Bishops

ON THE HOLY BISHOPS, APOSTLES OF THE SLAVS, CYRIL AND METHODIUS, AT OLOMOUC IN MORAVIA,

NINTH CENTURY.

Preliminary Commentary.

Cyril, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

Methodius, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

BHL Number: 1851

§ I. Which peoples were converted by SS. Constantine the Philosopher, or Cyril, and Methodius his brother, or Methudius.

[1] The annual solemnity of SS. Cyril and Methodius, or Methudius, is celebrated on the seventh day before the Ides of March. They were blood brothers, both initiated into the priesthood, SS. Cyril and Methodius are venerated on March 9, and, impelled by an apostolic spirit, they imbued various Slavic peoples with the knowledge of the Christian faith. Thus their memory is inscribed on this day in the records of the Roman Martyrology: In Moravia, the holy bishops Cyril and Methodius, who led many peoples of those regions, together with their kings, to the faith of Christ. A manuscript Florilegium of Saints remembers them thus on the same day: In Moravia, in the city of Velehrad, SS. Cyril and Methodius, Bishops and Confessors. Cardinal Baronius in his Observations on the Martyrology notes the following: The deeds of these men are found in the Breviary of the most devout Church of the Poles, By the Poles. arranged in six Lessons according to ecclesiastical custom. They are now three in the Breviary reduced to the Roman standard; and the same are found among the Proper Offices of the Saints of the Cathedral Church and the whole diocese of Olomouc, The Moravians, granted by the consent and authority of Our Most Holy Lord Urban VIII, to be recited by all priests of every order. These were published again in 1630 by the Most Eminent Lord Francis, Cardinal Priest of the Holy Roman Church of the title of Santa Maria in Trastevere and Prince of Dietrichstein, Bishop of Olomouc — illuminated by the Sacred Congregation of Rites and made illustrious by Our Most Holy Lord Urban VIII — so that the entire Clergy throughout Moravia might use them in the recitation of the Breviary. They also exist among the Proper Lessons of those Saints Of Bohemia whose memory is specially cultivated throughout the Archdiocese of Bohemia, published by the authority of the Most Eminent Cardinal von Harrach, Archbishop of Prague, in the year 1653. In the Directory, or order for reciting the Canonical Hours and celebrating Masses, according to the rite of the Roman Breviary and Missal, printed at Prague in 1663, the following is found for March 9: In Bohemia and Moravia, SS. Cyril and Methodius, Bishops, Confessors, and Patrons, Double. And in Moravia it is a feast of obligation, at which in the Mass, the CREED is said. We shall give below those more ancient six Lessons from the old Breviary of Olomouc.

[2] Now, because Baronius warns that, although only Moravia is attributed to Methodius, nevertheless from the register of Pope John VIII it is sufficiently clear They converted various peoples: that Methodius was also Bishop of the Slavs, who, ordained by the Roman Pontiff Hadrian II, predecessor of the same John VIII, was sent by him to the Slavic people — as if the Moravians too were not Slavs — it seems necessary to indicate to which peoples, inhabiting which regions, both of them preached Christ. And Cyril indeed, whom Martin of Poland in Book 4 of his Chronicle calls the Apostle of almost all the Slavs, was sent to the Khazars, Cyril to the Khazars, or Gazars or Chazars; and first he came to Cherson (as will be said below in the first narrative of his acts), which is indeed close to and contiguous with the land of the Khazars. From where the Khazars emerged and how widely they extended their dominion, Theophanes reports at the year 11 of Constantine Pogonatus in these words: The numerous nation of the Khazars, Dwellers on the Black Sea, bursting forth from the interior of Berzelia, which belongs to the first Sarmatia, and having reduced under their power all the provinces situated beyond the river as far as the Black Sea, made Batbaias, the Prince of the first Bulgaria, tributary to themselves, and exacts tribute from him to this day. Theophanes brought his Chronography down to the reign of Leo the Armenian, who seized power in the year 813, Indiction 6. Cedrenus at the year 16 of Heraclius mentions "the Turks of the East, whom they also call Khazars" (τοὺς Τούρκους της εώας ὃυς καὶ χαξάρους ὀνομάζουσιν).

[3] The second people to whom these holy brothers delivered the evangelical teaching Both of them the Bulgarians, originating from Sarmatia, were the Bulgarians. Their origin is also traced from Sarmatia, where the ancient and great Bulgaria lay, around the river called Atalis by Theophanes, by others Atel, in Tartaric Edel, as Ortelius notes, formerly Rha to Ptolemy, and to the Ruthenians Volga or Wolga, whence the people themselves were called Vulgares, or Bulgari, and Wulgares. Their ancient dominion was retained by the already mentioned Batbaias, the firstborn son of Crobas. The four remaining brothers, contrary to what their father had commanded them in his testament, separated from one another, together with the people subject to them. And the second,

whose name was Cotragus, having crossed the Tanais River, established his seat opposite his firstborn brother. The others migrated elsewhere: two settled around the Danube in lower Moesia and in Dardania, and thereafter waged many wars with their neighbors, especially the Thracians — although they had also made incursions into Thrace long before, as is reported in the Chronicle of Marcellinus the Count, under Indiction 7, when John Gibbus was sole Consul, in the year of Christ 499.

[4] At February 11, §9 of the Life of St. Theodora Augusta, mother of the Emperor Michael III (by whom St. Cyril was sent to the Khazars), (Whom the Roman painter Methodius had previously instructed, we related that Bogoris, King of the Bulgarians, was converted at that very time — he whom Constantinus Cupharas, an excellent man then a captive there, had first taught the sacred doctrines of the Christians, and then his own sister, who had been captured in a certain raid and detained in the court of the Empress, and there initiated into the Christian religion and imbued with the learning of letters. For she, having been sent home, did not cease to preach to her brother the mysteries of our Faith. But a stronger impulse came from a certain monk named Methodius, a Roman by nationality, skilled in the art of painting, who, having been commanded by the King to paint according to his own judgment something terrible that would strike horror and fear into the spectators — with nothing specifically prescribed — painted the Second Coming of Christ and the Last Judgment, than which he knew nothing more terrible, and at the same time instructed the King as to what these things meant. Thereupon, the King immediately renounced the superstition of his ancestors and received holy baptism, being called Michael after the name of the Emperor. We have more fully set forth at the cited place what was done and what later occurred; It is doubtful whether he is the same as Cyril's brother) however, we then deferred investigating, and even now cannot sufficiently disentangle, whether that Methodius was the same as the one who was the Apostle of the Slavs together with Cyril — since the latter also preached the faith of Christ to the Bulgarians. One objection can be raised against this — namely, that the painter Methodius was, as Cedrenus has it, "a Roman by nation" (ῥωμαῖος τὸ γένος); whereas our Methodius here was born either at Constantinople or rather at Thessalonica. But Cedrenus may have called "Roman" one who was born at Constantinople, which is the New Rome; or universally, the phrase "Roman by nation" is the same as "born within the boundaries of the Roman Empire." And indeed, even one born at Thessalonica could perhaps be said to trace his origin from Old Rome, for the reason that the Province of Thessalonica, like both divisions of Illyricum, was contained under the Roman Patriarchate. And since both he and his brother Constantine the Philosopher, or Cyril, were equally skilled in both Latin and Greek, they may be supposed to have been born at Thessalonica of Roman parents; and Methodius perhaps, either to avoid for a time, or for whatever other reason, the persecution stirred up by Theophilus against monks and painters, had withdrawn to the Bulgarians inhabiting Dardania, from where he would have returned to Constantinople when he learned that his brother had returned there from Khazaria. If, however, they were different Methodiuses — since the painter is not said to have been a priest — the holy brothers did not lack Bulgarians among those they might cultivate while making their way toward the Trans-Danubian Slavs.

[5] The Triballi (since these too are said to have been visited and imbued with the knowledge of the Faith) seem to have been intermingled with the Bulgarians at that time, They also convert the Triballi, intermingled with the Bulgarians, having unlearned Christian customs and faith through long association with barbarians — they themselves having been more than half-barbarian even before. Concerning these, Strabo wrote long ago, more than eight hundred years before the conversion of the Bulgarians, in Book 7 of his Geography, that the Getae were neighbors to the lower parts of the Ister, used the same language as the Dacians, and were better known to the Greeks because of their frequent migrations to both banks of the Ister and because they were intermingled with the Thracians and Mysians. The same thing, he says, has also befallen the Triballi, Formerly a Thracian people; a Thracian people. Somewhat earlier he had written that Alexander the Great, in the expedition he undertook against the Thracian inhabitants of Mount Haemus, also made an attack upon the Triballi, whom he saw extending all the way to the Ister and to the island of Peuce situated therein; and that he was prevented by Syrmus, King of the Triballi, from entering that island, to which the king had retreated. This is precisely what is now Bulgaria — namely, lower Moesia. And in his own time the same Strabo joins the Triballi and Mysians dwelling along the Ister. It is to be understood that St. Cyril visited these peoples, when in the more recent Breviary of the Poles, Moravians, and Bohemians it is said that, having taken his brother Methodius with him, he set out on a long journey and first turned aside to the Bulgarians dwelling along the Danube, and likewise delivered to them the faith of Christ and the sacred writings translated into their language — those writings, namely, which not only all the peoples of the Bulgarians use, but also many other nations that have borrowed the light of faith from the Bulgarians.

