The Medieval Church · c. 900–920
On the Letters
Chernorizets Hrabar
What it is
A short defence of the Slavic alphabet against Greeks who said only three languages were fit for scripture. The Greeks did not have letters either until Palamedes, he answers, and theirs were made by pagans over centuries, while ours were made at once by a holy man.
Why it lasted
The first argument for a vernacular literature written in that vernacular, and the founding document of Slavic cultural self-consciousness. Its case is the one every European vernacular would eventually have to make.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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