When painters depict on tablets and on walls the events of ancient history, their delineations delight the eye, and preserve the remembrance of the past. But historians substitute books for canvass, flowery eloquence for brilliant colours, and thus render the recollection of past events much more vivid and permanent. Besides, as the most skilful productions of painting are liable to be destroyed by time, I have undertaken to record in writing events hitherto omitted in ecclesiastical history, lest so many illustrious actions and incidents so deserving of fame, should be suffered to sink into oblivion. In addition to all this, I have been very frequently urged by my friends to undertake this work. But when I compared my own powers with the magnitude of the undertaking, I shrank from attempting it. Trusting, however, in the bounty of the Giver of all good, I feel emboldened to enter upon a task beyond my own strength. Aeterna Press

In this meticulously researched study, Mirela Ivanova offers a new critical history of the invention of the Slavonic alphabet. Showing how the alphabet was not invented once, but rather continually contested and redefined in the century following its creation, Ivanova challenges the prevalent nationalist historiography that has built up around it.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1870.