona) and its bishop Grgur (Gregory) in 925, later romanticized as a champion of the Slavonic literary tradition and national hero by 19th century Croatian romantics. During the 20th century, the Roman Slavonic liturgy was permitted on special occasions in a few places in Czechoslovakia (1920) and later throughout Yugoslavia (1930) The last Glagolitic missal of the Roman rite was published in 1905. A later edition of the Roman-Slavonic Missal (1927) appeared in Latin script with the Glagolitic text confined to the Canon of the Mass. This was necessary since few priests were able to read Glagolitic. After Vatican II which allowed the use of the vernacular in the Roman liturgy, the use of the Roman Slavonic Missal among the Croats waned, eventually to be replaced by Modern Croatian, except on a very few special occasions.

Aside from the Croats, a form of the Roman rite in Slavonic may have been celebrated during medieval times in parts of Bohemia, hungary and Poland, although the third possibility has been repeatedly questioned by modern scholarship. The Slavonic liturgy today. Among the Orthodox Slavs and their Greek Catholic or Uniate counterparts, the Byzantine liturgy is celebrated in Church Slavonic with more differences of pronunciation or accent by the Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Ruthenians (*Rutheni) among the Eastern Slavs, by the Serbs, by the Macedonians, Bulgarians and Croats of the Byzantine rite among the Southern Slavs, and the small group of Greek Catholic Slovaks. All except the Russians have introduced the modern vernacular to at least some extent in their liturgical celebrations. In practice, the pronunciation and accent of the Balkan Slavs differs somewhat from the Russians, although their printed editions are identical to those used by the latter, a heritage of Ottoman times when their *liturgical books were printed within the Russian Empire. texts: Das Glagolitische Missale von Kiew, V. Jagić (tr. into Lat.), J. hamm (ed.), Vienna 1979. studies: S. Smržík, The Glagolitic or Roman-Slavonic Liturgy, Cleveland Oh 1959; Glagolitica: Zum Ursprung der slavischen Schriftkultur, h. Miklas (ed.), Vienna 2000; A. Leskien, O. A. Rottmann, Handbuch der altbulgarischen Sprache: Grammatik, Texte, Glossar, heidelberg 2002. C. Simon.

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