[6] From what has been said, it seems to follow that the Khazars and Bulgarians had the Slavic language in common. But, as we reported above from Theophanes, the Prince of the first Bulgaria was made tributary to the Khazars together with his people; so too the same author narrates Likewise the Moravians, a Slavic people, that seven generations, as they are called, of Slavinians were reduced under the power of the Bulgarians inhabiting lower Moesia on the right bank of the Ister River. Having passed through these, they reached the Moravians, who at that time seem to have been the most powerful of the Slavs. The situation of Moravia is described thus by Aeneas Silvius in his Bohemian History, chapter 13: Moravia, he says, lies beyond the Danube; to the east the Hungarians and Poles possess the kingdom, Who once ruled more widely; separated by the Morava River, which gave the region its name. To the west the Bohemians face it; the Austrians to the south; the Silesians occupy the northern side ... Here rule was held for many years: the Hungarians, Bohemians, Russians, and Poles obeyed the Prince of the Moravians. How far this is true, let others investigate. Certainly they ruled more widely than the boundaries of the province now extend. For it will be shown below that their dominion reached as far as Nitra, now a city and river of Hungary.

[7] Finally, these same Saints were the first to bring the light of Faith into Bohemia in the ninth century of the Christian Era, when Borzivoj, the tenth Duke of the nation, as the same Aeneas Silvius reckons, was baptized, And the Bohemians. together with St. Ludmila his wife — who educated her grandson Wenceslaus, Duke and Martyr, in the pursuit of piety from infancy; and she herself also obtained the crown of martyrdom through the cruelty of her most impious daughter-in-law Drahomira. Her feast (as one of the Patron Saints of the kingdom) is celebrated on September 16 with a Double Office of the second class, as they call it; while Wenceslaus is celebrated on September 28, with a feast of obligation and a Double Office of the first class extended to the octave day.

§ II. The deeds of SS. Cyril and Methodius, chiefly from the history of the Translation of St. Clement, Pope and Martyr.

[8] The Acts of these Saints in Bohemian writers. The deeds of the holy bishops Cyril and Methodius were briefly touched upon rather than historically narrated by the writers of Bohemian affairs. The first of these was Cosmas, Dean of the Church of Prague, who in his letter to Master Gervasius — or the preface to his work By Cosmas of Prague, around the year 1120. which he entitled the Chronicle of the Bohemians — testifies that it was composed when the fourth Henry was reigning as Emperor of the Romans, and Pope Calixtus was governing the holy Church of God, in the time of Vladislav, Duke of the Bohemians, and likewise of Hermann, Bishop of the Church of Prague. Henry IV (whom the Germans commonly call the fifth) died in 1125, in the nineteenth year of his reign; Calixtus II on December 19, 1124; Hermann, Bishop of Prague, in 1122, on September 17; Duke Vladislav in 1125, on April 12, Palm Sunday.

[9] Next after him is Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, who, elected Supreme Pontiff in 1458, was called Pius II, and in that year finished his Bohemian History. [By Aeneas Silvius in the fifteenth century, Dubravius and Hagecius in the sixteenth,] This was treated somewhat more fully shortly afterwards by John Dubravius, Bishop of Olomouc, who placed the end of his work in Book 33 at the miserable death of King Louis and the inauguration of Ferdinand of Austria — the former occurring on August 29, 1526, the latter on February 24 of the following year. The author himself is reported to have died on September 6, 1553. Wenceslaus Hagecius composed around the same time a Chronicle of the Bohemians in the national language and dedicated it to the same Ferdinand I in 1541; this was rendered into German by John Sandel of Žlutice and presented to Emperor Rudolf II, printed in 1596. In these works too, mention is made of the holy Apostles of the Slavic nation, Cyril and Methodius, and here at the year of Christ 904, By Pontanus in the seventeenth; it is reported that in Bohemian he is called Strachota. George Bartholdus Pontanus von Braitenberg, Provost of the Metropolitan Church of Prague, also treats of them in his Bohemia Pia, printed at Frankfurt in 1608. These authors, however, neither sufficiently agree with one another nor entirely confirm the chronology they propose.

[10] Since we do not have their Acts written in a continuous narrative, we shall present various accounts of them that we have found. The first is copied from the codex of the most distinguished Francis Duchesne, More fully in the Translation of the body of St. Clement, a Senator in the Supreme Court of Paris, to which codex the title "Volume 2 of the Collection" is prefixed; and to this narrative the title is: Here begins the Translation of the body of St. Clement, Martyr and Pontiff. And this is primarily commemorated on the occasion of the pilgrimage undertaken by Constantine the Philosopher, a noble and pious priest, originally from Thessalonica, to the Tauric Chersonese, to imbue the Khazars, who requested it, with the mysteries of the Christian faith. While he paused there for a time to learn the language of the Khazars, he inquired about the body of Pope St. Clement Which St. Cyril found, (whom he remembered had been cast into the sea there with an anchor tied to his neck; and the sea had then receded three miles for the Christians praying on the shore; and going thither, they found a marble chapel in the form of a temple, and inside a stone ark where the body of the Martyr was deposited; and this miracle of the receding sea had been accustomed to occur for many years on the anniversary of his feast). He therefore inquired about the body of that glorious Pontiff, and, having held public prayers with all the people and the bishop of the neighboring city, he found it and transferred it, and carried it with him — or at least its principal parts — as he set out for the Khazars, And brought it to Rome around the year 868, and afterwards transported it to the Moravians, and finally to Rome, whither he had been summoned from Moravia by Pope Nicholas I; and it was deposited there in the church long since dedicated in honor of that same Martyr, where he too was afterwards entombed.

[11] Baronius mentions this Translation of St. Clement in his Notes on the Martyrology for November 23, and from a letter of Anastasius the Librarian, an eyewitness, addressed to King Charles on the first of April, Indiction 8 As the eyewitness Anastasius the Librarian says, — that is, in the year of Christ 875 — he recites the following: The great man and teacher of the apostolic life, Constantine the Philosopher, came to Rome under Pope Hadrian the Younger, of venerable memory, and restored the body of St. Clement to his See. The same Baronius in Volume 10 of the Annals at the year 867 narrates the history of that Finding and Translation from Peter de Natalibus, Book 10, chapter 98, who writes thus: Leo, Bishop of Ostia, relates that in the time of the Emperor Michael at Constantinople, etc. The same history was related more fully by James of Voragine nearly a hundred years before Peter, since he was created Archbishop of Genoa in the year 1292, And much later by Equilinus, and, as

as James Philip of Bergamo writes of him, he composed many commentaries full of substance both before and during his episcopate, and gathered into one volume many Lives of Saints that were scattered and dispersed. Concerning this volume, which is commonly called the Golden Legend or the Lombard History, we have treated at length in the General Preface to January, chapter 1, §4. But Peter — which escaped us when we were composing that Preface — And this one more ancient began his Catalogue of Saints on the feast of St. Barnabas in the year 1369 and completed it in 1371.

[12] We therefore give the text from Voragine, who has the following in his Life of St. Clement: Leo, Bishop of Ostia, relates James of Voragine, that at the time when the Emperor Michael was ruling the empire of New Rome, a certain priest named Philosophus, who had been so called from boyhood on account of his supreme genius, when he had arrived at Cherson and had asked the inhabitants about the things that are narrated in the history of Clement, they professed not to know, since they were newcomers rather than natives. For the miracle of the sea's recession had long since ceased on account of the sins of the inhabitants, and because of the incursion of barbarians who came at the time of the sea's recession, the temple had been destroyed, and the ark with the body had been overwhelmed by the waves of the sea, as the sins of the inhabitants demanded. Marveling at this, the Philosopher approached a small city called Georgia, and together with its Bishop and Clergy, went to seek the sacred relics on the island where they believed the body of the Martyr to be. There, digging with hymns and prayers, they found by divine revelation the body and the anchor with which he had been cast into the sea, and they carried it to Cherson. Then the aforesaid Philosopher came to Rome with the body of St. Clement, and after many miracles were displayed, the body was honorably placed in the church that is now called St. Clement's. In a certain Chronicle, however, it is read that after the sea had dried up from that place, it was translated to Rome by Blessed Cyril, Bishop of the Moravians.

