Cyrillic script of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following Latin and Greek. Cyrillic is derived from the Greek uncial script, augmented by letters from the older Glagolitic alphabet, including some ligatures. These additional letters were used for Old Church Slavonic sounds not found in Greek. The script is named in honor of the two Byzantine brothers, Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Glagolitic alphabet earlier on. Modern scholars believe that Cyrillic was developed and formalized by early disciples of Cyril and Methodius. In the early 18th century,
Glagolitic script By the time of the devastating Italianization movements under Fascist Italy in the early 20th century, numerous independent events had already greatly reduced the area of the liturgical use of Glagolitic. The tradition that the alphabet was designed by Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius has not been universally accepted. A less common belief, contradicting allochthonic Slovene origin, was that the Glagolitic was created or used in the 4th century by St. Jerome (Latin: "Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus"), hence the alphabet is sometimes named Hieronymian. It is also acrophonically called azbuki from the names of its first two letters in Bulgaria, on