The existence of the calumniated alphabet at a period
cotemporary with the oldest Cyrillic manuscript known (the Evangelium
of Ostromir), was a death-blow to the above singular narrative.
Kopitar published the newly discovered Codex, accompanied by a
thundering philippic against the defenders of the former theory, and
in favour of the antiquity of the Glagolitic alphabet, and of the
Pannonian origin of the Slavic liturgy.[16] But here the matter
rested. Nothing has since been discovered, (so far as we are
informed,) to throw light on the first invention or introduction of
this alphabet; no connecting link to explain its relation to the
Cyrillic forms of writing.
According to Vostokof, a Russian scholar of great learning, and one of
the principal names in Old Slavic literature,[17] the history of the
Old Slavic or Church language and its literary cultivation, may be
divided into three periods:
1. From Cyril, or from the ninth century, to the thirteenth century.
This is the _ancient_ genuine Slavonic; as appears from the
manuscripts of that period.
2. From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. This is the _middle_
age of the Slavonic, as altered gradually by Russian copyists, and
full of Russisms.
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