Church Slavic

Church Slavonic is a Slavic language belonging to the South-Slavic linguistic sub-branch of Balto-Slavic languages, in the Indo-European family. It is used, both historically and in the modern era, as a liturgical language by various Eastern Christian denominations. During medieval and early modern periods, it was also used as a literary language among Slavs. It stemmed from the Old Church Slavonic (9th-10th centuries), and later developed by adopting various regional and dialectal influences from local Slavic vernaculars, thus branching into several varieties, also called recensions, or redactions.

In its conservative form, that was standardized in the 18th century, it is used today by Eastern Orthodox churches in Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czechia and Slovakia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. The language also appears in the services of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, and occasionally in the services of the Orthodox Church in America.

In addition, Church Slavonic is used by some churches which consider themselves Orthodox but are not in communion with the Orthodox Church, such as the Montenegrin Orthodox Church and the Russian True Orthodox Church. The Russian Old Believers and the Co-Believers also use Church Slavonic. The language is also used in some communities belonging to the Orthodox Church of Finland.

From Wikipedia · Church Slavonic · CC BY-SA 4.0