Glagolitic Script

Devised by St. Cyril the Philosopher in the early 860s, the Glagolitic script is the most ancient attested Slavic script. Created for the christianizing mission of Sts. Cyril and Methodius to the Slavs of the Greater Moravian Empire, Glagolitic was used to render in writing the Old Church Slavic language that became the basis for the liturgical language known today as Church Slavic. Originally used in Pannonia (i.e., a region encompassing parts of present-day western Hungary, eastern Austria, northern Slovenia, northern Croatia, north-western Serbia, northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and southern Slovakia) and Moravia, Glagolitic writing spread to western Bulgaria and Macedonia in the late 9th and early 10th centuries; it also diffused west to Croatia and, to a more limited extent, east to eastern Bulgaria and Russia. Glagolitic died out early in Moravia and other northwestern regions of the Slavic world, where it was replaced by Roman script (and Latin as a liturgical language). In the south and east, Glagolitic was superseded by the Cyrillic script by the 14th century, except in the region of Dalmatia in Croatia, where, having assumed an angular variant form called “uglata glagolicja”, it continued to serve as the script for liturgical books written either in the Croatian recension, or dialect, of Church Slavic or in Croatian until the 20th century.

In modern times, Glagolitic texts have most frequently been published in philological editions, the titles of which are given in modern scholarly languages and, in those cases, there is no need to transcribe the Glagolitic script in bibliographical records. However, on occasion, catalogers may encounter Glagolitic when working with pre-20th century Croatian liturgical books and, in such cases, it may be necessary to transcribe a Glagolitic title in a bibliographical record.

Currently, the ALA-LC does not have a romanization table for Glagolitic. The present chapter seeks to fill this lacuna by giving a link to a table that maps Glagolitic letters to their Cyrillic counterparts, which, in turn, are mapped to their roman equivalents in accordance with the ALA-LC romanization table for Church Slavic. The forms of the uglata glagolicja letters deviate to some degree from those of the “classical” form of Glagolitic and also feature a much more pronounced use of ligatures, whereby two or more letters are combined into a single composite letter: accordingly, a link to a separate table for this form of the Glagolitic script has been provided as well. Because, as mentioned earlier, the uglata glagolicja script was used to write Croatian liturgical texts, the transliteration of this second table is into Croatian, rather than Old Church Slavic, letter values. These tables are followed by information on Glagolitic numbers, on rendering Glagolitic in the OCLC Connexion environment, and on language notes for Glagolitic.

1. Link to Glagolitic and uglata glagolicja script conversion tables (note: also attached at end of this page)

Glagolitic Script Conversion Table

Uglata Glagolicja Script Conversion Table

2. Numbers in Glagolitic

When a Glagolitic letter is used as a number, a line, known as a titlo, is placed over it to indicate its numerical status: for example,

Uglata glagolicja script uses either a titlo over letters or dots at the side of letters to indicate numerals: for example,

Two points should be noted about the preceding examples of numbers in uglata glagoljica script. First, as the initial example shows, the numbers are written in such a way that the “tens” digit follows, rather than precedes, the “unit” digit: thus, the “13” is not written as “10[+]3” but rather as “3[+]10”. Second,when the “side dot” notation for numerals is used, the following rule prevails. If a letter represents a “unit”, “tens”, or “hundreds” digit, the dot indicating its numerical character is placed after it (i.e., to its right). If the letter represents a “thousands” digit, the dot precedes it (i.e., is placed to its left).

The old Cyrillic script used to write Church Slavic follows the same convention of placing a titlo over letters to indicate that they are serving as numbers, but the number values assigned to Cyrillic letters are, in many cases, different from those assigned to their Glagolitic counterparts.

3. Glagolitic script and parallel fields

The OCLC Connexion software currently does not support the use of Glagolitic script in parallel vernacular-script fields. Thus, parallel fields cannot be added to romanized fields for Glagolitic text.

4. Glagolitic script and language notes

As noted earlier, the Glagolitic script was used primarily to write texts in Church Slavic. Because Church Slavic came, in time, to be written primarily in Cyrillic script, texts in Glagolitic script are relatively rare. For languages written in more than one script, AACR2 1.7.B2 and the LCRI pertaining to it as well as RDA 7.13.2 and the LC-PCC PS relating thereto prescribe indicating the script in a language note if the resource in question is written in the less usual script. For Church Slavic, then, this means that, if a resource contains Glagolitic texts, the presence of this script should be indicated in a language note. In MARC format, such notes will typically take the following form:

546 Church Slavic; ǂb Glagolitic.

The same holds in the case of Croatian liturgical texts written in uglata glagolicja:

546 Croatian; ǂb Glagolitic.