The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882). Papal Power and Political Reality by Maddalena Betti (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882). Papal Power and Political Reality by Maddalena Betti Stefan Moffat Maddalena Betti, The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882). Papal Power and Political Reality (Leiden/Boston: Brill 2014) xiii + 251 pp. This book is a re-working of the author’s 2008 PhD thesis. It consists of a forward by Thomas Noble, an introduction, and three chapters, and is supplemented by five maps, a bibliography, and an index. The author points out quickly that “the aim of my research is to clarify the role of the sources concerning the Methodian archdiocese within the wider debate over the location of Great Moravia” (10). The author, however, concentrates on the image of Moravia and its Saints in the records of the papacy. This focus allows [End Page 212] the author to contribute something new to the debate between “traditionalists” and “revisionists” about the location of Great Moravia by means of a literary analysis of the relationship between the papacy and the missionary brothers Constantine-Cyril and Methodius in the sources. Chapter 1 is devoted to an overview of the changing historiography of the Cyrillic-Methodian mission, and of Great Moravia as a place. Betti begins with the initial development of research into Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius in the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, concentrating on the impact of Slav nationalism on their historical image, pointing out that the figures were canonized by the pope in the nineteenth century and became important for Czech and Slovak scholars by the early nineteenth century as cultural icons. She follows a similar process with the discussion of the image of Great Moravia, beginning with eighteenth and nineteenth century debates about its physical location in East Central Europe. She makes it clear that a slowly emancipated Slavic conscience, due to the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in the early twentieth century, allowed for the figures of Constantine-Cyril and Methodius to be studied by Slavic scholars, and to become an important part of Slavicists’ research. The historiography of the Saints culminated in twentieth century concepts such as the depiction of Czechoslovakia as a reflection of Great Moravia and therefore as a strong, civilizing power in Central Europe. Alongside textual sources, Betti makes it clear that archaeological research has also been oriented toward answering the question of Great Moravia’s location. Betti discusses revisionist history led by Imre Boba in 1971 questioning the traditional location of Great Moravia North of the Danube, and the subject of ecclesiastical jurisdiction over East Central Europe between Rome and Constantinople pioneered by František Dvorník, which freed scholarship from a nationalistic framework. Betti attempts to depict the papal policy in East Central Europe as ambiguous. The bulk of the Apostolic See’s sources examined for the images of Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, as well as of Moravia, are letters of three successive ninth-century popes in touch with and sympathetic to the two missionaries: Nicholas I, Hadrian II, and John VIII. However, Pope Stephen V, John VIII’s successor, removed the Apostolic See’s earlier support for the use of Slavonic in the Christian liturgy, and attempted to maintain papal jurisdiction in East Central Europe by supporting the Frankish clergy, the opposite of John VIII’s behavior. Alongside these Betti uses other Roman sources including the official biographical record on the Roman popes known as the Liber Pontificalis, and the correspondence of the papal secretary Anastasius Bibliothecarius (“The Librarian”). Other sources used in this analysis are Slavonic biographical works on Constantine-Cyril and Methodius (two vitae and an encomium), Frankish annals, ecclesiastical documents such as the Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians, and letters of Frankish bishops. In chapter 2, Betti discusses sources associated with popes Nicholas I and Hadrian II. The Slavonic biographies of the brothers mix up the acts of Nicholas I and Hadrian II, claiming that it was Nicholas I, and not Hadrian II, [End Page 213] who ordained Methodius priest to work as a missionary, when in fact he did not even live to see the brothers whom he had invited to Rome. Pope John VIII is not even referred to by name in...