Nenad Hancic-Matejic from Germany created a new Croatian Glagolitic font - CROWN

A new Croatian Glagolitic quickscript font

Mr. Nenad Hančić-Matejić from Düsseldorf in Germany created a very nice Croatian Glagolitic quickscript font (or cursive font), called “Croatica”. It is available on the address www.glagolica.com.nu, described in Croatian, German and English languages. It is a result of four years of hard work, and the font was launched in 2009. It contains also numerous ligatures. The font will be useful for amateurs as well as for professionals working in the history of Croatian language, in particular for those dealing with centuries old texts written in Croatian Glagolitic quickscript.
In October 2009 Mr. Hančić-Matejić payed a visit to Zagreb and the Library of The Society of Lovers of the Glagolitic Script, kept in Knjižnica B. Ogrizovića near the Square of Petar Preradović, known also as the Flower Square (Cvjetni trg in Croatian), on the photo.
As an illustration, see the following text which was written by computer, using his excellent Glagolitic quickscript font, and not by hand.

And here is the same text written by his hand:

Iz Evanđelja po Ivanu – Proslov
U početku bijaša Riječ
i Riječ bijaše od Boga – i Riječ bijaše Bog.
Ona u početku bijaše od Boga.
Sve je po njoj postalo
i ništa što je postalo nije bez nje postalo.
U njoj bijaše život
i život bijaše svjetlo ljudima.
I svjetlo svijeti u tami
a tama ga ne obuze.
Svjetlo istinito
koje rasvjetljuje svakoga čovjeka,
dođe na ovaj svijet.
Bijaše na svijetu, i svijet postade po Njemu,
a svijet ga ne upozna.
K svojima dođe, ali ga Njegovi ne primiše.
A svima koji ga primiše dade vlast
da postanu djeca Božja:
oni koji vjeruju u Njegovo ime.
I Riječ tijelom postade,
i nastanila se među nama.
I mi smo promatrali slavu Njegovu
slavu koju ima kao Jedinorođenac od Oca –
puno milosti i istine.

At the bottom right is his signature: Nenad Hančić-Matejić.

The font of Croatian Glagolitic quickscript called “Croatica” and created by Nenad Hančić-Matejić is available on the following site, that we warmly recommend you to visit:

www.glagolica.com.nu

Nenad Hančić-Matejić:

Getting to Know Glagolica

I first came into contact with the Glagolitic script on a visit to the Cathedral of Zagreb in May 1990. It captured my attention and my enthusiasm for Glagolica has grown continually so that I finally had to learn it.
As I live in Germany I couldn’t find out much at all about Glagolica until I got my first Internet access in 2000. At that point I was able to find some simple websites on Glagolica. My self-imposed objective to learn this script seemed very difficult with these sites. It took quite some time for me after this to take on the learning of the angular Glagolica.
Over time I collected more and more information on Glagolica on the Internet, and one day at the beginning of the year 2005 I came across the website of Prof. Darko Žubrinić “Small Introduction to Cursive Glagolica”. It seemed to me I had been waiting for just such a website, and so I learned writing with cursive Glagolica as per the handwriting examples on this site.

Writing with Cursive Glagolica

After I had a good command of cursive Glagolica, I turned my attention to written examples. The website “Od librarije” (About the library) was very helpful to me. For the first time I could read connected sentences and gain an understanding of how the letters and ligatures were used.
By repeatedly exercising different writing styles from various contemporary documents I eventually developed my own inidividual handwriting style.
Over time that was not enough for me so I started so search for possibilities to use Glagolica on the PC – and I did find them.
But what I did find did not satisfy me as I was of the opinion that these hitherto existing fonts could in no way reproduce the grandeur of a text written in the Glagolitic script.

Design of a Font for Glagolica

So I made up my mind to create a cursive Glagolica font myself. I consider it as my contribution that Glagolica will neither be forgotten nor disappear in our electronic age.