For those who bestow their attention upon Literature and Languages,
this collection must have, at times, an especial value, whichever way
their choice may lead them, whether towards subjects of biblical,
classic or mediæval study: proofs of this, we think, may be gathered,
up and down the whole of this “Introduction.” With regard to our own
country, we deem it quite impossible for any one among us to properly
know the doings, in private and in public, throughout this land in
by-gone days, or to take in all the beauty of many a passage in our
prose writers, much less understand several particulars in the poetry
of the middle ages, without an acquaintance, such as may be made here,
with the textiles and needlework of that period.
To the student of languages, it may seem, at first sight, that he will
have nothing to learn by coming hither. When he looks at those two
very curious and interesting pieces, Nos. 1297, p. 296; 1465, p. 298,
and has read the scrolls traced upon them, he may perhaps, if he be in
search of the older forms of German speech, have to change his mind: of
the words, so often to be met with here, in real or pretended Arabic,
we say nothing. To almost every one among our English students of
languages there is one inscription done in needlework quite unreadable.
At No. 8278, p. 170, going round the four sides of this liturgical
appliance, are sentences in Greek, borrowed from the ritual, but hidden
to the Greek scholar’s eye, under the so-called Cyrillian character.
Toward the second half of the ninth century, a monk, known in his
cloister under the name of Constantine, but afterwards, when a bishop,
as Cyrillus, became earnestly wishful of bringing all the many tribes
of the Sclavonic race to a knowledge of Christianity; and warming in
the heart of his brother Methodius a like hope, they both bethought
themselves, the sooner to succeed, of inventing an alphabet which
should be better adapted for that purpose than either the Greek or the
Latin one; and because its invention is owing, for the greater part,
to St. Cyril, it immediately took, and still keeps, its name from him,
and is now denominated Cyrillian. Of this invention we are told by Pope
John VIII. to whom the two brothers had gone together, to ask authority
and crave his blessing for their undertaking: “Letteras Sclavonicas,
a Constantino quodam philosopho repertas, quibus Deo laudes debitæ
resonant. Ep. ad Svaplukum, apud Dobrowsky, Institutiones Linguæ
Slavicæ.” This great and successful missionary took not any Gothic,
but a Greek model for his letters, as is shown by Dobrowsky. The
Sclaves who follow the Greek rite, use the Cyrillian letters in their
liturgical books, while those of the same people who use the Latin rite
employ, in their service, the Glagolitic alphabet, which was drawn
up in the thirteenth century. The probability is that this latter--a
modification of the Cyrillian, is no older than that period, and is not
from the hand, as supposed by some, of St. Jerom.
A short time ago, the Sclaves celebrated with great splendour
the thousandth anniversary of St. Cyril, to whom they owe their
Christianity and their alphabet; and among the beautiful wall paintings
lately brought to light in the lower church of St. Clement at Rome,
by the zealous labours of Father Malooly, an Irish Dominican, the
translation of St. Cyril’s body from the Vatican, to that church, is
figured.