Cyril and Methodius

Cyril and Methodius, apostles of the Slavs, were brothers, and natives of Thessalonica. Cyril was the name adopted as a monk by Constantine, born in 827. He had been a disciple of Photius, and for his learning was surnamed 'the philosopher.' The Khasars, a Tartar people who inhabited the country from the north-east of the Black Sea to the lower Volga, having about the year 860 asked the Emperor Michael III. to send them Christian missionaries, Cyril was sent in answer to their appeal, and made many converts. The Bulgarians of Thrace and Mœsia were evangelised by Methodius, who baptised their king Bogoris in 861. At the request of Ratislav, Duke of Moravia, the brothers then turned to the countries on the March and Danube. They prepared a Slav translation of the Scriptures and chief liturgical books (which became the foundation of the literature of the Slavs), and by their services in the mother-tongue won the hearts of the people from the Roman missionaries. The two brothers were summoned to Rome to explain their conduct, and Cyril died there in 869. Methodius, who in the same year was consecrated at Rome Bishop of the Moravians, completed the evangelisation of the Slavs. Called to Rome a second time in 879 to justify his celebration of the mass in the native tongue, he succeeded in gaining the approval of Pope John VIII., returned to his diocese in 880, and (according to the most probable account) died at Hradisch on the March, 6th April 885. Bohemia and Moravia celebrated the millenary festival of their two apostles on the 5th July 1863. Both brothers are recognised as saints by the Roman Catholic Church, after having been condemned as Arians by several popes (including Gregory VII.). Their festival falls in the Roman Catholic Church on the 9th of March, in the Greek Church on the 11th of May. The Cyrillic alphabet, modified out of the Greek by Cyril, superseded the more ancient Slavic alphabet over a wide area. The history of Cyril and Methodius is still very obscure. The sources are collected by Schafarik in vol. ii. of his Slavische Alterthümer (Ger. trans. 2d ed. 1863), and more completely by Ginzel in his Geschichte der Slawenapostel Cyril und Method (Leitmeritz, 1857). See also Dümmler and Miklosich, Die Legende vom Heiligen Cyril (Vienna, 1870).