Old Belarusian Language - Rise and Decline

Rise and Decline

In the 14th century, the emerging Old Belarusian language had already been enjoying the wide-scale ubiquity of use in the GDL, being spoken and written from the lower classes to the nobility, non-Slavonic included, to the Grand Dukes of Lithuania themselves, from the vernacular to the state documents.

In the 15th—16th century, and partially in the 17th century, the Old Belarusian in the GDL had been the prevalent language of the state, diplomatic, business and private letters, the documents of the town, land, castle offices, town halls, magistrates, magdeburgies, the inventories and revisions of the estates, the indexes of the armed forces, even in the ethnic Lithuanian lands of the GDL. The major part of the documents of the Lithuanian Metrica of the 15th – 16th century had been composed in Old Belarusian (see also: Denomination of office language, Languages of Lithuanian Metrica). The Royal Chancelleries of Krakow and Warsaw had been composing the official correspondence to the GDL in Old Belarusian. The Codes of Law of the GDL had been written in the Old Belarusian.

The Old Belarusian became the 3rd Slavonic language, after the Czech and Polish, in which the printing had begun. The first book in Old Belarusian had been printed by Skaryna in Prague (1517). Later in the 16th century, the center of the printing activity done in the Old Belarusian had moved to the Vilnia.

The Old Belarusian had been the language of the belletrists, publicists, memoirists, religious polemics, hamiletics, angiography, etc. The Old Belarusian had seen the translations of the Western knight novels, historical chronicles and apocryphal works.

After the political changes happening during the end 14th—15th century, the general decline of the Old Belarusian culture in the GDL in favour of Polish had been progressing throughout the 16th and 17th century, despite being decried and lamented by various publicists, like, e.g., by Tyapinski in the foreword to his «Scriptures» (1570) The events had taken the especially unfavourable turn in the 1570s, with the beginning and progressing of the Counter-Reformation in Commonwealth, as the Orthodox and Protestants had constituted the major part of the Old Belarusian language userbase. The Commonwealth Inquisition’s «Index of Books Forbidden» (issued since 1603) had included many of the Old Belarusian and Lithuanian publications.

The 16th—17th century political opposition to the ongoing Polonisation manifested itself, e.g., in the article in the 1566 Code of Law (Statute), declaring the Old Belarusian. as the only allowed language of the office in the GDL. The article had been maintained in the 1588 edition, and even in Statute's re-publication in Polish language (1614). See also: Golden age of Belarusian history.

As more and more of the upper and, following them, middle classes had been embracing the Polonisation, the effective usage of the Old Belarusian had been dwindling. By the middle of the 17th century, the only significant amount of printing in the Old Belarusian was done by Orthodox church. However, even the language of the Orthodox-written texts, in a pursuit of «attractiveness» had been by then heavily infested with Polonisms, diverting considerably not only from the vernacular language, but from the earlier Old Belarusian literary tradition as well. Notably, since 1626 all of the anti-Greek-Catholic Orthodox polemic had been published completely in Polish language.

By the 2nd quarter 17th century, the Old Belarusian (literary) language had effectively incorporated the multitude of the Polish language’s elements, and therefore had become highly artificial and partially just unfit for the real live use, losing the connection with its live vernacular foundations. The literary language of the epoch, especially after the transfer of the center of the Orthodox printing to Kiev (c.1610s), could not even be considered truly Old Belarusian anymore.

In 1696, the General Confederation of Estates had decreed the cancellation of the use of the Old Belarusian language in the role of the language of office and court.

While surviving among smaller nobility and urban dwellers even in the beginning of the 19th century, effectively Old Belarusian was relegated to the role of plebes vernacular talk, with almost no printing in it happening, and with only schools using it in education being the schools run by the Basilian order.

In the 19th century, the remnants of Old Belarusian served as the basis for the developing of the Modern Belarusian language.