Honoring the Cyrillic Alphabet

Happy May 24! 

Честит 24-ти май!

Regardless of physical location and stage of life, I’ve never hesitated to call May 24 my most beloved holiday - the day of the saints Cyril and Methodius when, in my motherland Bulgaria, the Slavonic Alphabet gets celebrated. It is a most festive holiday, with school children and teachers marching in a joyful parade and celebrating the love of reading and culture - a holiday that I’ve known forever. Many schools and educational institutions bear the saints’ names, including the National Library of Bulgaria in the capital city Sofia, with a statue of the saint brothers in front of it. 

Even though I haven’t participated in person in these parades for years, the brothers Cyril (born Constantine, 826 - 869) and Methodius (815-885) always come to my mind when May 24 approaches. With time, I came to understand that the magnitude of their deed extends beyond my own heritage and has a broader appeal with the cause for the right to read and write in one’s mother tongue - a right that nowadays might be taken for granted, but wasn’t always the case.

Before the brothers began their work in the 9th century AD, literate persons in Europe wrote only in one of the languages sanctioned by the “Three Languages” theory - the languages of the inscription on the Cross at the time of Christ’s crucifixion: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. But as Christianity was becoming a dominant religion in Europe and paganism a thing of the past, there came the need to understand the language of the liturgy and the scriptures. 

With this need in mind, the Moravian ruler Rostislav (or Rastislav) sent an appeal to the Byzantine emperor Michael for a teacher able to explain to his people the Christian faith in a language they could understand, and to counter the missionary efforts of the Germanic Franks. The Byzantines agreed - they saw the Christianization of the Slavs as a way to gain them as allies. The teachers they sent in 863 were the brothers Constantine (who would assume the monastic name Cyril on his deathbed) and Methodius. Born in Thessaloniki (in today’s Greece), they grew up in an area with a strong Slavic presence and spoke the dialect of the Slavs there. Constantine, also known as “the Philosopher”, was one of the best scholars in Byzantium and a gifted linguist. Methodius, a monk at that time, was a former administrator of a Slavic territory.

In order to fulfill the mission, they composed a special alphabet called “Glagolitic” so that the books of the liturgy could be translated into the vernacular.

It is a phonetic alphabet based on the Slavic dialect they knew, and was gradually replaced by the “Cyrillic”, the creation of which was attributed to the disciples of Cyril & Methodius.

As an aftermath of some political changes in Moravia, and after Cyril’s death in 869, the Moravian mission was defeated by the Frankish authorities and the disciples of the brothers persecuted and driven out of Moravia.

Two of them - Clement and Naum - found a welcoming reception in the First Bulgarian Kingdom (681-1018), where the ruling khan Boris I was working towards Christianization of the country and establishing an autocephalous church. Naum, stationed in Pliska (in today’s Northeast Bulgaria) and Clement, stationed in Ohrid (in today’s North Macedonia) did tremendous work spreading the Cyrillic alphabet, translating, and establishing the first centers of Slavonic scholarship and education. 

Nowadays, the Cyrillic alphabet is used in numerous written languages, among them: Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Russian and Belarusian. With Bulgaria being granted European Union membership in 2007, it became one of the European Union’s alphabets. 

Last year, in 2021, in celebration of our native alphabet on May 24, my husband and I drew with chalk the Cyrillic letters in front of the Lawrence Branch building. We celebrated an alphabet created with the mission to defend the right to literacy and education for everyone in front of a place dedicated to the same mission. 

Our Mercer County Library System Virtual Branch offers acquaintance with the Cyrillic alphabet, too. 

The Bluebird and Pronunciator Language Learning databases provide access to languages that use Cyrillic, with the alphabet incorporated into the instruction. 

In the Current Events and News section, thousands of periodicals, including international ones written in the Cyrillic alphabet, can be accessed thanks to the PressReader database. 

The creation of the Slavonic alphabet in the 9th century AC was a fascinating part of European Medieval History. To read more on the saint brothers Cyril and Methodius and their deed, check our Biography, Genealogy and History databases:

Ancient and Medieval History

Biography Reference Bank (H.W. Wilson)

Biography Reference Center

History Reference Center

Some of our Student Practice and Research databases also provide information on the topic:

Academic Search Premier

Explora Secondary Schools

MAS Ultra: School Edition

Our physical collection, too, offers information on the lives and deed of St. Cyril and St. Methodius. Check the following titles:

The World Encyclopedia of Calligraphy: The Ultimate Compendium on the Art of Fine Writing - History, Craft, Technique (ISBN: 9781402733680)

Sailing from Byzantium: How a Lost Empire Shaped the World (ISBN: 9780553803815)

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Medieval Civilization (ISBN: 9780706408560)

For more extensive research, it is possible to request additional titles through the Interlibrary Loan department.

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In the year 1892, the Bulgarian writer Stoyan Mikhailovsky crafted a poem praising the deed of the saint brothers Cyril and Methodius as a march to enlightenment through literature and science. The composer Lyubomir Pipkov attached music to it. The song became an anthem and it has been sung every year since 1901 during the St. Cyril and St. Methodius celebrations (initially held on May 11, then on May 24 when Bulgaria switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1916.) The anthem is a call to march forward “with literature” and to “a bright future”. It praises science as “a sun that shines in our souls”. It is a call that can relate to every nation.