Cyril and Methodius (863): Apostles to the Slavs and Glagolitic

Cyril and Methodius were two Byzantine brothers from Thessalonica who in 863 began a mission to Great Moravia, a Slavic state in Central Europe. To carry out their work they created the Glagolitic alphabet, the first script designed for a Slavic language, and translated the Gospels and church services into Slavonic. Their followers later brought this legacy to Bulgaria, where the Cyrillic alphabet was developed, and today hundreds of millions of people write in scripts that descend from their work.

Background: two brothers from Thessalonica

Methodius was born around 815 and his younger brother Constantine around 826-827 in Thessalonica, the second city of the Byzantine Empire. Their father, Leo, was a military officer. The region around the city had a large Slavic population, and the brothers probably grew up hearing Slavic speech, though whether they had any Slavic ancestry is unknown.

Constantine studied in Constantinople with leading scholars, including Leo the Mathematician and Photios, the future patriarch. He became known as “the Philosopher”, served as a librarian at the patriarchate and taught philosophy. Methodius first worked as an administrator of a Slavic-populated district, then became a monk on Mount Olympus in Bithynia.

The brothers had diplomatic experience. Constantine took part in a religious embassy to the Arabs, and around 860-861 both brothers joined a mission to the Khazars north of the Black Sea. On the way, at Cherson in Crimea, Constantine recovered what were believed to be the relics of Saint Clement of Rome.

Why Moravia asked for missionaries

In 862 Rastislav, prince of Great Moravia, sent envoys to the Byzantine emperor Michael III. Christianity had already reached his lands through Frankish and other missionaries, but they preached in Latin and represented the power of the neighbouring East Frankish kingdom.

According to the Life of Constantine, Rastislav asked for a teacher who could explain the Christian faith to his people in their own language. Politically, he also hoped to reduce Frankish influence. Michael III and Photios chose Constantine and Methodius because of their learning and their knowledge of Slavic.

The Glagolitic alphabet

Before leaving, Constantine devised an alphabet for the Slavic language. The Life of Constantine presents this as a gift from God after prayer. Scholars agree it was the script now called Glagolitic, from the Slavic word glagol, meaning “word” or “to speak”.

Glagolitic had about 40 letters, many of them new shapes rather than copies of Greek letters, so that every significant sound of Slavic could be written. Some letters may have been inspired by Greek cursive, Hebrew or Samaritan characters, but the overall design was original. Constantine’s first translation, by tradition, began with the opening of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word”.

The language of these translations, based on the Slavic dialect of the Thessalonica region, is known today as Old Church Slavonic. It was the first literary language of the Slavs.

Creating it was a considerable intellectual achievement. Constantine had to find words for abstract theological ideas that the spoken language of farmers and warriors did not yet express, often by building new terms on Greek models. The result was a flexible written language that could carry Scripture, hymns, sermons and law. At that time the Slavic dialects were still close enough to one another that a text written in this language could be understood from Moravia to the Balkans.

The mission, 863-885

The brothers arrived in Moravia in 863 with a small group of helpers. They translated the Gospel readings, the Psalms and the main services of the Church, and trained local disciples to read and celebrate the liturgy in Slavonic.

This provoked conflict with Frankish clergy, especially the bishops of Bavaria, who regarded Moravia as their mission field. Some argued that God could be praised in only three languages: Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the languages of the inscription on Christ’s cross. The Life of Constantine calls these opponents “trilinguists” and describes Constantine debating them in Venice.

In 867 the brothers left Moravia to have their disciples ordained as priests. They travelled through Pannonia, where Prince Kocel at Lake Balaton also welcomed Slavonic teaching, and then to Venice.

Approval in Rome and the death of Cyril

Pope Nicholas I invited the brothers to Rome, but by the time they arrived, late in 867, he had died. His successor, Adrian II, received them warmly, in part because they brought the relics of Saint Clement. According to the Life of Constantine, the pope approved the Slavonic books and placed them on the altar of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, and some of their disciples were ordained.

Constantine fell ill in Rome. He became a monk, taking the name Cyril, and died on 14 February 869 at the age of about 42. He was buried in the Basilica of San Clemente, where the relics of Saint Clement were also placed.

