Cyril and Methodius

Background

The elder brother, Methodius (c. 815–885), and the younger, Cyril (826 or 827–869), were born in Thessalonica in the Byzantine Empire (the Eastern Roman Empire). Cyril's original name was Constantine; he is said to have received the name Cyril upon becoming a monk shortly before his death. Methodius served as an official in a frontier province with a large Slavic population before becoming a monk. Constantine studied in Constantinople and gained renown as a scholar. Around 860 the two brothers also took part in a mission to the Khazars, who lived northeast of the Black Sea.

By the ninth century, missionaries of the Latin Church from the Frankish kingdom (in what is now Germany) had already entered Great Moravia, a Slavic state in Central Europe. Rastislav, the ruler of Great Moravia, sought to free himself from Frankish influence and therefore turned to Byzantium for ecclesiastical assistance. Scholars hold that political motives played as large a role in this request as religious ones.

Course of Events

• 862: Rastislav asked the Byzantine emperor Michael III and Patriarch Photius of Constantinople to send teachers. The emperor and the patriarch sent the two brothers.
• 863: The brothers arrived in Great Moravia. Constantine is said to have devised the Glagolitic alphabet to write the Slavic language. Using this script, the brothers translated the Gospels and the principal liturgical texts into Slavic (the language now called Old Church Slavonic).
• c. 867: After conflict arose with Frankish clergy who accepted only Latin worship, the brothers traveled to Rome. Pope Adrian II approved worship in Slavic.
• 869: Cyril died in Rome on February 14. Methodius was consecrated archbishop of Sirmium (Pannonia) and appointed papal legate to the Slavs.
• 870–873: Bishops from Bavaria (in present-day southern Germany) had already been conducting missionary work in the territory entrusted to Methodius. Opposing his appointment, they arrested and imprisoned him. He was released in 873 after Pope John VIII intervened.
• 880: Methodius was again summoned to Rome to answer charges of heresy and questions over his use of Slavic. After he was cleared, John VIII reaffirmed worship in Slavic in the papal letter Industriae tuae.
• 885: Methodius died on April 6. His successor, the Frankish bishop Wiching, suppressed Slavic worship, and Methodius's disciples were expelled.

Results and Influence

Slavic worship did not last long in Great Moravia, and the state itself collapsed under Magyar (Hungarian) invasions between 902 and 907. The expelled disciples moved to the First Bulgarian Empire and continued their work there. Around the tenth century a new script based on the Greek alphabet was developed there; it is called the Cyrillic alphabet after their teacher. Disciples such as Clement of Ohrid and Naum are believed to have been involved in this work. Old Church Slavonic and the Cyrillic alphabet spread as the liturgical language and script of the Eastern European Orthodox world. Today Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and other languages are written in Cyrillic.

Assessment

The two brothers lived before the East–West Schism of 1054, and they are therefore honored as saints by both the Eastern and Western churches.

• The Orthodox Church calls them "Equal to the Apostles." They are commemorated on May 11; churches that follow the Julian calendar observe the feast on May 24 of the Gregorian calendar.
• The Catholic Church commemorates them on February 14. In 1980 Pope John Paul II proclaimed them co-patrons of Europe together with Saint Benedict. In 1985 he issued the encyclical Slavorum Apostoli (The Apostles of the Slavs), presenting them as a model of reconciliation between the Eastern and Western churches.
• Anglicans and some Lutheran churches also commemorate them.
• Many Slavic peoples remember the two brothers as the originators of their written language and culture. The brothers have also served as symbols of modern national movements, as in the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius founded by Ukrainian intellectuals in the nineteenth century.

Historians also point out that their mission took place amid political rivalry among Byzantium, the Frankish kingdom, and the papacy. Some also note that the common view that Moravia first received Christianity through them is mistaken. Nevertheless, their effort to enable other peoples to worship and read the Scriptures in their own language and script holds great significance in the history of missions. This theme also connects with the vernacular Bible translations of the Reformation era and with the translation of the Bible into Korean in the early period of missions in Korea.