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The name comes from the Old Church Slavonic glagolu, meaning word (which was also the name for the letter "G"). Since glagolati also means to speak, the Glagolitsa are poetically referred to as "the marks that speak".
The Glagolitic alphabet has around 40 letters, depending on variant. 24 of the original (Great Moravian, see below) 38 Glagolitic letters are probably derived from graphemes of the medieval cursive Greek small alphabet, and they have been given an ornamental design. It is presumed that the letters Sha, Shta and Tsi were derived from Hebrew alphabet (Shin and Tsadi) - the phonemes that these letters represent did not exist in Greek but are quite common for all Slavic languages. The remaining original characters are of unknown oriental origin. Some of them are presumed to stem from the Hebrew and Samaritan scripts, which Cyril got to know during his journey to the Khazars in Cherson .
Another theory asserts that the Glagolitic alphabet was based on ancient Slavic runes (chrti i rezi, i.e., lines and notches), which like the Germanic runes were only used in sacred texts of the pre-Christian Slavic religion.
The script was prohibited in 886 by Wiching , an East Frankish bishop of Nitra and 200 followers of Methodius (mostly of the students of the original academy) were jailed and then dispersed or, according to some sources, sold as slaves. Three of them, however, reached Bulgaria and were commissioned by Boris I of Bulgaria to teach and instruct the future clergy of the state into the Slavonic language. After the adoption of Christianity in 865, religious ceremonies in Bulgaria were conducted in Greek by clergy sent from Byzantium. Fearing growing Byzantine influence and weakening of the state, Boris viewed Old Slavonic as a way to preserve the independence of Bulgaria. As a result of Boris 's measures, two academies in Ohrid and Preslav were founded.
From there, the students travelled to various other places and spread the use of their alphabet. Some went to Croatia and Dalmatia where the squared variant arose and where the Glagolitic remained in use for a long time. It owed its popularity to the Catholic Church: similarly to how the Croats were allowed to use the native language in liturgy, they were also allowed to use their own alphabet. Later they continued using Glagolitic as opposed to Cyrillic, which was associated with Eastern Orthodoxy. Eventually it was replaced with the Latin alphabet.
Some of the students of the Ohrid academy went to Bohemia where the alphabet was partly used in the 10th and 11th century. Glagolitic was also used in Russia, although rarely.
At the end of the 9th century, one of these students of Methodius who was settled in Preslav (Bulgaria) created the Cyrillic alphabet, and this descendant of the Glagolitic almost entirely replaced the Glagolitic during the Middle Ages.
Nowadays, the Glagolitic is only used for Church Slavonic and, sometimes, vernacular in the service-books of the Catholic Eparchy of Križevci in Croatia.
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