[13] So he writes. But the one whom he says was a priest called by the name Philosophus, Equilinus calls Philip, And Baronius, and Baronius follows him; the already cited Anastasius calls him Constantine the Philosopher, with which the Acts also agree. And he is the same one who, by divine inspiration, wished to be called Cyril not long before his death; and the same who was Bishop of the Moravians, or, as they are now commonly called, Moravians. In other respects, the narrative of Equilinus and of Voragine agrees in substance, if not in words. But Equilinus concludes thus: They carried the body to Cherson and buried it there. But in the time of Pope Nicholas I, the body itself was taken up from there by St. Cyril, Bishop of the Slavs, and brought to Rome, and deposited in the church built in his name, where it rests, illustrious with miracles. Baronius, having previously reported from the letter of Anastasius that Constantine the Philosopher came to Rome under Pope Hadrian the Younger, of venerable memory, and restored the body of St. Clement to its See — which the Acts also report — says in the Annals, in order also to follow to some extent the narrative of Equilinus, that Cyril and Methodius brought the body of St. Clement to Rome while Nicholas was still alive; but he says they remained at Rome until the election of Hadrian.

[14] As for the writer of the already mentioned Translation — whom James of Voragine, Peter de Natalibus, And these cite Leo of Ostia, and Cardinal Baronius cite as Leo of Ostia — they do not indicate in which work he reports it, so that one may suspect that they themselves did not read it in his writings. We have read only his three books of the Cassinese Chronicle, in which we found nothing similar; but we know that Peter the Deacon lists more of Leo's writings in his book on the illustrious men of Cassino, chapter 30 — writings that Voragine can perhaps be believed to have seen, while the others at least cited what he had cited. Such are: Sermons on various feasts, a History of Pilgrims, the Life of St. Mennas, and very many other things. Perhaps in a sermon on the chair of St. Clement. We have received from the most reverend Abbot Ughelli, copied from a manuscript of the monastery of Fossanova, though mutilated, a Sermon of Lord Leo, Bishop of Ostia, on the ordination or Chair of Pope St. Clement, which is celebrated on the tenth day before the Kalends of February, and it begins thus: After the providence of divine ordination, Blessed Clement, as is related in the records of his life, received the seeds of the divine word at the city of Rome from Blessed Barnabas, and then, having been joined to the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, Peter, at Caesarea, was more fully formed and taught by him in the faith of Christ, and was solemnly baptized with the baptism of saving water, etc. It is only a single page, between what followed and what was torn from the codex; perhaps that too contained the narrative of the Finding and Translation through Constantine the Philosopher, which we have related from James of Voragine, and Baronius from Equilinus. As for the Chair of St. Clement, which in the title of the cited sermon is said to be celebrated on the tenth day before the Kalends of February, we find no mention of it in the Martyrologies for that day.

[15] The history of the Translation that we shall give here, we suspect was written by Gaudericus, Bishop of Velletri, whom others call Gaudentius. The history of the Translation was written by Gaudericus, Bishop of Velletri, For we have received from the same Abbot Ughelli the Life or history of St. Clement, though mutilated, whose Preface to Pope John VIII begins thus: The Preface of Gaudericus, Bishop of Velletri, to the Most Holy Pope John of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church. To the ever Blessed Lord, the Supreme Pontiff and Universal Pope John, Gaudericus, the least of bishops, sends perpetual joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. I thought it fitting, for the honor and praise of your Predecessor, Blessed Clement the Martyr and Pontiff, with God as guide, to gather together in one work certain things about his family and life; and to discover more clearly from what noble lineage he sprang, and how, disputing philosophically against idols, he came to know the truth by divine prescience — especially since I, however unworthy, have presided over the Church of this excellent Martyr of Christ, situated at the town of Velletri. And somewhat later: I have collected, not so much skillfully as devoutly, and gluing them together, have arranged them in three books. In the first book, indeed, we have indicated Clement's family, homeland, birth, education, resolution, life, conversion, and the nature of his recognition. In the second, with God's help, we have set forth the profundity of his teaching, the dignity of the episcopal summit, the authority of his singular pontificate, and his boldness in disputing sophistically against idols. But in the third, we marvel, and we have endeavored to collect the prodigies, the distresses of his exile, the laurels of his martyrdom, and the miracles of his return to his own See. As he himself testifies, And finally: What we, as we recall, he says, have seen and read to have been done by the prayers of this same Martyr of Christ, we have collected and transcribed, and from many things we have excerpted very few to the praise of Almighty God.

[16] Therefore it seems to us by no means doubtful that the narrative of the Finding of St. Clement, which the codex of Duchesne has supplied to us, was excerpted from that third book on the deeds of the same holy Pontiff, composed by Bishop Gaudericus of Velletri, and perhaps abridged. He himself certainly professes to have collected the return of St. Clement to his own See and the miracles that then occurred, which he seems to have watched; these were done under Hadrian II, the predecessor of John VIII, to whom he dedicates this narrative. The same Gaudericus or Gandericus, Bishop of Velletri, was present at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, as is clear from many passages.

[17] But I would not think that all the relics of the body of St. Clement were translated to Rome: Some relics seem to have been left in the Chersonese: for how would the people of Cherson have borne it? He seems therefore to have left some relics for them when departing, since they had been solemnly carried to their metropolis. What I shall add next is relevant — that about six hundred years ago, Yaroslav, the Catholic King of the Russians, son of St. Vladimir, brother of the martyred Saints Roman and David (or Boris and Hleb), related to the envoys of Henry I, King of France, the following, which is written in the margin of an ancient codex of the Church of St. Omer, next to the miracle reported in the Acts of St. Clement about an infant found sleeping under the waves after the space of a year.

[18] In the year of the Incarnate Word 1048, when Henry, King of the French, sent Roger, Bishop of Châlons, into *Rabastia to fetch the daughter of the King of that land, named Anna, whom he was to marry, Odalricus, Provost of the Church of St. Mary of Rheims, begged the same bishop to deign to inquire whether in those parts there was a Cherson, where St. Clement is read to rest, or whether the sea still parts on the day of his nativity and is passable for those going thither. And he did so; for from the King of that land, namely Yaroslav, he learned the following: that Pope Julius had gone to that region where St. Clement lay, in order to destroy a heresy that had sprung up in those parts. Some relics carried off to Rome, And when, the business being completed, the same Pope began to return from those parts, an Angel of the Lord appeared to him, saying: Do not depart; for it is commanded you by the Lord that you return and transfer the body of St. Clement, which has lain in the sea until now. He said: How can this be done, since the sea does not part except on the day of his nativity? The Angel said to him: This shall be a sign to you that the Lord commands you to return, because the sea shall part to meet you. He went there and transferred the body of St. Clement and placed it upon the shore and built a church there; and taking relics from his body, he brought them with him to Rome. It happened, however, that on the day when he brought them and the Roman people received the relics with the greatest honor, on that same day the sepulchre that had been left in the sea rose up above the sea together with its base and became an island; whereupon the people of that region built a basilica and a congregation, and from then on one goes to that church by boat. The same King Yaroslav, a Slavic George, therefore told the Bishop of Châlons that he himself had once gone there and brought back with him the heads of Saints Clement and Phoebus, his disciple, and placed them in the city of Kiev, where they are honorably venerated — and he also showed those same heads to the bishop.

[19] This Yaroslav, King of the Russians and father-in-law of Henry, King of France, Some relics later taken to Kiev: is erroneously called Iuriscloht in Volume 4 of Duchesne's French Writers, in a certain fragment from an ancient codex of Fleury; in another excerpt from a manuscript of the Thuanian Library, he is called George, the Slavic King of the Ratians. Roger, who is said to have been sent to him by Henry as envoy, was the forty-fourth Bishop of the Church of Châlons, the second of that name. Others report that Walter, the fiftieth Bishop of Meaux, was sent. What if both were sent? As for the statement here that Pope Julius came to the Tauric Chersonese to destroy a heresy that had sprung up in those parts, this does not sufficiently agree with ecclesiastical history. St. Julius I indeed undertook many struggles against the Arians for the defense of the orthodox Faith and the restoration of banished bishops; Those relics were found not by Pope St. Julius but by St. Cyril; yet he is never read to have traveled to those or any other eastern regions for that or any other reason; nor, as Baronius proves, did he go into exile for the sake of the faith, as is otherwise stated

in the Book of the Pontiffs. Julius II and III lived in the sixteenth century of the Christian Era, long after the time of Kings Henry and Yaroslav. Perhaps the neophyte King of the Russians had heard that the relics of St. Clement were removed and translated by Bishop Cyril, or Constantine the Philosopher, of whom we are treating here, and attributed them to Julius by some confusion, or the envoy erred in his memory, or the writer rashly blundered. Concerning what happened after the relics were carried to Rome, and concerning the sepulchre and island of St. Clement that emerged from the sea, we have not yet been able to read or had leisure to inquire anywhere. As for the head of St. Clement, or some part of it, preserved at Kiev — which is a very large city situated on the Borysthenes and is reported to have then been the metropolis of all Russia and the royal seat of Yaroslav himself, or at least of his parent Vladimir — what we have related is in any case confirmed by our Albert Wijuk Kojalowicz in his Miscellanea on the Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, page 42, where he reports from the Russian Annals that a certain Clement, elected Metropolitan of Russia in 1146, was consecrated by the imposition of the head of Pope St. Clement.

