Glagol signifies in Old Slavic the word or rather the verb; but the reason of the application of this term to the Illyrico-Servians of the catholic communion (Glagolitae), and to the language of their sacred writings (Glagolic or Glagolitic), has not yet been ascertained; all that has as yet been asserted by Slavic philologians being mere hypothesis.  The oldest monument known up to 1830. in which these letters were extant, was a Psalter of A.D. 1220.  This Psalter was by tradition ascribed to St. Jerome himself, who was in general called the inventor of the Slavic, that is the Glagolitic alphabet.  According to a popular legend of the Dalmatians, this father, who was a native of Illyria, also translated the whole Bible into the Slavic; but it has been since clearly proved, that while (as is well known) he corrected the old Latin version of the Bible, he yet never wrote a single line of Slavic.

The mystery, in which the origin of the Glagolitic was and still is buried, gave birth to the singular hypothesis already above mentioned.[18] The discovery however of several very ancient Glagolitic manuscripts, and especially of one which could be proved to be older than the Council of Spalatro[19] destroyed it at once; but unfortunately, without clearing up the mystery either of its invention or of its introduction.

Another Glagolitic manuscript of some interest may be mentioned here.  It was generally known, that the kings of France were accustomed, at their coronation at Kheiras, to take the oath on a large book, called Texte du Sacre, bound in gold or gilding, and covered with unwrought precious stones, which contained the Gospels written in some unknown hieroglyphic language.  When in 1717 Tzar Peter I. visited Rheims, this book was shown to him among other curiosities, and he exclaimed at once:  “This is my own Slavonic!” This view was soon spread among Slavic scholars.  But the precious parchment was written in two columns, and in two languages.  What idiom could the other be?  The French, it is said, took it for Greek:  more probably for Coptic.  In 1789, a learned English traveller, Thomas Ford Hill, was shown some Glagolitic manuscripts in the imperial library at Vienna; whereupon he declared without hesitation, that this was the mysterious writing of the Rheims manuscript.  Before the Vienna scholars, Dobner and Alter, then at the head of Slavic matters, had time to investigate the matter further, the revolution broke out, and the precious document disappeared.  No trace was left of it; and for half a century the patriotic Slavic scholars supposed they had cause to lament the loss of a document of the very highest antiquity.  It was conjectured that the book had originally been brought to France by some Slavic princess; for instance, by a princess of Kief, who is said to have been sent for by Henry I., son of Hugh Capet and king of France in the beginning of the eleventh century.  Application