Section VIII.—LITERATURE AND LANGUAGES.
Forthose who bestow their attention upon Literature and Languages, this collection must have, at times, an especial value, whichever way their choice may lead them, whether towards subjects of biblical, classic or mediæval study: proofs of this, we think, may be gathered, up and down the whole of this “Introduction.” With regard to our own country, we deem it quite impossible for any one among us to properly know the doings, in private and in public, throughout this land in by-gone days, or to take in all the beauty of many a passage in our prose writers, much less understand several particulars in the poetry of the middle ages, without an acquaintance, such as may be made here, with the textiles and needlework of that period.
To the student of languages, it may seem, at first sight, that he will have nothing to learn by coming hither. When he looks at those two very curious and interesting pieces, Nos.1297, p. 296;1465, p. 298, and has read the scrolls traced upon them, he may perhaps, if he be in search of the older forms of German speech, have to change his mind: of the words, so often to be met with here, in real or pretended Arabic, we say nothing. To almost every one among our English students of languages there is one inscription done in needlework quite unreadable. AtNo. 8278, p. 170, going round the four sides of this liturgical appliance, are sentences in Greek, borrowed from the ritual, but hidden to the Greek scholar’s eye, under the so-called Cyrillian character.
Toward the second half of the ninth century, a monk, known in his cloister under the name of Constantine, but afterwards, when a bishop, as Cyrillus, became earnestly wishful of bringing all the many tribes of the Sclavonic race to a knowledge of Christianity; and warming in the heart of his brother Methodius a like hope, they both bethought themselves, the sooner to succeed, of inventing an alphabet which should be better adapted for that purpose than either the Greek or the Latin one; and because its invention is owing, for the greater part, to St. Cyril, it immediately took, and still keeps, its name from him, and is now denominated Cyrillian. Of this invention we are told by Pope John VIII. to whom the two brothers had gone together, to ask authority and crave his blessing for their undertaking: “Letteras Sclavonicas, a Constantino quodam philosopho repertas, quibus Deo laudes debitæ resonant. Ep. ad Svaplukum, apud Dobrowsky, Institutiones Linguæ Slavicæ.” This great and successful missionary took not any Gothic, but a Greek model for his letters, as is shown by Dobrowsky. The Sclaves who follow the Greek rite, use the Cyrillian letters in their liturgical books, while those of the same people who use the Latin rite employ, in their service, the Glagolitic alphabet, which was drawn up in the thirteenth century. The probability is that this latter—a modification of the Cyrillian, is no older than that period, and is not from the hand, as supposed by some, of St. Jerom.
A short time ago, the Sclaves celebrated with great splendour the thousandth anniversary of St. Cyril, to whom they owe their Christianity and their alphabet; and among the beautiful wall paintings lately brought to light in the lower church of St. Clement at Rome, by the zealous labours of Father Malooly, an Irish Dominican, the translation of St. Cyril’s body from the Vatican, to that church, is figured.