* Perhaps for Bastarniam?

§ III. Another narrative of the acts of SS. Cyril and Methodius. The Scriptures translated into Slavonic by Cyril; Masses sung in that language approved by the Pope.

[20] Another Life, or narrative of the deeds, of the holy brothers Cyril, or Constantine the Philosopher, and Methodius was sent to us by our John Gamans from a very large codex of the monastery of Blaubeuren. Blaubeuren was — or, as Gabriel Bucelin writes, Blaubyra; as Martin Crusius, Another Life of SS. Cyril and Methodius from a Blaubeuren manuscript. Bladyra and Blauburnium — a distinguished monastery of the Benedictine Order, not far from Ulm, near a most ample and very deep spring from which arises a river of azure color called the Blau, whence also the name of the place, meaning "blue spring." I say "was" that monastery, because Duke Ulrich of Württemberg in the previous century, having uprooted the religion of his ancestors, seized it. The religious monks were indeed restored, first by the authority of Emperor Charles V, then of Ferdinand II, but were expelled a third time. Among the splendid ornaments of that monastery were excellent codices on the acts of the Saints, inscribed as Passionals, of which the tenth in number, most elegantly written on parchment by Brother Bartholomew Kraffe in the year 1480, presents at part 2, folio 19, the narrative that we shall give in the second place, with this title: The Life of St. Cyril, Bishop and monk, and of St. Methodius, Bishop, his brother, who converted Moravia and Bohemia to the faith of Christ. The earlier part of this narrative is moreover abridged from the one we give in the first place, which we believe was composed by Gaudericus, Bishop of Velletri, in his tripartite work on the deeds of Pope St. Clement — of which we obtained only a truncated copy. We shall nevertheless also publish that Blaubeuren narrative, which, although, as we have noted, its first part is abridged from the earlier one, nevertheless records many things that are lacking in it.

[21] To this narrative we shall append those six Lessons that the Churches of the Slavs were accustomed to recite in the Ecclesiastical Office of old, Another from the ancient Slavic Office, mention of which was made above from Baronius's annotations to the Martyrology. These were sent to us from Moravia from the old manuscript Breviary of the Church of Olomouc by our Louis Crasius. We also obtained six other Lessons from an Olomouc Breviary likewise printed, though in rather rough type, in 1495; to which, however, I would far prefer those we shall give from the manuscript. The opening of the printed ones is this: As is gathered from the histories of very many Saints and from various Chronicles, SS. Cyril and Methodius, blood brothers, from Alexandria, skilled in both the Greek and Slavonic languages, came into the land of Moravia. We have learned, however, that these same Lessons also exist in an ancient Passional at Prague. And the Life of St. Ludmila, We have received the Life of St. Ludmila from a distinguished parchment codex of the monastery of Böddeken, a house of Canons Regular in the diocese of Paderborn, the earlier part of which seems to have been taken from the Lessons we shall give, though with the phraseology here and there interpolated. Concerning the Bohemians converted to the faith of Christ through the work of these Saints, and especially of Methodius, we shall append certain passages from the same Life.

[22] Concerning the Scriptures and Divine Offices translated into the Slavonic language by these same apostolic men, but especially by Cyril, St. Cyril translated much of the Scriptures into Slavonic, the earlier Life has scarcely anything, except the one passage at number 7, that they were received with great joy by the Moravians because they had heard that they were bringing with them the relics of St. Clement and the Gospel translated into their language by the aforesaid Philosopher. But the Blaubeuren Life at number 5 narrates the following: When the holy men had called the King and people to the light of the Faith, then, expounding to them the Old and New Testaments and instructing them, And the Ecclesiastical Offices: translating many things from Greek and Latin, they established the public singing in the Church of God of the Canonical Hours and Masses in the Slavonic language. And the Life of St. Ludmila at number 1 says that Cyril also devised new letters or characters, and translated the Old and New Testaments and many other things from Greek or Latin speech into the Slavonic language; and moreover established that Masses and the other Canonical Hours should be chanted in the Church.

[23] When this was first reported to Pope Nicholas, he marveled, as is said at number 6 in the second Life, Which displeased those at Rome, that the priests of the Lord had dared to chant the Canonical Hours in Slavonic. Wherefore he commanded by Apostolic letters that they should come to him at Rome. They immediately set out on the journey and arrived at Rome, the Pope meanwhile dying. Or, as the ancient Lessons have it: When at a certain time Cyril had gone to Rome for the sake of devotion, he was reproved by the Supreme Pontiff and by the other Rectors of the Church for having dared, contrary to the decrees of the Canons, to institute the singing of the solemnities of the Mass in the Slavonic language. To this he responded modestly and wisely, and persuaded them to assent. All of which is also reported in the second Life at number 7. Aeneas Silvius, in chapter 13 of his Bohemian History, writes on this matter as follows: They say that Cyril, when he was at Rome, petitioned the Roman Pontiff that he might be allowed to use the Slavonic language in performing the sacred rites for the people of that nation whom he had baptized. While this matter was being debated in the sacred Senate, and there were not a few who opposed it, a voice was heard as if sent from heaven in these words: Let every spirit praise the Lord, and let every tongue confess to him; thereupon the privilege was granted to Cyril. In the Proper Offices now used by the Churches of Olomouc, Prague, and Poland, the following is reported in almost the same sense: Having finally established the Churches and completed the work of Christ, Afterwards nevertheless approved by a divine response: they bring the body of St. Clement to Rome; and from Pope Nicholas I they obtain permission for the nations baptized by them to perform the sacred rites in the vernacular language. This is said to have been approved by a divine response, that every spirit should praise the Lord. We shall soon show, however, that the permission to use the Slavonic language in the sacred rites does not seem to have been granted by Nicholas, but at most by Hadrian II, and at least afterwards by John VIII.

[24] Much the same as Aeneas Silvius, but not without a notable anachronism, John Dubravius writes in Book 2 of his Bohemian History; where, having reviewed several places in which Borzivoj, Duke of Bohemia, had built churches, he adds the following: And in all these sacred places he appointed priests consecrated by Bishop Methodius, and ordered that stipends be given to them from his treasury. He also established schools in which scholars might devote themselves to learning Latin letters, previously entirely unknown to the Bohemians. Meanwhile, a little son named Boleslav is born to Borzivoj from Ludmila, [St. Methodius was compelled by the Bohemians to use that language in sacred rites,] and is brought to Bishop Methodius to be baptized and anointed. There the Bohemians accost Methodius, demanding of him that he perform the sacred rites and Sacraments not in the Latin language, which they did not understand, but in the Bohemian language customary to them. He referred this matter to Rome, to his colleague Cyril, and Cyril to Nicholas, the Roman Pontiff. Both colleagues, on account of this report, offered themselves up to ridicule not only before the Pontiff, but also before a large council of the Fathers. When behold, unexpectedly, this voice sounded forth of its own accord in such a gathering: Let every spirit praise the Lord, Which was granted by the Pope: and let every tongue confess to him. Struck by this voice, the Roman Pontiff decided to respond to Cyril in accordance with the petition of the Bohemians. George Bartholdus Pontanus in Book 2 of his Bohemia Pia narrates all these things in the very same words.

[25] Both of them add the following: However, that custom of singing in the vernacular language during the sacred rites did not remain in force for many years, the Roman Pontiff abolishing it again Afterwards revoked, when he gave the Bohemians a bishop ... and prescribed to him that he should not deviate in any way from the Roman rite, ceremonies, and chant. And this indeed I believe had force in Bohemia and other provinces that use the Latin rite; But not universally; but those Slavic nations that follow the Greek rite mostly retain the Slavonic language in the sacred rites as well. Certainly in our own memory there was an Archbishop of Polotsk, Blessed Josaphat Kuntsevych, For it is still in force, who in the year 1623, on November 12, was cruelly murdered at Vitebsk by schismatics for the defense of the Catholic faith and of the Holy Apostolic Roman See, and was inscribed by Urban VIII on May 16, 1643, in the Catalogue of Holy Martyrs. As is clear from the practice of Blessed Josaphat, Bishop and Martyr. He knew neither Latin nor Greek letters, yet from the sole reading of Slavonic and Polish books he attained such learning that he himself could more easily grasp the most subtle theological difficulties — such as those concerning the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity and other matters of the kind — than the most subtle scholar could explain them to him, and no heretic or schismatic could withstand him, as is recorded in the Account of his martyrdom, printed at Zamość in 1624.

