Inventing and ethnicising Slavonic in the long ninth century

ABSTRACT This article situates the scholarship on the invention of the Slavonic alphabet within the discipline of literacy studies practised in Western medieval contexts. In so doing it identifies some of the methodological assumptions that have shaped the study of the invention of Slavonic, and proposes a new reading of the invention and ethnicisation of the alphabet, from a new methodological starting point. It demonstrates that the ethnicisation of Slavonic begins in the rewriting of the invention of the alphabet found in the Life of Methodios. It then argues that this rewriting emulates the discourse about conversion found in Latin missionary texts, from Gregory the Great onwards, where it is assumed that each ethnic group needs its own Church.