engleski

Intellectual and Cultural History: Croatian Glagolitic, Cyrillic, and Latin Written Culture in the Early Middle Ages

Specific characteristic of the Croatian medieval culture is the fact that cultural heritage is preserved in three languages (Croatian, Latin and Old Church Slavonic), and that these languages were written in three different alphabets (Latin alphabet, Glagolitic letters and Croatian Cyrillic script). All these languages and scriptures today can be seen in various epigraphic inscriptions, as well as in diplomatic and narrative sources. It is important to stress that the most of these extant sources are more or less directly related with the Benedictine Order, who is the eldest monastic order within the Catholic Church. During the Middle Ages Benedictines, with their abbeys and monasteries, played a key role regarding the development of European literacy and Christianization of Europe. They had the same role in medieval Croatia, where they brought Latin alphabet but they also helped in the spread of Glagolitic scripture and Croatian Cyrillic alphabet. Their most important monasteries in Croatia were in Rižinice (near Solin), St. Chrysogonus and St. Mary in Zadar, St. John Evangelist in Biograd (later Ss. Cosmas and Damian on the island of Pašman), St. Peter in Selo (in Primorska/Donja Poljica), male and female convents in Split, abbey of St. Lucy on the island of Krk and abbey of St. John the Baptist in Povlja on the island of Brač. All these monasteries were deeply involved in all the processes of development of Croatian literal and verbal culture, and monks of Benedictine order in Croatia wrote in all three alphabets. One has to emphasize that such involvement in the Croatian trilingual culture was not characteristic to any other later monastic order.

Early Middle Ages, Croatia, Intellectual History, Cultural History, Written Culture, Croatian Language, Medieval Latin Language, Old Church Slavonic Language, Latin Script, Glagolitic Script, Cyrillic Script, Benedictines

This article is a revised and expanded version of a paper written in Croatian and published in Nova zraka u europskom svjetlu. Hrvatske zemlje u ranome srednjem vijeku (oko 550 − oko 1150) [New Ray in European Light. Croatian Lands in the Early Middle Ages], ed. Zrinka Nikolić Jakus, Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2015, pp. 272-295.