[26] If, however, a Pope had granted such authority to use the Slavonic language in the sacred rites — not Nicholas, as some of the already cited authors suppose, but Hadrian II, by whom St. Methodius had been ordained Archbishop of the Moravians, as John VIII, the successor of the same Hadrian, asserts in Epistle 194 — we marvel not without reason why the same John, in Epistle 195 to Methodius himself, dated the eighth day before the Kalends of July, Indiction 12, which was the year of Christ 879, John VIII in the year 879 reproves St. Methodius for doing this, the seventh of his Pontificate, wrote as follows: We hear also, he says, that you sing Masses in a barbarous, that is, in the Slavonic, language; wherefore we have already by our letters sent through Paul, Bishop of Ancona, forbidden you to celebrate the sacred solemnities of the Mass in that language, but only in the Latin or Greek language, as the Church of God, spread throughout the whole world and extended among all nations, sings. Perhaps ignorant that his predecessor had granted the indult: Perhaps he had not been present at Rome at the time when the Fathers were consulted about that ceremony and a response is said to have been sent from heaven? Which, however,

that response was perhaps nothing other than a certain divine impulse by which the minds of each of them were moved to assent to the requests of the apostolic men, once their arguments and the fruit they had already produced among the barbarians were perceived; but by later writers this was explained as a voice sent from heaven.

[27] However the matter stood, the same Pope John in Epistle 247, addressed to the glorious Count Sventopulk (who is Swantopulk, King of Moravia, but not yet honored with the royal title by the Apostolic See), writes, among other things in praise of St. Methodius, Afterwards in the year 880 he commends his faith, the following: And we, finding him orthodox and profitable in all ecclesiastical doctrines and works, have again sent him back to you to govern the Church of God committed to his charge; whom we command that you receive as your own Pastor, with due honor and reverence and a joyful mind. And shortly after: The Slavonic letters, moreover, He praises the Slavonic letters invented by Constantine the Philosopher, discovered by a certain Constantine the Philosopher, by which due praises resound to God, we rightly praise; and we command that the glories and works of Christ our Lord be recounted in the same language. For we are admonished by sacred authority to praise the Lord not only in three languages, but in all, when it commands, saying: Praise the Lord, all nations, and praise him together, all peoples ... Nor does anything stand in the way of sound faith or doctrine, And approves that sacred rites be performed in that language, whether one sings Masses in the same Slavonic language, or reads the sacred Gospel or divine lessons of the Old and New Testaments, well translated and interpreted, or chants all the other Offices of the Hours; for he who made the three principal languages — namely Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — himself also created all the others for his own praise and glory. Ps. 116:1 Provided the Gospel is first read in Latin, We command, however, that in all the churches of your land, for the sake of greater honor, the Gospel be read in Latin, and afterwards, translated into the Slavonic language, be announced in the ears of the people who do not understand the Latin words, But that Masses be said in Latin, if the King prefers, as seems to be done in certain churches. And if it pleases you and your judges to hear Masses rather in the Latin language, we command that the solemnities of the Mass be celebrated for you in Latin. Given in the month of June, Indiction 13, that is, the year 880. So much for the Masses and Canonical Hours to be sung in the Slavonic tongue. Concerning which rite, below in the ancient Office, Lesson 1: The fruit of saying Mass in Slavonic. Which is practiced to this day in the regions of the Slavs, especially among the Bulgarians, and many souls are won for Christ the Lord.

§ IV. Chronology of the Apostolic preaching of SS. Cyril and Methodius.

[28] The one whom the Pontiff here calls the inventor of the Slavonic letters, which are useful for singing praises to God in that language, "a certain Constantine the Philosopher," is, Constantine the Philosopher is the same as St. Cyril, as was said before, the brother of St. Methodius — a great man and teacher of the apostolic life, as Anastasius called him above — who by this time seems either to have died, or to have hidden himself in a monastery under a changed name, so as to avoid the sight and praises of men. For it is erroneously stated in the Breviary now used by the Bohemians, Moravians, and Poles, in Lesson 1, that the father of Cyril and Methodius was Constantine surnamed the Philosopher; for this was the name of Cyril himself, as is established by the assertion of the eyewitness Anastasius in his letter to Charles the Bald, King of the Franks, written in the year 875, in which he reports that the body of Pope St. Clement was brought to Rome by Constantine the Philosopher. But it is established that this was done by Cyril, Who brought the body of St. Clement to Rome, the brother of Methodius; therefore Constantine and Cyril were one and the same person. Nor would it have been necessary for him to stay at Cherson to learn the Khazar language, which he could have absorbed at home through paternal instruction, if his father had been the discoverer of the Slavic letters and the translator of the sacred books.

[29] It is pleasing here, to commend the erudition and piety of the same Constantine, or Cyril, and his zeal for the true faith, to produce what the same Anastasius narrates of him in the preface to the eighth ecumenical, or fourth Constantinopolitan, council, addressed to Pope Hadrian II, where among other things he writes thus: Some years ago, the same Photius preached that every human being consists of two souls. And had previously reproved Photius for positing two souls in every human being, When he was rebuked by Constantine the Philosopher, a man of great holiness and his very close friend, who said: Why, spreading so great an error among the people, have you killed so many souls? He replied: It was not with the desire of harming anyone that I proposed such statements, but to test what Patriarch Ignatius would do if any heresy, arising through the syllogisms of philosophers, were to appear in his time — he who had driven away men of secular wisdom. But I was unaware that under the pretext of this proposition I would injure so many souls. To which the other replied: O wisdom of the world, which is made foolish and destroyed! You have cast arrows into the multitude of a teeming crowd, and you were unaware that any of them would be wounded. Certainly it is clear to all that just as eyes, however large and open they may be, cannot see beyond if the smoke of chaff intervenes, Done to stir up envy against St. Ignatius, so the eyes of your wisdom, however ample and wide they may be, yet utterly blinded by the smoke of avarice and envy, cannot see the path of justice. And therefore it is true what you say — that you thought no one would be harmed by your blow — since, having your understanding so blinded by the aforesaid passions against the Patriarch, you did not even foresee what you had let loose.

[30] It seems that the most wise Constantine reproved that reckless dogma of Photius around the year 848 or the following year, Around the year 848, since in the year 847, St. Ignatius, son of the Emperor Michael Curopalates, had been elevated to the patriarchal seat of the imperial city after the death of St. Methodius. And not much later Constantine himself was sent Sent shortly after to convert the Khazars, to expound the mysteries of the Christian faith to the Khazars, who had sought this from the Emperor Michael — whose name was already celebrated even among foreigners — ruling peacefully and happily with his holy mother Theodora and his sister Thecla, and, what was most important, then piously cultivating chastity. On the advice, therefore, of his mother and the Queen his sister, and of Patriarch Ignatius, Michael selected Constantine for this task. He soon set out for the Chersonese, where he first learned the Slavonic language, which was also common to the Khazars, In the Chersonese he learns the Slavonic language, and, as is likely, translated the Gospel into that language, and other passages from the Scriptures or ecclesiastical books that he deemed useful for the more convenient instruction of the barbarians, and for public prayers whose forms he would instill in them, to be used also privately. For this purpose he also devised new characters, He translates sacred books into it, since perhaps, as even now some Eastern peoples, they used certain figures that could neither be learned so easily on account of their multitude, nor were equally suited for expressing all things, unless certain forms were fashioned, connected as in the order of an alphabet, And devises new characters for that language: by the various transposition of which, not whole words, let alone sentences, but syllables would be represented by a certain movement and, as it were, breath of consonants — as he knew was done in Greek and Latin. Those characters, however, necessarily had to be different from both, so that readers would not be confused, for whom the new script of their own language would be just as novel as that of another. With these things thus prepared, and the relics of Pope St. Clement having meanwhile been found, he went to the Khazars and quickly instructed them He converts the Khazars — since they were already voluntarily seeking it — in the knowledge of our Religion. This task accomplished, he returned to Constantinople, having perhaps left behind among the Khazars orthodox priests from the Tauric region who, being skilled in their language, would devote their efforts to conferring the Sacraments upon them and providing whatever else was necessary, especially for neophytes.

