Cyrillic script and Related Topics

Saint George's Cathedral, Istanbul, Turkey

Eastern Orthodox Church

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Second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members.

Christ Pantocrator, sixth century, Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai; the oldest known icon of Christ, in one of the oldest monasteries in the world

Emperor Constantine presents a representation of the city of Constantinople as tribute to an enthroned Mary and baby Jesus in this church mosaic (Hagia Sophia, c. 1000)

An icon of Saint John the Baptist, 14th century, North Macedonia

Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325) holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381.

Hagia Sophia, the largest church in the world and patriarchal basilica of Constantinople for nearly a thousand years, later converted into a mosque, then a museum, then back to a mosque.

The baptism of Princess Olga in Constantinople, a miniature from the Radzivill Chronicle

Latin Crusaders sacking the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Orthodox controlled Byzantine Empire, in 1204.

Timeline showing the main autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Churches, from an Eastern Orthodox point of view, up to 2021

Canonical territories of the main autocephalous and autonomous Eastern Orthodox jurisdictions as of 2020

Percentage distribution of Eastern Orthodox Christians by country

Our Lady of Tinos is the major Marian shrine in Greece.

The Theotokos of Vladimir, one of the most venerated of Orthodox Christian icons of the Virgin Mary

Last Judgment: 12th-century Byzantine mosaic from Torcello Cathedral

David glorified by the women of Israel from the Paris Psalter, example of the Macedonian art (Byzantine) (sometimes called the Macedonian Renaissance)

Chanters singing on the kliros at the Church of St. George, Patriarchate of Constantinople

An illustration of the traditional interior of an Orthodox church.

Shards of pottery vases on the street, after being thrown from the windows of nearby houses. A Holy Saturday tradition in Corfu.

Eucharistic elements prepared for the Divine Liturgy

The wedding of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Eastern Orthodox subdeacon being ordained to the diaconate. The bishop has placed his omophorion and right hand on the head of the candidate and is reading the Prayer of Cheirotonia.

The consecration of the Rt Rev. Reginald Heber Weller as an Anglican bishop at the Cathedral of St. Paul the Apostle in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, with the Rt. Rev. Anthony Kozlowski of the Polish National Catholic Church and Saint Tikhon, then Bishop of the Aleutians and Alaska (along with his chaplains Fr. John Kochurov and Fr. Sebastian Dabovich) of the Russian Orthodox Church present

Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew I in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, 2014

The Constantinople Massacre of April 1821: a religious persecution of the Greek population of Constantinople under the Ottomans. Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople was executed.

The Pan-Orthodox Council, Kolymvari, Crete, Greece, June 2016

Patriarchate of Peć in Kosovo, the seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church from the 14th century when its status was upgraded into a patriarchate

Traditional Paschal procession by Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church

Greek Orthodox massacred during the Greek Genocide in Smyrna in 1922.

A major event in this effort was the development of the Cyrillic script in Bulgaria, at the Preslav Literary School in the ninth century; this script, along with the liturgical Old Church Slavonic, also called Old Bulgarian, were declared official in Bulgaria in 893.

The lower-case "a" and upper-case "A" are the two case variants of the first letter in the English alphabet.

Letter case

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Distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals and smaller lowercase (or more formally minuscule) in the written representation of certain languages.

Ascenders (as in "h") and descenders (as in "p") make the height of lower-case letters vary.

Adyghe Latin alphabet, used between 1927 and 1938, was based on Latin script, but did not have capital letters, being unicameral.

Alternating all-caps and headline styles at the start of a New York Times report published in November 1919. (The event reported is Arthur Eddington's test of Einstein's theory of general relativity.)

Steve Jobs's signature as seen on the inner side of the original Macintosh, using lower case cursive

Of the seven SI base-unit symbols, "A" (ampere for electric current) and "K" (kelvin for temperature), both named after people, are always written in upper case, whereas "s" (second for time), "m" (metre for length), "kg" (kilogram for mass), "cd" (candela for luminous intensity), and "mol" (mole for amount of substance) are written in lower case.

Languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Adlam, Warang Citi, Cherokee, Garay, Zaghawa, and Osage scripts use letter cases in their written form as an aid to clarity.

Eastern Europe

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Ambiguous term that refers to the eastern portions of the European continent.

Traditional cultural borders of Europe: usage recommendation by the Standing Committee on Geographical Names, Germany.

Expansion of Christianity<ref>{{cite web|url=http://rbedrosian.com/Maps/ahgh66b.htm |title=Atlas of the Historical Geography of the Holy Land |publisher=Rbedrosian.com |access-date=23 February 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130610034842/http://rbedrosian.com/Maps/ahgh66b.htm |archive-date=10 June 2013 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://home.comcast.net/~DiazStudents/MiddleAgesChurchMap1.jpg |title=home.comcast.net |access-date=23 February 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130213233630/http://home.comcast.net/~DiazStudents/MiddleAgesChurchMap1.jpg |archive-date=February 13, 2013 }}</ref>

European regional grouping according to CIA World Factbook Eastern Europe here is mainly equivalent to the European part of the former Soviet UnionNorthern Europe
Western Europe
Central Europe
Southwest Europe
Southern Europe
Southeast Europe

Regions used for statistical processing purposes by the United Nations Statistics Division Eastern EuropeNorthern Europe
Southern Europe
Western Europe

European sub-regions according to EuroVoc Central and Eastern EuropeWestern Europe
Southern Europe
Northern Europe

Pre-1989 division between the "West" (grey) and "Eastern Bloc" (orange) superimposed on current borders:
Russia (the former RSFSR)
Other countries formerly part of the USSR
Members of the Warsaw Pact
Other former Communist states not aligned with Moscow

The parts of Eastern Europe which remained Eastern Orthodox was dominated by Byzantine cultural influence; after the East–West Schism in 1054, significant parts of Eastern Europe developed cultural unity and resistance to the Catholic (and later also Protestant) Western Europe within the framework of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Church Slavonic language and the Cyrillic alphabet.

