<nettime> The WYSIWYG Society (MEME 3.03)

["Melentie Pandilovski" <mpandil@soros.org.mk>]

Since I work with with alternate 
history I would like to ask David S. Benhaum to contribute with these 
"facts"... They would certainly help me in my intentions of  changing 
actual history.



 
4. SAILING TO BYZANTIUM.NET

 Latin and the Catholic church carried the essence of old
Rome forward, loosely uniting the West with the Latin alphabet and, for
awhile, Catholicism.  Until the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther,
much of the West-- certainly its core, Britain, Spain, France and the
German principalities-- swore spiritual allegiance to the same holy empire.
They even went on joint military operations, the Crusades, and developed
postal roads, a feudal harbinger of NATO and EMU.  In the Byzantine empire,
which subsumed the Balkans, Turkey, Romania, and today's Moldavia, Ukraine,
and bits of Russia, a new alphabet, Cyrillic (created by the Bulgarian St.
Cyril in the tenth century), emerged.  Here the religion was Orthodox, and
this, like the Catholic, eventually splintered into further forms (like
Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox).
The great divide between these two halves of the former Roman empire,
strangely, is reappearing as the geographic division of a new Europe.  The
new border falls squarely between alphabets.  Nations which use Latin
letters are welcome to join the "ex-West."  Those which use Cyrillic, the
heirs of Byzantium, are excluded.  They will ultimately come to form the
true "ex-East."  This line can be traced from the Baltic sea, where Estonia
(Latin alphabet, Protestant and Catholic), meets Russia (Cyrillic, Russian
Orthodox), southwards, subsuming Russia, Belorussia, Moldavia, Bulgaria,
Serbia, and Macedonia into one block, loosely the same territory which
Byzantium once occupied.  



1. The Romanians and Moldavians in fact use the Latin Alphabet.
This is also true for today's Turks and Albanians.

2. St. Cyril was Bulgarian as much as Martin Luther was French.
In fact he was a Byzantinian missionary from the city of 
Thessaloniki. He was in charge of  several missions, 
such as the Byzantine mission of converting the Khazar Kingdom into 
Christianity. 

3. The alphabet created by the brothers St. Cyril and Methodius was the so 
called Glagolic. It was used throughout the
Slavic world (Latin and Orthodox). In fact in Croatia it endured the
longest (in some parts untill the 17th century).

4. St. Cyrill and Metodius's mission in the Slavic lands took place in
Moravia (The Czech Republic) were they were invited by King Rostislav
They dealt mostly with the translation of religious books into Slavic.
They knew the Slavic language which was spoken around their home city
(Thessaloniki - Solun) and based the Church Slavic on it. St. Cyrill
died in 869 in Rome. He was buried in the temple of  St. Clement - Bihop of
Rome. His brother  Metodij had died 885/6 in Moravia.


5. The Cyrilic alphabet (in honour of St. Cyril) was devised
later. The authors are unknown. Some historians attribute the 
authorship of the Cyrillic alphabet to  St. Clement of 
Ohrid who is also honoured for establishing the Slavic University in 
Ohrid in 893.

6. The key country is missing in this theory and it is of course 
Greece. Will Greece be excluded from the West (NATO & EU&bla.bla.)in 
order for the pieces of this theory to fill in, or will it have to 
adapt to Latin Letters in order for that not to happen.


So much I have spotted...

melentie

Melentie Pandilovski
assistant director

Soros Center for Contemporary Arts - Skopje
Ruzveltova 34
91000 Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

Tel/Fax: 389.91.361.855
e-mail:  mpandil@soros.org.mk    scca@soros.org.mk
http://www.soros.org.mk
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