Home
Sts. Cyril and Methodius (sometimes called Constantine and Methodius) were brothers born to a senatorial family in Thessalonica in 827 and 826 respectively. They both decided to become priests and after ordination lived in a monastery on the Bospherus. The Khazars asked Constantinople to send them missionaries. The two brothers were chosen, learned the slavic language and converted many Khazars. Shortly afterward there was a request from Moravia for missionaries. There had been German missionaries in Moravia who had had little success. The Moravians wished someone who spoke the slavic tongue. Cyril and Methodius were chosen for this mission also. In preparation, Cyril invented an alphabet (Cyrilic) and he and Methodius translated the Gospels and liturgical books into the slavonic language. They entered Moravia in 863 and preached there for four and a half years with great success. The Germans regarded them with suspicion because they came from Constantinople where schism was raging and because they conducted the liturgy and church devotions and sevices in the slavic language. They complained to Rome about them and Nicholas I summoned them to appear before him and give an account of themselves. Nicholas died as they were travelling to Rome and they appeared before Pope Adrian II, who confirmed their othordoxy as well as their mission to Moravia and the use of the slavonic language. He consecrated them bishops. But before they could return to Moravia, Cyril died at Rome, Feb.4,896. At the request of Rastislav and Svatopluk, Moravian princes, and of Kocel, slavic prince of Pannonia, Adrian TT formed the archdiocese of Moravia and Pannonia, independent of Germany, naming Methodius as archbishop. In 870 Methodius was summoned to Ratisbon for a synod, by King Louis and the German bishops. This combine deposed him and imprisoned him. After three years he was liberated at the command of Pope John VIII, and reinstated in his archbishopric. Methodius now attempted the spread of the faith among the Bohemians and Poles in Northern Moravia. At the instigation of a German priest, Wiching, he was summoned to Rome, where Pope John, after examination confirmed his othordoxy and sanctioned the Slavonic Liturgy, the only exception being that the Gospel of the Mass must first be read in Latin and then in Slavonic. Wiching had been appointed his suffragan bishop and gave him constant trouble, but John VIII constantly supported him. Methodius, with the help of several priests, translated the remainder of Holy Scripture into Slavonic, with the exception of the Books of Machabees, together with the Nomo-canon, the Greek ecclesiastical-civil law. Worn out by his struggles, he died April 6, 885, naming as his successor his disciple, Gorazd. The Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius was formerly celebrated in Bohemia and Moravia on March 9, but Pope Pius IX changed the feast day of the Apostle of the Slavic Peoples to July 5, and Pope Leo XIII in 1880 extended their Feast to the Universal Church. Technical Details: Scott Catalogue - 369 - 371 Date Issued - 22 November 1963 Face Value - 30 l, 70 l, 150 l Perforations - 14 Printer - The Italian State Printing Works |
| (From Vatican Notes Volume XII, Number 6, May - June 1964, Page 7) |
