The first Serbian syllabary was made by Inok Sava, and was printed by the Venetian printer Rampazzetti in Venice in 1597, after which the book fell into oblivion and neglect. We don’t know much about inok Sava except that he was born in Paštrović and was a monk of the monastery Dečani. The first page of the syllabary has printed alphabet, followed by vowels, then the syllables, the names of all the letters, etc. The syllabary of Inok Sava originates from the time when very few European countries and cultures possessed their own teaching aids.
The syllabary fascinates the most with its teaching methods, because it was the first in Europe to have applied the principle of phonetic reading. However, this syllabary remained forgotten. While the Serbs learned literacy from foreign books, they didn’t know that they had their own book for learning reading and writing for more than two centuries.
The first Serbian syllabary has been unknown to all until 1893. That year, the Russian consul in Shkodra, Krylov, gave the first edition, printed in Venice on 20th of May, 1597, as a gift to a reporter and interpreter Okica Gluščević. Later, in 1921, engineer Milorad Dimitrijević from Belgrade bought the second edition, published on 25th of May, 1597, in Dubrovnik, where he was on a trip. Both editions, the first and the second, were presented to the National Library of Serbia.
The first edition consisting of only two sheets of paper, of which we only have a copy today, was burned in the German bombing of Belgrade and the National Library on April 6, 1941, and second edition, on four sheets, is fortunately preserved.
Look at the pages of this valuable book HERE
Source: fb page/MeettheSerbs
