Church Slavonic Language

Church Slavonic Language

Church Slavonic is the primary liturgical language of the Orthodox Church in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It is also used in the Orthodox churches of Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Poland, and it occasionally appears in the services of the American and the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church. It is the most widely used liturgical language in the Orthodox Church. It is also used by churches not in communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church, such as the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Russian True Orthodox Church, and others.

In addition, Church Slavonic is sometimes used by Greek Catholic Churches in Slavic countries, for example the Croatian and Ruthenian Greek Catholics.

Historically, this language is derived from Old Church Slavonic by adapting pronunciation and orthography and replacing some old and obscure words and expressions with their vernacular counterparts (for example from the Old East Slavic language). Attestation of Church Slavonic traditions appear in Early Cyrillic and Glagolitic script. Glagolitic has nowadays fallen out of use, though both scripts were used from the earliest attested period. The first Church Slavonic printed book was the Croatian Missale Romanum Glagolitice (1483) in Croatian angular Glagolitic, followed shortly by five Cyrillic liturgical books printed in Kraków in 1491.