Glagolitic singing has been preserved mainly through oral transmission in the course of ten centuries as specific Croatian liturgical singing using the Western Roman Church rite. Glagolitic singing is unique due to the position of Glagolitism in the organization of the Western Church as well as the cultural tradition of three languages (Old Church Slavonic, Latin, Croatian) and three scripts (Glagolitic, Croatian Cyrillic and Latin). Its chant repertory shows Byzantine, Aquileian, Gregorian and other West European sacral influences (as in the case of the Bohemians, with as many as three co-developing phases) and distinguished, in particular, by layers of folk music expression. Glagolitic singing lasted parallel with the Latin tradition: from the 9th to the 17th centuries in the narrower sense, and up to the 20th century in wider terms. Different traditions of church music including secular folk music, church songbooks by known and unknown redactors all could have played a role in the creation of the musical characteristics of Glagolitic singing. Today Glagolitic chant is studied on the basis of documents (the most important dating from 1248 and 1252), liturgical roles in rubrics, rare note records, but mostly sound recordings and transcriptions (mgt. from the beginning of the 20th century). Geographically, it spread to Istria, the islands (Krk, Cres, Lošinj, Rab, Pag) and the Kvarner hinterland, Dalmatia (with the islands of Hvar, Korčula, Brač, Šolta, Vis) all the way to Dubrovnik and Kotor, including the hinterland of the cities of Split, Zadar, Šibenik and most probably to all areas populated by Croats, both in the homeland and emigration. The first document music dates from 1117, when Pope Alexander III visited Zadar and laudibus and canticis were sung "in eorum sclavica lingua". A letter written in 1198 by Pope Innocent III gives evidence on the intrusion of the Greek and Slavonic languages into the singing of the liturgy. The very rare examples of written music include tunes for: Santus ("Svet", fragment from Ljubljana from the 15th century, an example of the Bohemian tradition) Passion (1556/1564) or specific markings in the Missal of Prince Novak (1368) with 22 small circles indicating how the credo should be sung. The Missal of Prince Hrvoje (1404) contains symbols for roles in the singing of Passion. In addition to direct sources, manuscripts and printed liturgical books (Edition Princeps, 1483, the Second Novi Breviary, 1495), although without written music, contain a large number of examples of the terms and explanations used in practice at that time, and indicating the then music repertory. Later sources include collections of music materials in manuscript (Sonnleithner Sammlung in Vienna, 1819; the Kuhač collection in Zagreb, 1869; the Glanc collection in Zagreb, 1870; the Kozinović collection in Zagreb, 1949,1950) as well as in print, such as the editions Congregatio de Propaganda Fide (by R. Levaković, B. Kašić) and some, so called, Protestant editions.