Church Slavonic language as lingua sacra in Church and culture of Slavic peoples

The paper comprehensively describes the history of saints Cyril and Methodius' Moravian mission and the creation of the Slavic alphabet, as well as outlines the main milestones of the Slavic written language formation in Bulgaria, Poland, Czech and Rus. The author puts forward the thesis that the sacred language created by the Solun brothers became the language of liturgy and homilies from the very beginning, as well as the language of theology, philosophy and hagiography. The history of the Cyril-Methodius tradition spreading among the Western, Southern and Eastern Slavs is presented by the author basing on the analysis of the ancient legends of the Holy brothers, as well as Bulgarian, Polish, Czech and Old Russian manuscripts and evidences of medieval chroniclers. The history of the Russian version of the Church Slavonic language is separately considered. The language situation in Ancient Rus is analysed with considering the point of correlation between the Old Russian and Church Slavonic languages. The problem of the Church Slavonic evolution and functioning in South-Western and Moscow Rus is studied in detail, as well as the formation of a common all-Russian version of this language in the second half of the 17th century.