Inventing Slavonic: cultures of writing between Rome and Constantinople

Thesis

This thesis offers a study of changing ideas about and attitudes toward writing, as they are expressed in the earliest texts concerned with the invention of the Slavonic alphabet and its legendary ninth-century inventor, the Byzantine diplomat, Constantine-Cyril. It is divided into three case studies, each focusing on the three major texts narrating the invention of Slavonic and dating to the late ninth and early tenth centuries: the Life of Constantine-Cyril, the Life of Methodios, Cyril’s brother, and On Letters, a treatise written in defence of the new alphabet.

In contrast with existing scholarship which largely accepts these texts as telling a unified, monolithic story of the birth of Slavonic culture, the thesis approaches each text as an intellectual monument, that sought to make an intervention into a specific set of socio-political circumstances. In so doing it reveals the intricate ways in which early medieval authors in Central and Eastern Europe navigated through Greek and Latin language intellectual culture, in order to compose and compile texts and thus propagate specific agendas. Moreover, it demonstrates the complex and profound ways in which the Slavonic alphabet was invented and reinvented in this process, and how this multitude of ideas about writing, albeit present in the medieval sources, has been flattened by modern historiography.

Authors: Ivanova, M

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-koj40op1j
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: Greek, Ancient (to 1453) and English
• Keywords: slavonic; medieval; culture; hagiography; written; nationalism; history; byzantine
• Subjects: Middle Ages; History; Byzantine Empire--History--527-1081; Church Slavic language; Christian hagiography--History--To 1500