No. 4 the Exotic Croatian Glagolitic Alphabet Darko ~ Ubrini
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TUGboat, Volume 13 (1992), No. 4 The Exotic Croatian Glagolitic Alphabet In 1248, by the decree of Pope Innocent IV, Croats were allowed to practise Glagolitic liturgy Darko ~ubrini~ (i.e. early Croatian), using holy books written in Dedicated to the memory of Gordan Lederer Glagolitic instead of Latin or Greek. This decision (1958-1 991) of the Pope was unique in medieval Europe- Croats were the only nation in Europe who were Just for fun, one day I decided to write my own allowed to use their own language in liturgy instead name in Glagolitic letters. I was very proud of the of Latin. result: Uhhhca ~a~6z~sw.Without creating TfjX Even today the Glagolitic liturgy is preserved Prof. Donald Knuth probably would have never had in some parts of Croatia, with priests still singing opportunity to see his name written as in early Croatian language as in St. Cyrill's time (the ninth century!). The Glagolitic alphabet has probably been our most important cultural (The h = k was dropped because it is not pro- monument for thirteen centuries of difficult, but nounced.) rich life in Europe. The origins of the Croatian Glagolitic alphabet As for the name of Croatia, let me mention are still mysterious. The only thing we can state for by the way that the French and German names for sure is that it has existed in my homeland for more tie -cravate and die Krawate -were coined from than a thousand years, i.e. since the ninth century. it. It would take us too far from our purpose to tell Croats have been living in their homeland since in detail this very interesting story. the seventh century and they were the first among There are thousands of monuments, pergament Slavs to be Christianized. It used to be generally letters and books written in the Glagolitic alphabet. regarded that the Glagolitic alphabet was created One of the most beautiful certainly is "Misal" by St. Cyrill, a Greek apostle from Thessaloniki, (or Mxahdb), printed in 1483, most probably in but now there exist several very different theories the Croatian town of Kosinj, only 37 years after about its origins. However, the fact that Croats had Gutenberg's invention, or only six years after the already been Christianized when St. Cyrill was born first printed books appeared in Paris and Venice, (825), together with the unique multiorthographic or 70 years before the first book was printed in tradition of written documents (Glagolitic, Latin, Moscow. Like Gutenberg's Bible, it has many Cyrillic) in medieval Croatia, and above all, more ligatures. Unfortunately, in 1493 there was a than a thousand years' history of Glagolitic script in penetration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which Croatia, seem to prove that the origins of Glagolitic was stopped in Croatia (until the XIXth century!). script are authentically Croatian. This did not allow a normal development of printing One of the earliest Glagolitic inscriptions we as in other parts of Europe. Despite very difficult know of in Croatia can be seen on a stone monument conditions many Glagolitic documents bear witness found in the church of St. Lucy near the city of to surprisingly rich cultural activity in medieval Bashka on the island of Krk, dating back to around Croatia, especially on the island of Krk and the 1100 AD. It is the oldest known monument written Istrian penisula. in my native tongue which mentions the name of Glagolitic books for Croatian priests were also Croatia (i.e. Hrvatska) and the name of the Croatian printed in Venice, which even had two Glagolitic king Zvonimir . churches at one time, then in Rome. With the Through the Glagolitic alphabet Croats kept in help of Croatian protestants books were printed touch with other European cultures of the Middle in Wittenberg and Urach in Germany. One of Ages. For example, in 1347 the famous Czech the founders of protestantism in Europe was the king Charles IV established a Glagolitic convent Croatian philosopher Flacius Illiricus. The Gla- near Prague, where Croatian priests were teaching golitic alphabet was also taught in the city of the Glagolitic alphabet. Similarly, the Polish king Dubrovnik. Besides in Croatia, Croatian books Wladislav I1 Yagiell organized (in 1390) a Glagolitic and manuscripts written in the Glagolitic alphabet convent near Krakow. are now kept in Rome, Sankt Petersburg, Berlin, Especially interesting is the story of the old Vienna, Innsbruck, Moscow, Copenhagen, London, Glagolitic book handwritten on the island of Krk in Oxford, Constantinople, Paris, Tours, New York, Croatia, that somehow came from Prague to Reims Krakow, Porto, Budapest, Trento, Padova, Sienna, in France. There, for centuries afterwards, French and some other places. kings were sworn in by putting their hands on this There are a few Glagolitic letters that came holy book (it still exists). from Greek, like Q, (f), 3 (e); the letter u (sh) came TUGboat, Volume 13 (1992), No. 4 471 from Hebrew. You will also find these letters in Cyrillic script, created later by the followers of St. am e$ mi 0 olju Method in Bulgaria on the basis of the Greek uncial script. a bl Z ko a!? ml 3 ot Of course, one can find some similarities with bo li @ mlc nl[l pl other Cyrillic and roman letters, but the difference d is considerable. It is interesting to note that $ br lo mo pivr the Glagolitic A = is almost the same as the il abO it 4% ms d so Ethiopian 'ha'. I learned that in a very interesting ili lv ? no tvr article [I]. The complete font, together with numerical it bfO lju a 01 vod values, looks like this: jur dfOb ljud oli 86 zr Ligatures give a special flavor to Glagolitic A 1 0 manuscripts. As an example, the Glagolitic expres- B 2 P sion for 'moon' is in some manuscripts given by v 3 R &% (in Croatian: mjesec). G 4 S A few words about the T@-community in D 5 T Croatia. It is rather widespread. Many students prepare their graduation works using TEX, while E 6 u among mathematicians it has become a routine z 7 F means of creating documents. However, we still Dz 8 H lack some basic literature, and we are still not z 9 Ot organized as in other countries. We hope this will Iie 10 st, sc, c improve through collaboration with your excellent journal. I 20 C I would be pleased to contact anyone wishing J 30 c to learn more about the Glagolitic alphabet. Let K 40 s me take the opportunity to illustrate it by greeting L 50 Ja, Je my friends and colleagues in the USA who know M 60 Ju Croatian: N 70 It was created according to the above men- tioned "Misal" from 1483. Note that the letter I would like to thank Sonja ~terc(Zagreb) and .Pt = ch looks rather 'chinese'. From the table we Barbara Beeton for help during the preparation of see that some of the symbols had only numerical this article. values, like T = 10. The letters were also assigned appropriate nu- References merical values, similarly to the old Greek script. For example the year 1254 could have been written as [1] Abass Andulem: The road to Ethiopic W. .B.a.fi.%.. Numbers from 11 to 19 were written TUGboat, Vol. 10, No. 3 (November 1989), in the reverse order, for instance P?? = 12. What 352-354. do you say about the following arithmetic: [2] Donald Knuth: The METRFONTbook, Addison Wesley, 1986. &+%=PT, T+B=.Pth? Among many interesting ligatures let me men- o Darko ~ubriniC University of Zagreb tion a 'three storey m' = a,which was used ETF, Avenija Vukovar 39, Zagreb for [ml] (our language is not easy -remember the Croatia tongue-twisting island Krk), and 'double i' = a for Internet: [ili], which I like very much. Some of the ligatures darko.zubrinicQetf.uni-zg.ac.mai1.y~ are represented on the following list: .