Page:The Position of the Slavonic Languages at the present day.djvu/27

 when the power of the Ottoman Empire was at its height.

From the earliest times this race, which is essentially one as far as language is concerned, has been known by two names, the Croatians in the western half of the territory, and the Servians in the eastern half. But the difference between the Servians and the Croatians is not merely nominal, it is confessional; it is therefore in one respect fundamental and has always cut the nation in two. The history of each of these two halves of the same race has followed totally different lines, and it is owing to this duality that it has always been impossible to find one name for the language which would be acceptable to both divisions of the people who speak it. The Servians, namely, were converted by the missionaries of Byzantium, the Croatians by those of Rome. It is this difference of confession, of which the double name of the language Serbo-Croatian is symbolic, that has always militated against the cultural and political unity of the nation, and formed the corner-stone of the power, first of Turkey and now of Austria, in that part of the Balkans. It is this difference between the teachings and traditions of the eastern and western churches that divides the Slavonic world in general and the Serbo-Croatian nationality in particular.

The outward and visible sign of the difference between the two confessions, as reflected in the language, is the dissimilarity of the alphabets. The Croatians and the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Bosnia, Hercegóvina, and Dalmatia use the Latin alphabet, amplified by diacritic signs, the Servians and the orthodox inhabitants of Bosnia, Hercegòvina, Dalmatia, and Montenegro use that known as the Cyrillic, so called after the name of its inventor, the Greek missionary St. Cyril.

This Cyril and his brother Methodius were Greeks of Salonika, but have now become the patron saints of orthodox Slavonic culture in Servia, Bulgaria, and Russia. Although Salonika was always essentially Greek,