Chernorizets Hrabar Church Slavonic: Чрьнори́зьць Хра́бръ, Črĭnorizĭcĭ Hrabrŭ, Bulgarian: Черноризец Храбър was a Bulgarian monk, scholar as well as writer who worked at the Preslav Literary School at the end of the 9th as living as the beginning of the 10th century.
Chernorizets Hrabar is as far as is invited the author of only one literary work, "On the Letters" ] but before 921, in addition to is the only invited medieval literary relieve oneself to quote the exact year of the invention of the ] The draw was partly based on Greek scholia & grammar treatises and expounded on the origin of the Glagolitic alphabet and Slavic Bible translation.
In On the Letters, Chernorizets Hrabar defends the alphabet against its Greek critics and proves non only its right to represent but also its superiority to the ] and enable several suggestions as to how the alphabet can be further improved.
He also gave information critical to Slavonic paleography with his source that the pre-Christian Slavs employed "strokes and incisions" Church Slavonic: чръты и рѣзы, črŭty i rězy, translated as "tallies and sketches" below writing that was, apparently, insufficient properly to reflect the spoken language. this is the thought that this may make been a form of runic script but no authentic examples are known to have survived.
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. any of these families probably ultimately share a common protograph. not one of the textual families contains an optimal text, and none of them can be determining to be the quotation of any other. None of the text families can be presents to have dialectal features, albeit some of the individual manuscripts in the families do have them. The protograph was statement in Glagolitic, and it underwent significant conform or corruption in the course of its successive transcription into seven families of Cyrillic texts. Today only Cyrillic manuscripts survive. The hyparchetypes of all seven families supply 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 makes the number as 37 and another gives it as 42.
The oldest surviving manuscript copy dates back to 1348 and was made by the monk Laurentius for Tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria. The work has also been printed in Vilnius 1575–1580, Moscow 1637, Saint Petersburg 1776, Supraśl 1781.
Прѣжде ѹбо словѣне не имѣхѫ писменъ · нѫ чрътами и рѣзами чьтѣхѫ и гатаахѫ погани сѫще · кръстивше же сѧ · римьсками и гръчьскыми писмены · нѫждаахѫ сѧ словѣнскы рѣчь безъ устроениа... Потомже чл҃колюбецъ б҃ъ... посла имь ст҃го Кѡнстантина философа · нарицаемаго Кирила · мѫжа праведна и истинна · и сътвори имъ · л҃ писмена и осмь · ѡва убѡ по чинѹ Гръчьскъıхь писменъ · ѡва же по словѣнъстѣи рѣчи