The Exotic Croatian Glagolitic Alphabet - TUG

TUGboat, Volume 13 (1992), No. 4 

The Exotic Croatian Glagolitic Alphabet 

Darko ~ubrini~ 

Dedicated to the memory of Gordan Lederer 

(1 958-1 991) 

Just for fun, one day I decided to write my own 

name in Glagolitic letters. I was very proud of the 

result: Uhhhca ~a~6z~sw. Without creating TfjX 

Prof. Donald Knuth probably would have never had 

opportunity to see his name written as 

(The h = k was dropped because it is not pronounced.) 

The origins of the Croatian Glagolitic alphabet 

are still mysterious. The only thing we can state for 

sure is that it has existed in my homeland for more 

than a thousand years, i.e. since the ninth century. 

Croats have been living in their homeland since 

the seventh century and they were the first among 

Slavs to be Christianized. It used to be generally 

regarded that the Glagolitic alphabet was created 

by St. Cyrill, a Greek apostle from Thessaloniki, 

but now there exist several very different theories 

about its origins. However, the fact that Croats had 

already been Christianized when St. Cyrill was born 

(825), together with the unique multiorthographic 

tradition of written documents (Glagolitic, Latin, 

Cyrillic) in medieval Croatia, and above all, more 

than a thousand years' history of Glagolitic script in 

Croatia, seem to prove that the origins of Glagolitic 

script are authentically Croatian. 

One of the earliest Glagolitic inscriptions we 

know of in Croatia can be seen on a stone monument 

found in the church of St. Lucy near the city of 

Bashka on the island of Krk, dating back to around 

1100 AD. It is the oldest known monument written 

in my native tongue which mentions the name of 

Croatia (i.e. Hrvatska) and the name of the Croatian 

king Zvonimir . 

Through the Glagolitic alphabet Croats kept in 

touch with other European cultures of the Middle 

Ages. For example, in 1347 the famous Czech 

king Charles IV established a Glagolitic convent 

near Prague, where Croatian priests were teaching 

the Glagolitic alphabet. Similarly, the Polish king 

Wladislav I1 Yagiell organized (in 1390) a Glagolitic 

convent near Krakow. 

Especially interesting is the story of the old 

Glagolitic book handwritten on the island of Krk in 

Croatia, that somehow came from Prague to Reims 

in France. There, for centuries afterwards, French 

kings were sworn in by putting their hands on this 

holy book (it still exists). 

In 1248, by the decree of Pope Innocent IV, 

Croats were allowed to practise Glagolitic liturgy 

(i.e. early Croatian), using holy books written in 

Glagolitic instead of Latin or Greek. This decision 

of the Pope was unique in medieval Europe- 

Croats were the only nation in Europe who were 

allowed to use their own language in liturgy instead 

of Latin. 

Even today the Glagolitic liturgy is preserved 

in some parts of Croatia, with priests still singing 

in early Croatian language as in St. Cyrill's time 

(the ninth century!). The Glagolitic alphabet 

has probably been our most important cultural 

monument for thirteen centuries of difficult, but 

rich life in Europe. 

As for the name of Croatia, let me mention 

by the way that the French and German names for 

tie - cravate and die Krawate - were coined from 

it. It would take us too far from our purpose to tell 

in detail this very interesting story. 

There are thousands of monuments, pergament 

letters and books written in the Glagolitic alphabet. 

One of the most beautiful certainly is "Misal" 

(or Mxahdb), printed in 1483, most probably in 

the Croatian town of Kosinj, only 37 years after 

Gutenberg's invention, or only six years after the 

first printed books appeared in Paris and Venice, 

or 70 years before the first book was printed in 

Moscow. Like Gutenberg's Bible, it has many 

ligatures. Unfortunately, in 1493 there was a 

penetration of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which 

was stopped in Croatia (until the XIXth century!). 

This did not allow a normal development of printing 

as in other parts of Europe. Despite very difficult 

conditions many Glagolitic documents bear witness 

to surprisingly rich cultural activity in medieval 

Croatia, especially on the island of Krk and the 

Istrian penisula. 

Glagolitic books for Croatian priests were also 

printed in Venice, which even had two Glagolitic 

churches at one time, then in Rome. With the 

help of Croatian protestants books were printed 

in Wittenberg and Urach in Germany. One of 

the founders of protestantism in Europe was the 

Croatian philosopher Flacius Illiricus. The Glagolitic 

alphabet was also taught in the city of 

Dubrovnik. Besides in Croatia, Croatian books 

and manuscripts written in the Glagolitic alphabet 

are now kept in Rome, Sankt Petersburg, Berlin, 

Vienna, Innsbruck, Moscow, Copenhagen, London, 

Oxford, Constantinople, Paris, Tours, New York, 

Krakow, Porto, Budapest, Trento, Padova, Sienna, 

and some other places. 

There are a few Glagolitic letters that came 

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 

is considerable. It is interesting to note that 

$ br lo d 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 

article [I]. 

The complete font, together with numerical it bfO lju a 01 vod 

values, looks like this: 

A 1 

B 2 

v 3 

G 4 

D 5 

E 6 

z 7 

Dz 8 

z 9 

Iie 10 

I 20 

J 30 

K 40 

L 50 

M 60 

N 70 

0 

P 

R 

S 

T 

u 

F 

H 

Ot 

st, sc, c 

C 

c 

s 

Ja, Je 

Ju 

tvr 

jur dfOb ljud oli 86 zr 

Ligatures give a special flavor to Glagolitic 

manuscripts. As an example, the Glagolitic expression 

for 'moon' is in some manuscripts given by 

&% (in Croatian: mjesec). 

A few words about the T@-community in 

Croatia. It is rather widespread. Many students 

prepare their graduation works using TEX, while 

among mathematicians it has become a routine 

means of creating documents. However, we still 

lack some basic literature, and we are still not 

organized as in other countries. We hope this will 

improve through collaboration with your excellent 

journal. 

I would be pleased to contact anyone wishing 

to learn more about the Glagolitic alphabet. Let 

me take the opportunity to illustrate it by greeting 

my friends and colleagues in the USA who know 

Croatian: 

It was created according to the above mentioned 

"Misal" from 1483. Note that the letter 

.Pt = ch looks rather 'chinese'. From the table we 

see that some of the symbols had only numerical 

values, like T = 10. 

The letters were also assigned appropriate numerical 

values, similarly to the old Greek script. For 

example the year 1254 could have been written as 

.B.a.fi.%.. Numbers from 11 to 19 were written 

in the reverse order, for instance P?? = 12. What 

do you say about the following arithmetic: 

&+%=PT, T+B=.Pth? 

Among many interesting ligatures let me menwhich 

was used 

for [ml] (our language is not easy - remember the 

tongue-twisting island Krk), and 'double i' = a for 

[ili], which I like very much. Some of the ligatures 

are represented on the following list: 

tion a 'three storey m' = a, 

I would like to thank Sonja ~terc (Zagreb) and 

Barbara Beeton for help during the preparation of 

this article. 

References 

[1] Abass Andulem: The road to Ethiopic W. 

TUGboat, Vol. 10, No. 3 (November 1989), 

352-354. 

[2] Donald Knuth: The METRFONTbook, Addison 

Wesley, 1986. 

o Darko ~ubriniC 

University of Zagreb 

ETF, Avenija Vukovar 39, Zagreb 

Croatia 

Internet: 

darko.zubrinicQetf.uni-zg.ac.mai1.y~

The Exotic Croatian Glagolitic Alphabet - TUG

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