Sts Cyril and Methodius

Cyril and Methodius are remembered as the apostles of the Slavs and the fathers of Slavonic Christian literary culture. The younger brother, baptized Constantine and later known as Cyril, was formed at Constantinople and gained a great reputation for learning. Methodius had served in public office before becoming a monk. Both were already tested men when Prince Rostislav of Moravia asked for missionaries who could teach his people in their own tongue. That request changed the course of their lives. They knew the Slavonic speech, and Cyril, or those immediately around him, prepared the characters by which it could be written. With translated portions of Scripture and liturgical texts, the brothers entered Moravia not merely as preachers but as founders of a Christian culture. Their success with the people was immediate, and so was the resistance. German clergy already at work in the region opposed both their influence and their use of the vernacular. The brothers therefore went west seeking support and ordination for their helpers.

In Rome they were warmly received by Pope Adrian II, especially when they brought the relics of St Clement. Their cause was examined and approved: the use of Slavonic in the liturgy was allowed, and their mission received papal backing. Cyril did not return east. He died in Rome in 869 after receiving the monastic habit and was buried there in honour. Methodius carried the burden on alone. Consecrated and sent back as metropolitan of Sirmium, he found himself caught in the long struggle between Roman approval, German hostility, and Slavic political instability. He was seized by hostile bishops and imprisoned for years, later released by papal intervention, then forced again to defend both his orthodoxy and the use of Slavonic. This life makes the whole life feel like a long endurance of labour, misunderstanding, and patient fidelity. Even so, Methodius kept preaching, governing, and translating, and in his last years completed a vast body of Slavonic biblical and legal work. He died in 884, worn out by apostolic labour, after giving a people not only missionaries but a Christian written inheritance that endured far beyond the quarrels of his own day.