Methodius as archbishop

After Cyril’s death, Adrian II appointed Methodius as papal legate to the Slavs and, around 869-870, archbishop of a revived see of Sirmium in Pannonia. Back in Central Europe, however, he was seized by Bavarian bishops in 870, tried and imprisoned, probably in Swabia, for about two and a half years. Pope John VIII secured his release in 873.

Methodius then worked in Moravia under Prince Svatopluk I, who preferred Latin clergy and gave him only limited support. In 880 Pope John VIII’s letter Industriae tuae confirmed Methodius’s position and permitted the Slavonic liturgy, on condition that the Gospel was first read in Latin. Around 881-882 Methodius visited Constantinople and was received by Emperor Basil I.

According to the Life of Methodius, in his last years he and his disciples translated nearly the whole Bible into Slavonic, along with church law and writings of the Church Fathers. He died on 6 April 885, having named his disciple Gorazd as successor.

Expulsion of the disciples and the rise of Cyrillic

After Methodius’s death his opponent Wiching, bishop of Nitra, gained the upper hand. Pope Stephen V forbade the Slavonic liturgy, and around 885-886 Methodius’s disciples were imprisoned and expelled from Moravia. Some were sold as slaves and later freed in Venice.

Several leading disciples, among them Clement, Naum and Angelarius, found refuge in Bulgaria, where Khan Boris I had accepted Christianity in the 860s. Boris welcomed them as a means of building a Slavic-speaking Church independent of Byzantine Greek clergy. Clement founded a school at Ohrid that is said to have trained thousands of students, and another centre developed at the new capital, Preslav.

At Preslav, around the 890s or early 900s, scholars developed a new alphabet based mainly on Greek uncial letters, with extra letters taken from Glagolitic for Slavic sounds. This script was later named Cyrillic in honour of Cyril, although he did not create it. It flourished under Simeon the Great and spread to Serbia and Rus, especially after the Christianisation of Kievan Rus in 988.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Cyril invented Cyrillic. He created Glagolitic. Cyrillic was developed by his followers in Bulgaria and named after him.
• Myth: The brothers converted the Moravians. Moravia was already partly Christian. Their achievement was to give the Church a Slavic written language and liturgy.
• Fact: Glagolitic survived for centuries. In Croatia priests used Glagolitic for the liturgy into the 19th and 20th centuries. The Baška tablet of around 1100 is a famous Croatian Glagolitic inscription.
• Fact: the earliest manuscripts are later copies. No manuscript written by the brothers survives. The oldest Glagolitic books, such as the Kiev Missal, date from the 10th century.

By the numbers

Legacy

Cyril and Methodius are venerated as saints by both Catholic and Orthodox Christians and are known as the Apostles to the Slavs. In 1980 Pope John Paul II declared them co-patrons of Europe, and in 1985 he devoted the encyclical Slavorum Apostoli to them.

Their influence reaches far beyond religion. Old Church Slavonic became the literary and liturgical language of much of the Slavic world for centuries. Cyrillic is today used for Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian and several non-Slavic languages, and it became the third official script of the European Union when Bulgaria joined in 2007.

National holidays honour the brothers in Bulgaria (24 May), North Macedonia (24 May), and the Czech Republic and Slovakia (5 July).

Timeline

• c. 815: Birth of Methodius in Thessalonica.
• c. 826-827: Birth of Constantine (Cyril).
• c. 860-861: The brothers’ mission to the Khazars.
• 862: Rastislav of Moravia asks Michael III for teachers.
• 863: The mission arrives in Moravia with the Glagolitic alphabet.
• 867-868: Journey to Rome; Pope Adrian II approves the Slavonic books.
• 869, 14 February: Death of Cyril in Rome.
• 870-873: Methodius imprisoned by Bavarian bishops.
• 880: Pope John VIII permits the Slavonic liturgy.
• 885, 6 April: Death of Methodius; his disciples are soon expelled to Bulgaria.

Why it matters

The mission of 863 gave the Slavs their first alphabet, literary language and vernacular liturgy, at a time when Western Europe worshipped only in Latin. Through Bulgaria and later Rus, it laid the foundations of written culture for a large part of Eastern Europe. Few missions in history have had such a lasting effect on how millions of people read and write.