«Inesplicabile come un enigma ... intricato come un labirinto»: il glagolismo nella visione di Arturo Cronia

The paper focuses on Cronia's work, L'enigma del glagolismo in Dalmatia, in which the historical sources concerned with the diffusion of so-called 'Glagolitic liturgy' – i.e. the roman liturgy translated in Old Church Slavonic and written in Glagolitic alphabet – in Dalmatia are reconsidered. In order to clarify the canonical status of such a liturgy, Cronia analyses the origins and the canonical premisses of this translation in Great Moravia (IX century) and the possible connection with the dawning of Glagolism in Dalmatia. As a result, the traditional point of view about Glagolitic heritage in Dalmatia is brought into question, and a new interpretation of the historical process legitimising a 'croatian national Church', based on the right to celebrate the mass using the Glagolitic liturgy, is provided. Cronia's reconstruction is hardly accepted in academic and non academic milieu. However it is a strong sources-based analysis, whose outcomes should not be ignored.