Chernorizets Hrabar

Chernorizets Hrabar (Church Slavonic: Чрьнори́зьць Хра́бръ, Črĭnorizĭcĭ Hrabrŭ, Bulgarian: Черноризец Храбър)^{[note 1][1]} was a Bulgarian^[2][3][4][5] monk, scholar and writer who worked at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century.^[6] He is credited as the author of On the Letters.

Name and historicity

His appellation is correctly translated as "Hrabar, the Black Robe Wearer" (i.e., Hrabar The Monk), chernorizets being the lowest rank in the monastic hierarchy (translatable as "black robe-wearer", see wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/čьrnъ and wikt:riza), "Hrabar" ("Hrabr")^{[note 2][7]} supposed to be his given name. However, sometimes he is referred to as "Chernorizets the Brave", "the Brave One"^[8] or "Brave" which is the translation of Hrabar assumed to be a nickname.

The authorship of his work and his identity have been a matter of scholarly debate.^[9] His name has been theorized as a pseudonym used by some of the other famous men of letters such as Constantine, John the Exarch, Clement of Ohrid or even by Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria himself.^[10][11]

On the Letters

A page from the oldest (1348) copy

Chernorizets Hrabar is the credited author of only one literary work, "On the Letters" (Church Slavonic: О писмєньхъ, O pismenĭhŭ, Bulgarian: За буквите), a popular medieval treatise written in Old Church Slavonic.^[10][12][13] The work was written in the late ninth or early tenth century.^[2][10] It was partly based on Greek scholia and grammar treatises and expounded on the origin of the Glagolitic alphabet and Slavic Bible translation.^[14]

He also provided information critical to Slavonic paleography with his mention that the pre-Christian Slavs employed "strokes and incisions" (Church Slavonic: чръты и рѣзы, črŭty i rězy, translated as "tallies and sketches" below) writing that was, apparently, insufficient properly to reflect the spoken language. It is thought that this may have been a form of runic script but no authentic examples are known to have survived. The dominant view among scholars is that Hrabar was defending Slavonic in response to Greek criticism, while others have argued that his text was a defense of Glagolithic against Cyrillic.^[15][11][8]

Manuscript copies

The manuscript of On the Letters has been preserved in 79 copies in seven families of texts, including five contaminated manuscripts, plus four abridgements independent of the seven families.^[14] All of these families probably ultimately share a common protograph.^[14] Not one of the textual families contains an optimal text, and none of them can be established to be the source of any other.^[14] None of the text families can be shown to have dialectal features, albeit some of the individual manuscripts in the families do have them.^[14] The protograph was written in Glagolitic, and it underwent significant change or corruption in the course of its successive transcription into seven families of Cyrillic texts.^[14] Today only Cyrillic manuscripts survive.^[14] The hyparchetypes of all seven families give the number of the letters in the alphabet as 38, but the original Glagolitic alphabet had only 36, as attested in the acrostic of Constantine of Preslav; however, one of the abridgements instead gives the number as 37 and another gives it as 42.^[14]

The oldest surviving manuscript copy dates back to 1348 and was made by the monk Laurentius for Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria.^[16] The work has also been printed in Vilnius (1575–1580), Moscow (1637), Saint Petersburg (1776), Supraśl (1781). It is the earliest printed work of an early Bulgarian author, included as part of the 1578 version of Ivan Fеdorov's East Slav primer.^[5]

Excerpt

Прѣжде ѹбо словѣне не имѣхѫ писменъ · нѫ чрътами и рѣзами чьтѣхѫ и гатаахѫ погани сѫще · кръстивше же сѧ · римьсками и гръчьскыми писмены · нѫждаахѫ сѧ словѣнскы рѣчь безъ устроениа... Потомже чл҃колюбецъ б҃ъ... посла имь ст҃го Кѡнстантина философа · нарицаемаго Кирила · мѫжа праведна и истинна · и сътвори имъ · л҃ писмена и осмь · ѡва убѡ по чинѹ Гръчьскъıхь писменъ · ѡва же по словѣнъстѣи рѣчи

Being still pagans, the Slavs did not have their own letters, but read and communicated by means of tallies and sketches.^{[note 3]} After their baptism they were forced to use Roman and Greek letters in the transcription of their Slavic words but these were not suitable ...^{[note 4]} At last, God, in his love for mankind, sent them St. Constantine the Philosopher, called Cyril, a learned and upright man, who composed for them thirty-eight letters, some (24 of them) similar to the Greek, but some (14 of them) different, suitable to express Slavic sounds.^[who?]

Legacy

Hrabar Nunatak on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, is named for Chernorizets Hrabar.

See also

• Cosmas the Priest
• Pre-Christian Slavic writing
• History of Bulgaria

Footnotes

1. Sometimes modernized as Chernorizetz Hrabar, Chernorizets Hrabr or Crnorizec Hrabar
2. Other spellings include: Khrabr (in Russian), Khrabǎr (in Bulgarian), Xrabr and Chrabr (in German and French).
3. Note: "by means of tallies and sketches" - the original "чрътами и рѣзами" is literally translated as "by means of drawn and cut drawings", i.e., "by means of strokes and incisions"
4. In this place are listed eleven examples of Slavic words, such as "живѣтъ" /živětŭ/ "life", which can be hardly written using the unadapted Roman or Greek letters (i.e. without diacritic changing their sound-values).

Notes

1. Куйо М. Куев (1967). Черноризец Храбър (in Bulgarian). Изд-во на Българската академия на науките.
2. A history of East Central Europe: East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, Jean W. Sedlar, University of Washington Press, 1994, p. 430., ISBN 0-295-97290-4
3. Dimitri Obolensky (2004). The Bogomils: A Study in Balkan Neo-Manichaeism. Cambridge University Press. p. 92. ISBN 0-521-60763-9.
4. Omoniyi, Tope; Fishman, Joshua, eds. (2006). Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion. John Benjamins Publishing. p. 61. ISBN 978-902-722-710-2.
5. Simon Franklin (2019). The Russian Graphosphere, 1450-1850. Cambridge University Press. p. 46. ISBN 978-110-849-257-7.
6. A concise history of Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 16-17., ISBN 0-521-61637-9
7. Gasparov, Boris; Hughes, Olga Raevsky, eds. (1993). Slavic Cultures in the Middle Ages, Volume 1. University of California Press. p. 8. ISBN 9780520079458.
8. John Van Antwerp Fine (1991). The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century. University of Michigan Press. pp. 134–137. ISBN 978-047-208-149-3.
9. Florin Curta (2019). Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1300) (2 vols). BRILL. p. 219. ISBN 978-9-004-39519-0.
10. Kiril Petkov (2008). The Voices of Medieval Bulgaria, Seventh-Fifteenth Century: The Records of a Bygone Culture. BRILL. pp. 65–68. ISBN 978-904-743-375-0.
11. Robert Browning (1975). Byzantium and Bulgaria: A Comparative Study Across the Early Medieval Frontier. Temple Smith. pp. 156, 180. ISBN 0-8511-7064-1.
12. Simon Franklin (2002). Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c.950–1300. Cambridge University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-113-943-454-6.
13. Florin Curta (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500-1250. Cambridge University Press. p. 215. ISBN 0-521-81539-8.
14. William Veder (1996), Textual Incompatibility and Many-Pronged Stemmata.
15. Francis Dvornik (1970). Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius. Rutgers University Press. pp. 250–251. ISBN 0-813-50613-1.
16. Alexander M. Schenker (1995). The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology. Yale University Press. p. 227. ISBN 978-030-005-846-8.