The Balkan Slavs were inheritors of Byzantium culture, but Oriental and Scandinavian influences are also important in their creations. The cyrillic script (and its antecedents) provides the basic written units for a dozen or more related languages. Even though in modern-day Serbia latin letters are used, in the past cyrillic script was the norm in the region. Writings of high value were carefully decorated with impressive knotwork decorations that remind of Celtic aesthetics.
The images above were selected from: National library of Serbia’s collection of cyrillic manuscripts (RS); Jernej Kopitar’s collection of slavic manuscripts (Kop) and the Chester Beatty collection (Dublin) of cyrillic manuscripts (RU).
