Slavonic writing is said to have begun with St. Jerome. To him is ascribed the invention of the Glagolitic alphabet, a set of symbols for Illyrian use, which seem to have no affinity to any of the familiar scripts. It cannot have obtained much currency, notwithstanding the ample sufficiency of its twenty-eight letters; as otherwise the Cyrillic alphabet (derived from the Greek, with necessary additions) would never have come into being. In any case, St. Cyril's alphabet, devised in the ninth century for the use of the Slovenes in Moravia, quite overpowered the Glagolitic of Dalmatia, and while the Croats and the Dalmatians, who came under the influence of the Koman see, retained their Glagolitic only for liturgical use, the Slavs to the east fell into communion with the Greek Church, and employed the Cyrillic letters as their national type of writing. It has lasted to the present time in its old form, in biblical and liturgical books of which the texts are ancient, but a plainer type, more like the Greek of to-day, has been adopted for modern literature. The Poles and Bohemians, and the various Slavs in Germany, have always followed the custom of Germany in writing. The Kussian alphabet is more complex than that of Servia; but it is only in modern time that the latter has been simplified. The Bulgarians, since the establishment of their autonomy, have given up the old Slovene alphabet, and adopted that of Servia.
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