What did the tradition emerge from?
It emerged from the script, the Glagolitic alphabet. This was designed by Cyril the Philosopher with, of course, the participation of his brother Methodius. The text “Of Letters” (O pismeneh), most probably composed by one of their disciples, who signed himself as Crnorizec Hrabar (the Brave Monk), testifies to the fact that Cyril devised the first Slavonic alphabet of thirty-eight letters. The letters had both a spoken and numerical value just like the prototype which the Educator and Enlightener used, i.e. the Greek minuscule or cursive. The source for the letters for the characteristic Slavonic sounds lay, by all accounts, in the Coptic and ancient Hebrew alphabets. This new alphabet was named after the Old Church Slavonic glagolati (to speak). It was obviously considered in the Byzantine Empire that the entire Slavonic world spoke the same language. This was not far from the truth. The genealogical tree of the Slavonic languages – Common Slavonic (Slave Commun) had not yet branched
