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.
Read more about Church Slavonic Language: Recensions, Grammar and Style
Famous quotes containing the words church and/or language:
“It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)