St. Cyril and St. Methodius

Two brothers, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, were the founders of the Slavonic liturgy. Their influence spread to part of the southern Slavs, Russians and Bulgarians. At the beginning of the twentieth century, in 1909, there was founded the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius at Danville, Pennsylvania.


St. Cyril

St. Cyril
by Mikhail Vrubel
Cyril was born Constantine in Thessalonica around 826, and changed his name only when he became a monk shortly before his death. He had six brothers and sisters, one of them St. Methodius (originally Michael). Their father was an officer in the Legion of Thessalonica and the two brothers spoke the Slavic dialect of Macedonia.

Cyril was 14 when his father died. He moved to Constantinople, where the chief minister, the Empress Theodora, looked after his instruction. He studied philosophy at the Imperial University. Cyril was ordained priest before being named librarian at St. Sophia and eventually became a professor at the university. After a mission to the Arabs, he joined his brother, Methodius, who had retired to a monastery on Mount Olympus, in Bythnia. In 860, they were both sent by Emperor Michael III as missionaries to the partly Christianized Khazars, and in 862 to Moravia, where the duke had requested Slavonic-speaking priests. There, Cyril invented the Glagolithic alphabet (which later produced Cyrillic), and translated into Slavonic both Biblical and liturgical texts.

Thanks to the two brothers, Greek clerical influence increased in Moravia, at the expense of the Latin clergy who had originally evangelized the country and settled there. Gradually, tension mounted between the two rival priesthoods. The situation was similar in Pannonia. At the end of 867, approbation from Rome was sent by Pope Hadrian II to the two brothers in a Greek monastery. Cyril, who was seriously ill, took monastic orders and died soon after; he was buried in S. Clemente, in Rome.


St. Methodius

Methodius was a district governor of a Slav province. In 840 he left state service and became a monk in Bythnia. He accompanied his brother Constantine (later Cyril) on his mission to the Khazars. He was named Archbishop of Pannonia and Moravia the year his brother died (869) and was made Papal Legate to the Slavs. Methodius returned to Pannonia, where he met with resistance from the Bishop of Salzburg. Condemned by a synod held at Regensburg, he was exiled to Ellwangen. Pope John VIII released him in 873, although he forbade the Slavonic liturgy. Finally, however, although Latin was used in the liturgy, the Slav language was not disregarded. Tension between Methodius and the suffragans imposed by Rome was defused only on his death in 885.

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