Writing letters are means to communicate over space and time. Generally, it could be any system of visual forms (drawings, figures, symbols, signs and combinations thereof) that are intended for the purpose of memorizing and providing information; more specifi-cally defined writing is a system of signs that represent certain elements of spoken language: words, syllables and sounds. In the end 9th century the first Slavic writing appeared: glagoljica, including 38 letters.
The name is related to the Old Slavic verb – glagolati, i.e. to speak. The system of writing was established by the brothers Ćirilo and Metodije, who are assumed as the founders of the Slavic literacy. Since this is a dificult to realise and rather complex system of writing, in the 10th century, among Slavs in Bulgaria, a simpler and easibly readible system of writing – ćirilica appeared. These writing letters originated from the Greek consitutional, liturgical letters, where from 24 letters were adopted. For the Old Slavic sounds that could not be found in the Greek language, special letters were created, mostly respective to glagoljica letters.
As the first dated memorial of Cyrillic writing we assumed the Samuilo inscription from 993. The earliest preserved Serbian manuscript in Cyrillic writing is Miroslavljevo jevanđelje (the Gospel of Miroslav) of the late 12th century, and the first book in the Balkans that was printed in Cyrillic was Oktoih Osmoglasnik. The printing of this book was completed on 04.01.1494 in the printing shop of Đurađ Crnojević in Obod near Cetinje, which was run by the monk Makarije. The Gospel of Miroslav is the major and the most prominent monument of the Serbian literacy of the 12th century. It was worked out about 1185, probably in Kotor, on the order of Miroslav, the knez of Zahumlje, who used to be a brother of Stefan Nemanja, the great count of Raška, and for the use of the church St. Peter in Bijelo Polje. The greatest part of gospel text is the doing of unknown copyist (called Varsemeleon for
research purposes), while dijak Gligorije, another copyist, wrote the final part of the manuscript, several short notes and complited it with ornaments. Until 1896 the manuscript had been stored in Hilandar, when it was given as a gift to Aleksandar Obrenović on the occasion of his visit to Athos. Today the manuscript is stored preserved in the National Museum of Belgrade.
It was in Russia during the rule of Petar the Great, in the early 18th century, that the Old Church Slavic Cyrillic writing was replaced by so called civil Cyrillic. The purpose of the reform initiated by Peter the Great was that the old Cyrillic forms are harmonized with the modern European forms of Latin writing. Eventually the reform of the Serbian Cyrillic writing was implemented by Vuk Karadžić in 1818: unnecessary letters of the Russian alphabet were left out, and six new letters were introduced in the Serbian alphabet (ć, đ, lj, nj, j and dž). The Cyrillic writing by Vuk was officially recognized only I n 1868. It represents the most consistent phonetic writing in the world.
The both writings, glagoljica and Cyrillic, were created for the Old Slavic language, which was the first Slavic literary language (10th-12th century), which today it is not mother tongue of any Slavic nation. Gradually, this language assumed certain features of the colloquial language spoken within the people and there from originated the Serbian edition of the Old Slavic, which is called the Serbian Slavic language. Russians and Bulgarians shared the same experience.
The Serbian Slavic language was used in ecclestiastical writings from 12th to the first half 18th century, when the Russian Slavic was adopted as ecclestiastical and literary language.
Introducing the linguistic and orthography reform of Vuk Karadžić in 1818 the literary language was changed, while the Serbian Orthodox Church maintained the Russian Slavic in use for religious service. According to the words St. Apostle Paul, Christian family is a small church. Just as each Christian church is dedicated to one saint that is praised as a patron, so a Serbian familiy used to be put under patronage of one saint, to whom they address their prayers before God and whom they respect as the family patron. To the saint patron Serbian families dedicate and maintain regular feasts 3).
Family feast is a glorious expression of the Serbian otrodox faith and a specific feature of national identity, since these rites are maintained with Serbs only.
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