The Medieval Church · c. 894–906
The Alphabet Prayer and the Didactic Gospel
Constantine of Preslav
What it is
An acrostic prayer whose lines begin with the letters of the Slavonic alphabet in order, and a cycle of fifty-one sermons on the Sunday gospels — the first original preaching composed in a Slavic language rather than translated.
Why it lasted
A pupil of Methodius building a literature after the mission was expelled from Moravia and took refuge in Bulgaria. The Alphabet Prayer is a poem whose form is the alphabet itself, written by people who had just been given one.
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.
Read next