[31] The rumor of the conversion of the Khazars immediately spread among the other Slavic chieftains At the request of King Rastislav, he is sent to the Moravians, and reached Rastislav, at that time the most powerful Prince of Moravia — who elsewhere also appears to be called Swantoplutus or Sventipulk. When he saw that his people had already voluntarily withdrawn from the worship of idols and were eager to receive the Christian Faith, he himself also sent envoys to the Emperor Michael, asking that he would allow that excellent teacher Constantine, who had instructed the Khazars, to come also to instruct his own people — which was readily granted. We think this happened before the year 856, when Michael removed both his mother and sister from the government of the empire Before the year 856, and distanced himself from the familiar companionship of St. Ignatius, circumvented by the fraudulent counsels of his uncle Bardas. Together with his brother Methodius. Constantine's brother Methodius was his companion on this second expedition. When the Saints arrived at the royal city of Velehrad can be discerned from the fact that in the earlier Life from the Duchesne codex, they are said to have remained in Moravia for four and a half years Whom they convert in four and a half years, and to have converted the entire nation together with the King. Then, summoned to Rome by Pope Nicholas, they immediately set out on the journey and did not arrive until Hadrian II was Pope, who had been appointed as successor to Nicholas, who died on the Ides of November 867. In the year 867 they are called to Rome: By him they themselves were consecrated bishops.

[32] It is not sufficiently clear, however, whether both then returned together to Moravia, or whether — as the earlier Life suggests — soon after they were inaugurated as bishops, Constantine, sensing that the day of his passing was approaching, by the concession of the Supreme Pontiff imposed upon himself the name Cyril, Perhaps Cyril died in the year 868, which had been divinely revealed to him, and — as the second Life reports — renouncing the episcopate, put on the monastic habit, and this around the fourth day before the Ides of January; and after forty days he received his dormition in the Lord, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of March. At least this much seems to be gathered with certainty: that Constantine departed this life before the year of Christ 880, in which the letter 247 from John VIII to the glorious Count Sventopulk, cited by us above, was given, At least before 880, in which he has the following: We have also consecrated that priest named Wichinus, whom you have sent to us, as elected Bishop of the holy Church of Nitra — whom we order and will to be obedient to his Archbishop (namely Methodius, of whom he speaks throughout that letter) in all things, as the holy Canons teach; so that you may likewise, with the consent and foresight of the same Archbishop, send us at a suitable time another useful priest or deacon, whom we may similarly ordain as bishop in another church in which you shall know an episcopal See to be necessary; so that with these two bishops ordained by us, your aforesaid Archbishop may thereafter be able to ordain bishops in other places where bishops ought and can honorably exist, according to the Apostolic decree. For why, besides Wichinus, would it have been necessary for a third bishop to be ordained, with whom Methodius could consecrate other bishops, if Constantine, who is also Cyril, was present — himself the senior and Archbishop?

[33] What is, however, most entirely at variance with the truth is what Pontanus

writes in Book 1 of his Bohemia Pia, that Borzivoj, Duke of Bohemia, invited by Swatopluk, King of the Marcomanni, Nor did he baptize Borzivoj, Duke of Bohemia, in the year 894, was converted to the Christian faith through the most diligent instruction of St. Cyril, and in the year 894, on the vigil of St. John the Baptist, received Baptism together with his family. And shortly after: This Borzivoj, he says, afterwards bore exile and every injustice most patiently for the sake of the Christian faith, committing all things to God; and making a vow to God in the presence of the King and the Bishop of Moravia, that if God should restore him to his former Duchy, he would be a good Christian and would dedicate a distinguished church to the Virgin Mary, the divine Mother. Where, shortly before he had made his vow, Nor did he then go with him into Bohemia. behold, envoys from Bohemia arrive, urgently demanding his return, and they lead him to set out for Bohemia immediately, with Bishop St. Cyril as his companion. Can it be believed that, having been baptized at the end of June 894, he returned to Bohemia, and by openly professing the religion to which he had devoted himself, so irritated the minds of his subjects that they conspired to expel him from his homeland or even to murder him? And that to escape their fury, he was forced to withdraw voluntarily and to take refuge in Moravia with Sventopulk, by whom he was most kindly received, and there, staying for some time, he fully acquired the teaching of Christ — as will be said below from the Life of St. Ludmila? Meanwhile, Zreimir was summoned to the helm of the Duchy, who had been living in exile as a fugitive among the Germans; and he too, because he had forgotten his native language, and because those who supported him had secretly plotted to eliminate their opponents under the guise of a consultation, was driven out of the country along with them; and then Borzivoj was recalled from Moravia. Who can persuade himself that all these things were accomplished in the latter part of the year 894? Especially when the following is read in the Frankish Annals of Metz at the same year: Around this time also, Sventopulk, King of the Moravian Slavs, a man most prudent among his own people and most clever in talent, died. His sons held his kingdom for a short time, unhappily, with the Hungarians devastating everything to the ground. But what refutes Pontanus's opinion even more strongly is what was said before — that besides Wichinus, Bishop of Nitra, another bishop had to be joined to Methodius, whom the King and Methodius would present to the Pope, so that the three of them might thereafter be able to consecrate whatever other bishops might be elected; and this had already been prescribed since the year 880. So that it is plainly certain that Constantine, or Cyril, had died before that year.

[34] Nor are those to be heeded who report that Borzivoj was indeed baptized by Methodius, Nor did Methodius baptize the Duke in that year. but in the same year 894. For since it is established that the younger Swatopluk was struck with anathema by Methodius, and the sacred rites were placed under interdict throughout his entire kingdom, on account of religion being violated; and that Methodius himself then went into Bohemia to Duke Borzivoj, who had already been previously enlisted for Christ; and was afterwards recalled to Moravia by Swantopluk, who was earnestly begging pardon for his crimes: who can think he can connect all these things and compress them within the space of a few months — the Duke's baptism, his return to his homeland, the life lived there for some time according to the principles of Christian discipline, the plans of rebellion formed by the populace, his voluntary exile, the recovery of his principality, the injury inflicted on Methodius by the King, the King's repentance, the reconciliation of grace with the Bishop, and finally the death or withdrawal of the King himself? Who, I say, can suppose all this could have happened in the space of six months? But that withdrawal into solitude is attributed by some to the elder Swatopluk, by others to the younger. Neither is established.

[35] Concerning the baptism of Borzivoj, we conclude that if it was bestowed upon him by St. Cyril, it seems to have happened before the death of Pope Hadrian; but it is far more likely that he was baptized by St. Methodius, But earlier, as was also St. Ludmila; as Cosmas, Dean of Prague, Aeneas Silvius, and John Dubravius report — although we by no means agree with their opinion concerning the year in which it occurred. By the same Archbishop Methodius, St. Ludmila, the wife of Borzivoj, was also baptized, as Aeneas Silvius writes in chapter 12, and their son Boleslav, as Pontanus writes in Book 2; who also says that Borzivoj had Methodius arrange for the most frequent preaching and sacred services, And he converts many thousands in Bohemia: so that many thousands were converted and baptized. But Dubravius in Book 4 reports that Borzivoj entrusted the administration of the province to his son Spytihněv, so that he himself might more freely devote himself to piety in the stronghold called Tetín, together with Ludmila and his chaplain Paul, a most devout man. But when Spytihněv, despising the most salutary admonitions of his excellent parent, was carried off by a premature death, and the father was recalled to the principality because his other son Vratislav seemed too young to bear the burden of power; He forms Duke Vratislav in piety: Borzivoj nevertheless obtained that the same Vratislav should succeed, and took him into his own care to be formed by his precepts and instructions. And so that, moreover, in his father's absence he might have someone by whose authority he would be kept in the duty of religion, he arranged with Bishop Methodius that, whenever he was free from divine affairs, he should strengthen the young man's modesty, religion, and faith; and then he enjoined upon Drobosinus, who was connected to him by kinship, not to depart from his son's side, but always being present to admonish him what to follow and what to avoid in a life still unsteady.

[36] This Vratislav, from his most impious wife Drahomira, fathered St. Wenceslaus, a son more like his grandfather and grandmother than his mother. Borzivoj, as the same Dubravius writes, not long after, as if pressed by sleep by illness, fell asleep in the Lord and was buried with Christian rites in the church recently founded by himself and consecrated by Bishop Methodius. He returns to Rome, Methodius, as the same writer says, had previously departed for Rome, where he also died not long after. And both he and his brother Cyril, as the same Dubravius testifies, displayed at their death and after it And he dies, illustrious for miracles: the miracles of their holiness, which soon enrolled them in the catalogue of the Saints. And Vratislav, mindful of the benefits that the holy men had conferred upon his parents, A church was erected in honor of him and Cyril by Vratislav, upon himself, and upon his whole people, wished a monument to their memory to stand even among posterity — namely, a church consecrated under their names, which he himself built in that place which they call Boleslavia from the name of his son Boleslav to this day; in that very village, in whose sacred church At Boleslavia, in which St. Wenceslaus was later slain. — this same one, as we think, which Vratislav had built — Boleslav the Cruel savagely murdered his brother St. Wenceslaus; and he therefore enclosed and fortified the village with ditches, ramparts, and walls, so that he might be able to resist Emperor Otto, who was soon to come to avenge the murder of that most innocent Prince. But what pertains to these brothers and their grandfather and grandmother will be said more fully elsewhere, especially in connection with the Acts of SS. Wenceslaus and Ludmila. Now let us carry through what remains concerning these Apostles of the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius.

