CYRILLIC ALPHABET. - It was introduced into Old Slavonic literature in Bulgaria at the turn of the 9th to the 10th century. It is formed on the model of Greek uncial script, as found in the liturgical texts of the 9th-10th century. For Slavic sounds unknown to Greek, the corresponding letters of the Glagolitic alphabet (v.) were adopted.It is not established who the author of the a. c. is; it was later wrongly attributed to St. Cyril, Apostle of the Slavs, whence its name. Being simpler than the Glagolitic one, its use prevailed in Old Slavonic and Slavonic-ecclesiastical literature. It is still used today in the liturgical books of the Byzantine-Slavonic rite. Modernized, especially in Russia through the work of Peter the Great (graddanskij trefz: secular characters), it is still employed by Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Bulgarians.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: P. A. Lavrov, Paleograficheskoe obozrenie kirillovskogo pis'ma, Petrograd 1914-16, with an album of reproductions; V. Ščepkin, Učebnik russkoj paleografii, Moscow 1920; E. Karšik, Slavjanskaja kirillovskaja paleografija, Leningrad 1928.

Giuseppe Olšr

@incollection{ec3_cirillico_alfabeto, author = {Olšr, Giuseppe}, title = {Cirillico, alfabeto}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {III}, pages = {1715}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1949}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/cirillico-alfabeto} }

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Cyrillic Alphabet

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