Simeon I of Bulgaria

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Tsar Simeon (also Symeon) I the Great (цѣсар҄ь Сѷмеѡ́нъ А҃ Вели́къ цар Симеон I Велики Συμεών Αʹ ὁ Μέγας) ruled over Bulgaria from 893 to 927, during the First Bulgarian Empire.

Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Simeon I

Simeon I's army defeating the Byzantines, led by Procopius Crenites and Curtacius the Armenian in Macedonia. From the Madrid Skylitzes.

The Bulgarians routing the Byzantine forces at Bulgarophygon in 896. From the Madrid Skylitzes.

Map of the progress of the Battle of Acheloos or Anchialos

The Bulgarian victory at Anchialos, Madrid Skylitzes.

Byzantine Emperor Romanos I Lekapenos negotiating with Simeon I of Bulgaria c. 922–924. miniature of the Radziwill Chronicle (15th century).

Simeon sending envoys to the Fatimids, Madrid Skylitzes.

Ceramic icon of Theodore Stratelates dating to Simeon's reign

The Bulgarian Tsar Simeon: The Morning Star of Slavonic Literature (1923), by Alphonse Mucha, The Slav Epic

The newly independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church became the first new patriarchate besides the Pentarchy, and Bulgarian Glagolitic and Cyrillic translations of Christian texts spread all over the Slavic world of the time.

Early Cyrillic alphabet

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Writing system that was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the late 9th century on the basis of the Greek alphabet for the Slavic people living near the Byzantine Empire in South East and Central Europe.

Bulgar translation of Manasses chronicle

Capital letters of the early Cyrillic alphabet

The modern Cyrillic script is still used primarily for some Slavic languages (such as Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Russian and Ukrainian), and for East European and Asian languages that have experienced a great amount of Russian cultural influence.

Schematic depiction according to genetic studies by Alena Kushniarevich

Ukrainian language

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East Slavic language of the Indo-European language family.

Percentage of people with Ukrainian as their native language according to 2001 census (by region).

Domini Georgi Regis Russiae; Lord George (Yuri), the King of Rus

King's seal of Yuri I of Halych (reign: 1301–1308) "S[igillum] Domini Georgi Regis Rusie" (left), "S[igillum] Domini Georgi Ducis Ladimerie" (right).

"Moneta Rvssie" coined in 1382 based on groschen

Miniature of St Luke from the Peresopnytsia Gospels (1561).

Ukrainian speakers in the Russian Empire (1897)

The Ukrainian text in this Soviet poster reads: "The social base of the USSR is an unbreakable union of the workers, peasants and intelligentsia".

The 1921 Soviet recruitment poster. It uses traditional Ukrainian imagery with Ukrainian-language text: "Son! Enroll in the school of Red commanders, and the defense of Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."

Anti-russification protest. The banner reads "Ukrainian school for Ukrainian kids!".

While Russian was a de facto official language of the Soviet Union in all but formal name, all national languages were proclaimed equal. The name and denomination of Soviet banknotes were listed in the languages of all fifteen Soviet republics. On this 1961 one-ruble note, the Ukrainian for "one ruble", один карбованець (odyn karbovanets`), directly follows the Russian один рубль (odin rubl`).

Fluency in Ukrainian (purple column) and Russian (blue column) in 1989 and 2001

Modern signs in the Kyiv Metro are in Ukrainian. The evolution in their language followed the changes in the language policies in post-war Ukraine. Originally, all signs and voice announcements in the metro were in Ukrainian, but their language was changed to Russian in the early 1980s, at the height of Shcherbytsky's gradual Russification. In the perestroika liberalization of the late 1980s, the signs were changed to bilingual. This was accompanied by bilingual voice announcements in the trains. In the early 1990s, both signs and voice announcements were changed again from bilingual to Ukrainian-only during the de-russification campaign that followed Ukraine's independence. Since 2012 the signs have been in both Ukrainian and English.

Ukrainian language traffic sign for the Ivan Franko Museum in Kryvorivnia.

Sign in both Ukrainian and Romanian languages in the village of Valea Vișeului (Vyshivska Dolyna), Bistra commune, in Romania

Ethnographic Map of Slavic and Baltic Languages

Map of Ukrainian dialects and subdialects (2005).
Northern groupSouth-eastern groupSouth-western group

Written Ukrainian uses the Ukrainian alphabet, a variant of the Cyrillic script.

Clement of Ohrid

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One of the first medieval Bulgarian saints, scholar, writer and enlightener of the Slavs.

Icon of Saint Clement, located in the Mother of God Perybleptos church, Ohrid

Fresco of St. Clement in the Church of St. Athanasius, Kastoria

Southeastern Europe in the late 9th century.

Tomb of Saint Clement within the Church of Saints Clement and Panteleimon, Ohrid, North Macedonia.

He was one of the most prominent disciples of Saints Cyril and Methodius and is often associated with the creation of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic scripts, especially their popularisation among Christianised Slavs.