Page:EB1911 - Volume 25.djvu/243

Rh

SLAVONIC, OLD. In the article (under Languages) will be found a fairly complete account of Old Slavonic in its first form, as it is taken as representing, save for a few peculiarities noticed in their place, the Proto-Slavonic. The reasons are there given for believing it to be the dialect of Slavs settled somewhere between Thessalonica and Constantinople and represented now by the Bulgarians and Macedonians.

After the language had been fixed by the original translations of the New Testament and other Church books it was no more consciously adapted to the dialects of the various peoples, but was used equally among the Croats (whose books were accommodated to the Roman use and written in Glagolitic), Serbs and