Typographic Dictionary - Cyrillic

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Cyrillic

One of the two ancient Slavonic alphabets named after St. Cyril (Constantine the Philosopher). It was invented in the 9th century based on the Greek ecclesiastical majuscule script. There were several scribal Cyrillic hands: Ustav, Poluustav, Skoropis’, and Vyaz’. The first printed Cyrillic book was published in Krakow in 1491 by Schweipolt Feol (Feyl, Feyol), and its type was cut by Rudolf Borsdorf (Ludolf Borchdorp) of Braunschweig. Cyrillic alphabet was reformed by Tzar Peter I in 1708–10. As a result the Cyrillic letterforms became close to Roman ones. The Modern Byelorussian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian and Ukrainian alphabets were made-up based on the ancient Cyrillic script. In the 1920–30s alphabets of most former USSR peoples and Mongolia were created based on the Russian alphabet.