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Old Church Slavonic

Also known as Ohrid Folios, Old Church Slavonic language, Old East Slavic, Old Slavonic

medieval Slavic literary language, without ISO codes, preceding Church Slavonic (Q33251, cu, chu)

AI overview

Old Church Slavonic was a medieval literary language used by Slavic peoples, developed before the later Church Slavonic language that became standardized in Orthodox Christian contexts. It matters historically because it represents one of the earliest written forms of Slavic languages and provides insight into how Slavic communities expressed themselves in religious and literary texts during the medieval period.

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Wikidata facts

Image: Oldchurchslavonic.jpg

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P10369: Warsaw
P11012: ATC code V09
P13311: Saint-Apollinaire

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Article

Old Church Slavonic (OCS) or Old Slavonic (/sləˈvɒnɪk, slæˈvɒn-/ slə-VON-ik, slav-ON-) is the first Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the Eastern South Slavic subgroup of the South Slavic branch of the Slavic language family and remains the liturgical language of many Christian Orthodox churches.

Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with standardizing the language and undertaking the task of translating the Gospels and necessary liturgical books into it as part of the Christianization of the Slavs. It is thought to have been based primarily on the dialect of the 9th-century Slavs living in the Byzantine theme of Thessalonica (in present-day Greece). The oldest manuscript is usually thought to be the Kiev Missal.