Glagolitic alphabet. An old Slavic script in which the most ancient Old Church Slavonic manuscripts were written. Its origin has been disputed for a long time but it was most likely invented by Saint Cyril, who also included some Hebrew letters. Under Byzantine influence it was soon replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet, which in the shape of most letters was patterned on the Greek alphabet. There is no information on the systematic use of Glagolitic in Kyivan Rus’, although individual Glagolitic letters and short Glagolitic insertions occasionally occur in 15 (according to Grigorii Ilinsky) East Slavic manuscripts of the 11th to 15th centuries, two of which are from Ukraine.