'''Church Slavonic''' originated as a literate language when the [[missionary]] Constantine (later called Cyril) in the ninth century devised an alphabet for the spoken language of the Slavs of Great Moravia. Cyril and his brother Methodius used the alphabet to prepare translations of liturgical books for use during their mission preaching Orthodox Christianity to the Slavs of Moravia. His original alphabet was called ''Glagolitic''. The Glagolitic alphabet was later, in the eleventh tenth century, refined into the alphabet called ''Cyrillic''.