[37] Concerning them, Baronius writes in the Annotations to the Roman Martyrology: Furthermore, the same men, The relics of Cyril and Methodius are at Rome in St. Clement's: dying at Rome, illustrious for miracles, were buried; and I have learned that their sacred relics were recently found beneath the altar in a very ancient chapel of the same church (namely, St. Clement's). Octavius Panciroli also writes in the Hidden Treasures of the Gracious City, concerning the said church of St. Clement, which is the twenty-third of the second region, that the bodies of these Saints are preserved there and that they are venerated on March 9.

[38] Some of their relics were later transferred to Moravia. For Brno, Some relics of St. Cyril are at Brno. which is a famous city there, was the subject of a letter sent to us in 1658 by our Father Theodore Moretus: I recently visited the collegiate Church of St. Peter at Brno, where in the Treasury of that Church an entire bone of the arm of St. Cyril, Bishop and, together with St. Methodius, Apostle of Moravia, was shown to me, enclosed in a very ancient silver reliquary.

[39] Our Balthasar Corderius published at Vienna in Austria in 1630 the Moral Apologues of St. Cyril; for so they were titled in the old codex, which, as its binding and insignia indicated, had once belonged to Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and from that most celebrated library of nearly the entire East at Buda, Whether the Moral Apologues of St. Cyril are by this Cyril? had been hung up as a splendid trophy from the spoils of the Danaans in the Academic Library of Vienna, by the Most Reverend Lord John Faber, Bishop of Vienna. And it was indeed splendidly enough written on parchment, but very corruptly. As to which Cyril this work belongs to — of Jerusalem, of Alexandria, or of any other — Corderius confesses he cannot divine, as he has nowhere found mention of these Apologues. But this little book, as our Philip Labbé judges concerning Ecclesiastical Writers, was written by a Latin author; and, as he observed — and he himself cites — Aubert Le Mire in his work on Ecclesiastical Writers, at chapter 57 of Gennadius of Marseilles, it was published long ago at Paris by Jean Petit under the title Mirror of Wisdom. A learned man once told me that he suspected this little book was written by our St. Cyril, the Apostle of the Slavs. It would need to be investigated whether any trace of it exists in Slavonic writings.

[40] Finally, it is pleasing to recite Epistle 268 of Pope John VIII, in which he congratulates Blessed Methodius on his cultivation of the orthodox faith, and on his zeal and care for religion, and prays for his ever greater spiritual progress, and consoles him. It reads thus: To Archbishop Methodius, concerning the faith. Approving the care of your pastoral solicitude, Epistle of Pope John VIII to St. Methodius, which you display in winning the souls of the faithful for the Lord our God, and seeing that you are a vigorous cultivator of the orthodox Faith, we rejoice exceedingly in the same Lord, and do not cease to render him immense praise and thanks: By which he praises his zeal for the faith, that he may kindle you more and more in his commandments, and mercifully snatch you from all adversities for the advancement of his holy Church. Indeed, having heard through his letters of your various misfortunes and events, you will be able to perceive how greatly we have sympathized with you, And consoles him in adversities, in that we have admonished you, placed before us, that you ought to follow the doctrine of the holy Roman Church, according to the approved tradition of the Holy Fathers; and we have submitted both the Creed and the right Faith to be taught and preached by you; and we have signified this same thing to the glorious Prince Sventopulk in our Apostolic letters, which you say were delivered to him. And no other letters from us were directed to him, nor did we enjoin upon that bishop anything else to be done publicly or secretly, nor did we decree anything different to be performed by you. Denying that he gave occasion for the accusation fabricated against him, How much less is it to be believed that we would have required an oath from the same bishop, whom we did not address even with a casual word on this matter? And therefore let that doubt cease, and with God's cooperation,

as the evangelical and apostolic doctrine teaches, instill the cultivation of the orthodox Faith in all the faithful, so that by the labor of your struggle you may bring abundant fruit to the Lord Jesus Christ, Promising a reward from God, and, being rewarded by his grace, receive a fitting recompense. As for the other temptations that you have suffered in various ways, do not be sad; but rather, according to the Apostle, consider it all joy altogether, James 1:2 because if God is for you, no one will be able to be against you. Nevertheless, when, with God as your guide, you have returned, whatever has been irregularly committed against you, whatever the aforementioned bishop has exercised against you contrary to his ministry — we shall, with the Lord's help, commit both sides of the case, discussed before us, to a lawful conclusion; And promising that he too will have the false accusation against him examined. and we shall not omit to correct his obstinacy by the sentence of our judgment. Given on the tenth day before the Kalends of April, Indiction 14. This was the year of Christ 882. From this letter it is moreover evident that he endured many more hardships than are narrated in his Life; and perhaps this can be regarded as the beginning of the persecution that he suffered from the younger Sventopulk.

LIFE WITH THE TRANSLATION OF ST. CLEMENT,

From the manuscript of the most distinguished Francis Duchesne.

Cyril, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

Methodius, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

BHL Number: 2073

[1] At the time, therefore, when the Emperor Michael was ruling the empire of New Rome, there was a certain man of noble birth, born in the city of Thessalonica, named Constantine, who on account of the marvelous genius with which he wonderfully distinguished himself from early childhood, was called by the truthful surname of Philosopher. When the Khazars sought a teacher of the faith, When he had grown up and had been brought by his parents to the imperial city, and was moreover endowed with great devotion and wisdom, he also obtained the honor of the priesthood there, by the Lord's ordination. At that time, envoys of the Khazars came to the aforesaid Emperor, praying and beseeching him to deign to send them some learned man who would truly teach them the Catholic faith; adding among other things that now the Jews strive to convert us to their faith, and now the Saracens strive to convert us to theirs. Constantine the Philosopher, who is also Cyril, is sent: But we, not knowing to which party we should most properly transfer ourselves, have therefore decided to seek counsel for our faith and salvation from the Supreme and Catholic Emperor, trusting greatly in your faith and ancient friendship. Then the Emperor, having taken counsel together with the Patriarch, summoned the aforesaid Philosopher and sent him there with great honor, together with their envoys and his own, trusting greatly in his wisdom and eloquence.

[2] Immediately therefore, having prepared everything necessary, he set out on his journey and came to Cherson, which is indeed near to and contiguous with the land of the Khazars, Here at Cherson he learns their language, and there he lingered for a while in order to learn the language of that people. Meanwhile, by the inspiration of God, who had now resolved to reveal so great and precious a treasure — namely, the body of St. Clement — to his faithful, the aforesaid man began, as if a curious investigator, to inquire most diligently of the inhabitants of the place and to investigate skillfully those things that had come to him — both by the tradition of writings and by common report — concerning the body of Blessed Clement, concerning the temple prepared by angelic hands, and concerning his ark. To him all the aforesaid people, And inquires about the body of Pope St. Clement, being not natives but newcomers from various nations, professed that they were entirely ignorant of what he was asking. For already for a long time, on account of the fault and negligence of the inhabitants, that miracle of the sea's recession — which is celebrated enough in the history of the passion of the aforesaid Pontiff — had ceased to occur, and the sea had poured back its waves into their former positions. Moreover, on account of the multitude of raiding barbarians, Whose memory was then antiquated: that place had been deserted, and the temple had been neglected and destroyed, and a great part of that region had been rendered nearly desolate and uninhabitable; and therefore the very ark of the holy Martyr together with his body had been overwhelmed by the waves.

[3] Greatly marveling at and saddened by this response, the Philosopher turned to prayer, so that what he could not discover through human agents, Having proclaimed prayers, the divine revelation might deign to show him through the merits of the aforesaid Pontiff. Inviting the Metropolitan of that small city, named George, together with the Clergy and people to seek these same things from heaven, and also relating to them the account of his passion and of the miracles of the same most blessed Martyr, he encouraged many of them by his exhortations to approach and seek out such precious pearls, so long neglected, and with God's help to bring them back to light. And on a certain day, which is inscribed on the third day before the Kalends of January, With the Bishop and others he goes to a certain island; entering a ship on a calm sea, with Christ as their guide, they set out on the journey — the aforesaid Philosopher, namely, together with the Bishop and the venerable Clergy, and also with some of the people. Sailing therefore with immense devotion, singing psalms and praying with great trust, they arrived at the island on which they estimated the body of the holy Martyr to be. Surrounding it on every side, therefore, and illuminating it with the great splendor of lights, they began to press more and more upon their sacred prayers and to dig most carefully and most insistently in that heap where so great a treasure was suspected to rest.

