Church Slavonic Language in Hungarian Greek Catholic Records

If you have worked with Greek Catholic church records from northeastern Hungary, Slovakia, Carpathian Ruthenia or Romania, chances are you encountered this mysterious and seemingly illegible language: 

Kis Dobra Greek Catholic baptism records, 1850

As if deciphering old Latin handwriting was not difficult enough, right?!

This is Old Church Slavonic, created in the mid-9th century as the first Slavic literary language for translating the Bible and other ecclesiastical texts. It has never been a language of everyday communication. It has only been used by Orthodox and Greek Catholic priests in church ceremonies and documentation. This is an archaic language, incomprehensible for most native speakers of any modern Slavic language, who never took paleography classes.

Let alone the speakers of Latin script-based languages!

But it can make you feel better knowing that the Hungarian priests in the 19th century were, too, complaining about “not understanding the Slavic language”, which they were supposed to keep records in. The thing is that historically Greek Catholic church was mostly composed of Ruthenians and Romanians. In the 17-18th centuries, after the conflict with Protestants, many Hungarians joined the Greek Catholic church. In the 19th century Hungarian language started to be used, but after the defeat of the 1848 Hungarian Revolution, there was a return to Church Slavonic again. This process was not uniform, and varied not only between Munkács and Eperjes dioceses, but even from church to church within the same episcopate.

It explains the sudden changes in script in the mid-19th century records, sometimes just in the middle of a page, as in the picture below. Notice how the upper two rows are in Church Slavonic and the bottom two lines are in Hungarian. It looks like it is even the same person's handwriting. 

Kis Dobra Greek Catholic baptism records, 1850

It looks like the priests were given new instructions every now and then. I would also guess that they acted based on those instructions, as well as their own preferences and competences. Who can blame them?


If you are struggling with Church Slavonic records, here are some resources that you can use:

• Old Church Slavonic Online Dictionary
• Old Church Slavonic Numbers, Dates, and Months by Matthew Bialawa 
• Introduction to Church Slavonic video tutorial
• MACSE (Hungarian Society of Family History Research) page with tips on reading the old Slavic script (in Hungarian)

Textbooks, for a deep dive into Church Slavonic language:

• Handbook of Old church Slavonic
• An Introduction to Old Church Slavic by William R. Schmalstieg
• Old Church Slavonic: An Elementary Grammar by S. C. Gardiner  
• А.И. Изотов. Старославянский и церковнославянский языки: Грамматика, упражнения, тексты. (In Russian)
• А.А. Плетнева, А.Г. Кравецкий. Учебное руководство по церковнославянскому языкую. - М.: Издательство Древо Добра, 2001. (in Russian)

If you already know some basics of reading Cyrillic letters, it is a good idea to use a table like this one, while reading records. As the script was evolving, the form of letters changed over time. 

Variations of handwritten Church Slavonic alphabet

If you still have troubles with Old Church Slavonic records, please, contact me and I will be happy to assist you.