chernorizetz hrabar

Chernorizetz Hrabar (Chernorizetz the Brave) was a medieval Bulgarian scholar and writer working at the Preslav Literary School at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. No biographical information is available about him but his name is usually considered to be a pseudonym used by one of the other famous men of letters at the Preslav Literary School or may be even by Bulgarian tsar Simeon I (893 – 927). Chernorizetz Hrabar is (or is known to be) the author of only one literary work, За буквите (An Account of Letters), which, on the other hand, was one of the most admired and popular works of literature written in Old Church Slavonic. За буквите is supposed to have been written shortly after the Bulgarian church council in 893 and is the only known medieval literary work, which quotes the exact year of the invention of the Glagolitic alphabet (855). In За буквите, Chernorizetz Hrabar defends the alphabet against its Greek critics and proves not only its right to existence but also its superiority to the Greek alphabet arguing that the Greek letters are neither the oldest known to man, nor divine. At the same time Chernorizetz Hrabar opposes Glagolitic dogmatists and makes several suggestions as to how the alphabet can be further improved. The manuscript of За буквите has been preserved in some 80 copies, the oldest of which dates back to 1348 and was made by the monk Laurentius for Bulgarian tsar Ivan Alexander. The work has also been printed in Vilnius (1575 – 1580), Moscow (1637), Saint Petersburg (1776), Suprasl (1781).

Chernorizetz Hrabar

See also