The mission of SS. Cyril and Methodios and its aftermath in Central Europe

Abstract

The achievement of SS. Cyril and Methodios may be summarized as follows: in 863 the Byzantine emperor sent to the Prince of Moravia, at the latter’s request, a mission led by the brother saints to develop the evangelization of his lands, since Frankish missionaries were becoming politically more and more personae non gratae in Moravia. By the time that the surviving brother Methodios died in 885, as archbishop and papal legate in Moravia, the principle of the mission had not only been maintained in the face of constant opposition but also accepted, if only partially and grudgingly, elsewhere. This principle was that any people, especially neophyte, must be allowed to praise God in its own language: only through one’s native tongue can one fully understand the promises of baptism, the liturgy, and the Holy Scriptures. During those twenty years a form of the Slav language was elevated to literary status and recorded in a specially designed alphabet, and many clerks had been trained in it. From Moravia its use spread first to those lands which came under Moravian rule in the 870s and 880s—Bohemia, Pannonia, and (very probably) south Poland. On Methodios’s death the Frankish clergy regained the upper hand in Moravia and dispersed the saints’ colleagues and disciples, who then found support for their ministry in yet other Slav lands, namely Croatian Dalmatia and Bulgaria.