Church Slavonic
old Slavic language used in the liturgy of some branches of the Orthodox Church
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Church Slavonic is an old Slavic language that has been used for religious services in certain branches of the Orthodox Church. It remains important to these Orthodox communities because it preserves their liturgical traditions and cultural heritage.
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Church Slavonic is a Slavic language belonging to the South-Slavic linguistic sub-branch of Balto-Slavic languages, in the Indo-European family. It is used, both historically and in the modern era, as a liturgical language by various Eastern Christian denominations. During medieval and early modern periods, it was also used as a literary language among Slavs. It stemmed from the Old Church Slavonic (9th-10th centuries), and later developed by adopting various regional and dialectal influences from local Slavic vernaculars, thus branching into several varieties, also called recensions, or redactions.
In its conservative form, that was standardized in the 18th century, it is used today by Eastern Orthodox churches in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia and Slovakia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. The language also appears in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.