Chernorizets Hrabar
Template:Short description Chernorizets Hrabar (Template:Langx, Črĭnorizĭcĭ Hrabrŭ, Template:Langx)<ref group=note>Sometimes modernized as Chernorizetz Hrabar, Chernorizets Hrabr or Crnorizec Hrabar</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> was a Bulgarian<ref name="sedlar">A history of East Central Europe: East Central Europe in the Middle Ages, 1000-1500, Jean W. Sedlar, University of Washington Press, 1994, p. 430., Template:ISBN</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="franklin">Template:Cite book</ref> monk, scholar and writer who is credited as the author of On the Letters. He worked at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century.<ref>A concise history of Bulgaria, R. J. Crampton, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 16-17., Template:ISBN</ref>
Name and historicityEdit
His appellation is correctly translated as "Hrabar, the Black Robe Wearer" (i.e., Hrabar The Monk), chernorizets being the lowest rank in the monastic hierarchy (translatable as "black robe-wearer", see wikt:Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/čьrnъ and wikt:riza), "Hrabar" ("Hrabr")<ref group=note>Other spellings include: Khrabr (in Russian), Khrabǎr (in Bulgarian), Xrabr and Chrabr (in German and French).</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> supposed to be his given name. However, sometimes he is referred to as "Chernorizets the Brave", "the Brave One"<ref name="fine">Template:Cite book</ref> or "Brave" which is the translation of Hrabar assumed to be a nickname.
The authorship of his work and his identity have been a matter of scholarly debate.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> His name has been theorized as a pseudonym used by some of the other famous men of letters such as Constantine, John the Exarch, Clement of Ohrid or even by Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria himself.<ref name="petkov">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="brown">Template:Cite book</ref>
On the Letters Template:AnchorEdit
Chernorizets Hrabar is the credited author of only one literary work, "On the Letters" (Template:Langx, O pismenĭhŭ, Template:Langx), a popular medieval treatise written in Old Church Slavonic.<ref name="petkov" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The work was written in the late ninth or early tenth century.<ref name="sedlar" /><ref name="petkov" /> It was partly based on Greek scholia and grammar treatises and expounded on the origin of the Glagolitic alphabet and Slavic Bible translation.<ref name=Veder>William Veder (1996), Textual Incompatibility and Many-Pronged Stemmata.</ref>
He also provided information critical to Slavonic paleography with his mention that the pre-Christian Slavs employed "strokes and incisions" (Template:Langx, črŭty i rězy, translated as "tallies and sketches" below) writing that was, apparently, insufficient properly to reflect the spoken language. It is thought that this may have been a form of runic script but no authentic examples are known to have survived. The dominant view among scholars is that Hrabar was defending Slavonic in response to Greek criticism, while others have argued that his text was a defense of Glagolithic against Cyrillic.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="brown" /><ref name="fine" />
Manuscript copiesEdit
The manuscript of On the Letters has been preserved in 79 copies in seven families of texts, including five contaminated manuscripts, plus four abridgements independent of the seven families.<ref name=Veder /> All of these families probably ultimately share a common protograph.<ref name=Veder /> Not one of the textual families contains an optimal text, and none of them can be established to be the source of any other.<ref name=Veder /> None of the text families can be shown to have dialectal features, albeit some of the individual manuscripts in the families do have them.<ref name=Veder /> The protograph was written in Glagolitic, and it underwent significant change or corruption in the course of its successive transcription into seven families of Cyrillic texts.<ref name=Veder /> Today only Cyrillic manuscripts survive.<ref name=Veder /> The hyparchetypes of all seven families give the number of the letters in the alphabet as 38, but the original Glagolitic alphabet had only 36, as attested in the acrostic of Constantine of Preslav; however, one of the abridgements instead gives the number as 37 and another gives it as 42.<ref name=Veder />
The oldest surviving manuscript copy dates back to 1348 and was made by the monk Laurentius for Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The work has also been printed in Vilnius (1575–1580), Moscow (1637), Saint Petersburg (1776), Supraśl (1781). It is the earliest printed work of an early Bulgarian author, included as part of the 1578 version of Ivan Fеdorov's East Slav primer.<ref name="franklin" />
ExcerptEdit
- Being still pagans, the Slavs did not have their own letters, but read and communicated by means of tallies and sketches.<ref group=note>Note: "by means of tallies and sketches" - the original "чрътами и рѣзами" is literally translated as "by means of drawn and cut drawings", i.e., "by means of strokes and incisions"</ref> After their baptism they were forced to use Roman and Greek letters in the transcription of their Slavic words but these were not suitable ...<ref group=note>In this place are listed eleven examples of Slavic words, such as "живѣтъ" /živětŭ/ "life", which can be hardly written using the unadapted Roman or Greek letters (i.e. without diacritic changing their sound-values).</ref> At last, God, in his love for mankind, sent them St. Constantine the Philosopher, called Cyril, a learned and upright man, who composed for them thirty-eight letters, some (24 of them) similar to the Greek, but some (14 of them) different, suitable to express Slavic sounds.Template:Who
LegacyEdit
Hrabar Nunatak on Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica, is named for Chernorizets Hrabar.