[4] While they lingered long and much with holy desire, and trusted greatly in the hope of divine mercy, Where, having dug up, his rib, at length, unexpectedly, as if some very bright star, one of the ribs of the precious Martyr shone forth by God's gift. At this sight, all were filled with immense exultation, and digging the earth more and more eagerly now without any prompting, the holy head itself of the saint also appeared in succession. Together with the head, How great now were the voices raised to heaven by all, how great the praises and thanksgivings to God with outpourings of tears — if we can scarcely even estimate this, how much less can we express it? For so great was the innate joy in all — both from the discovery of the holy Relics With a sweet odor spreading: and from the sweetness of the most immense fragrance — that, congratulating one another with ineffable jubilation, they seemed to themselves to stand in Paradise. Then other particles, When behold, after a little while, further particles of the holy relics were gradually found, in small intervals, as if from certain hidden places, and all were discovered. And the anchor, At last also the anchor itself, with which he had been cast into the sea, appeared.

[5] Therefore, all being filled with immense joy on account of such great gifts of God, after the sacred mysteries had been celebrated there by the holy Pontiff, the holy man himself, lifting the casket of the holy relics upon his own head, carried it to the ship amid the great rejoicing of all who followed; and then transported it to the metropolis, Gloria, Those Relics are solemnly transferred. with the greatest hymns and praises. Meanwhile, as they were already approaching the city, the nobleman Nicephorus, Duke of that same city, came to meet them with many others, and having adored the most sacred Relics, he preceded the holy casket with many thanksgivings and hastened to return to the city with joy. There, too, the holy and venerable body was received and adored amid the immense rejoicing of all; and after the mystery of its finding had been recited before all the people, since it was already growing dark and they could no longer enter further on account of the exceeding throng of people, they placed it in the church of St. Sozon, which was adjacent to the city, with careful custody; but finally they transferred it to the Church of St. Leontius. Then, when morning had come, the whole multitude of the city gathered, took up the casket of the holy Relics, and with great praises processed around the entire city; and thus, coming to the principal basilica, they placed it there with honor; and so at last all returned to their homes rejoicing.

[6] After this, the aforesaid Philosopher set out on his journey and, coming to the nation to which he had been sent, accompanied by the preaching and the arguments of the words of God, the Redeemer of all, Cyril converts the Khazars. converted all of them from the errors that they retained from the perfidy of both the Saracens and the Jews. Whence, greatly delighted and strengthened and taught in the Catholic faith, they gave thanks to Almighty God and to his servant Constantine the Philosopher. They also sent letters to the Emperor with many thanksgivings, because by his zeal he had endeavored to recall them to the true and Catholic faith, affirming that for this reason they wished henceforth always to remain subject and most faithful to his empire. He asks that all foreign captives be given to him and takes them away. And when they escorted the Philosopher with great honor, they offered him the greatest gifts, all of which he, as a true Philosopher, refused; and he asked that in place of those gifts, they should release to him, who was about to return, however many foreign captives they had. Which was immediately done.

[7] When the Philosopher had returned to Constantinople, Rastislav, the Prince of Moravia, having heard what had been done by the Philosopher in the province of the Khazars, He is sent with Methodius to the Slavs in Moravia: himself also taking thought for his own nation, sent messengers to the aforesaid Emperor, announcing that his people had indeed withdrawn from the worship of idols and desired to observe the Christian law; but that they did not have such a Teacher as could instruct them in reading and fully teach them the law itself; asking that he send such a man to those parts who would be able to show fully to that people the faith and order of divine law and the way of truth. The Emperor, assenting to his prayers, invited the same above-named Philosopher to come to him, and sent him there — that is, to the land of the Slavs — together with his brother Methodius, having given him very abundant provisions from his palace. They bring with them the relics of St. Clement, And when he had come to those parts, with God preparing the way, the natives of the place, learning of their arrival, rejoiced greatly, because they had heard that they were bringing with them the relics of Blessed Clement and the Gospel translated into their language by the aforesaid Philosopher. And the Gospel rendered into Slavonic: Going out therefore beyond the city to meet them, they received them honorably and with immense joy. And so they began to apply themselves zealously to accomplishing that for which they had come — teaching their children letters, instructing them in the ecclesiastical offices, and wielding the sickle of their eloquence for the correction of various errors that they had found among that people; and thus, having cleared and uprooted from that pestilential field the manifold thorns of vices, sowing the seeds of the divine word. They convert all. They therefore remained in Moravia for four and a half years, and directed that people in the Catholic faith, and left there in writing all things that seemed necessary for the ministry of the Church.

[8] When all these things were heard, the most glorious Pope Nicholas, greatly gladdened by what had been reported to him, commanded and invited them by Apostolic letters to come to him. They are called to Rome by Nicholas I When they received this message, they were greatly overjoyed, giving thanks to God that they were held in such esteem,

that they deserved to be summoned by the Apostolic See. Setting out on their journey at once, they also brought with them some of their disciples, whom they judged worthy to receive the honor of the episcopate; and so after some days they arrived at Rome.

[9] But since the above-mentioned Pope Nicholas had passed to the Lord not many days before, the second Hadrian, who had succeeded him in the Roman Pontificate, After his death, they are received honorably by Hadrian II, hearing that the aforesaid Philosopher was bringing with him the body of Blessed Clement, which he had discovered through his own efforts, was exceedingly delighted, and going out beyond the City with the Clergy and the people to meet them, received them with great honor. Meanwhile, in the presence of the holy Relics, wonderful healings began to occur through the power of Almighty God, At the Relics of St. Clement, miracles occur: so that anyone oppressed by any kind of illness, upon adoring the most holy relics of the precious Martyr, was immediately cured. Wherefore both the Venerable Apostolic Father and the whole body of the Roman people, rendering the greatest thanks and praises to God, rejoiced and were gladdened in him who, after so long a span of time, had granted them in their days to receive a holy and apostolic man, and the very successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, in his own See; and to illuminate not only the entire City, but also the whole world of the Roman Empire, with his signs and powers. And so, many thanksgivings having been rendered to the aforesaid Philosopher for so great a benefit, They themselves are consecrated bishops. they consecrated both him and Methodius as bishops, and also their other disciples as priests and deacons.

[10] When the Philosopher, who is also Constantine, sensed that the day of his passing was drawing near, by the concession of the Supreme Pontiff he imposed upon himself the name Cyril, saying that this had been revealed to him; and so after forty days he received his dormition in the Lord St. Cyril dies at Rome and is magnificently borne forth, on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of March. The holy Apostolic Father commanded that all Clerics, both Greek and Roman, should hasten to his funeral with psalms and canticles, with candles and the fragrance of incense, and should pay him the honor of a funeral no differently than they would to the Apostolic Father himself.

[11] Then the above-mentioned brother Methodius, approaching the holy Pontiff and falling at his feet, said: I have thought it right and necessary to suggest to your Blessedness, When Methodius wishes to carry his brother's body back to their homeland, Apostolic Father, that when we set out from our home for the service which, with the Lord's help, we have performed, our mother with many tears besought us that if it should happen that one of us should die before we returned, the living brother should bring the deceased brother back to his monastery and bury him there with fitting and appropriate obsequies. May your Holiness therefore deign to grant this favor to my lowliness, lest I seem in any way to go against the prayers and entreaties of our mother. It did not seem fitting to the Apostolic Father, The Pope assents at first, although it seemed to him somewhat painful, to refuse this petition and wish; but having carefully enclosed the body of the deceased in a marble coffin and sealed it moreover with his own seal, after seven days he gave him leave to depart. Then the Roman Clergy together with the bishops and cardinals and nobles of the City, having held a council, came together to the Apostolic Father and began to say: Then the Romans intercede, It seems to us most unworthy, venerable Father and Lord, that so great and magnificent a man — through whom our City and Church has merited to recover so precious a treasure, and whom God by his gratuitous mercy has deigned to bring to us from such distant regions and foreign lands, and even from this place to take him to his own kingdom — should for any reason whatsoever be permitted to be transferred to other parts; He denies the request; but rather let it please you that he be honorably entombed here, for it is most fitting that a man of such celebrated fame should have a celebrated place of burial in so very celebrated a city. This counsel pleased the Apostolic Father, and he decreed that he should be placed in the basilica of Blessed Peter, in his own monument.

[12] When Methodius saw that his purpose had now been defeated, he prayed again, saying: But he orders a magnificent burial I beseech you, my Lords, since it is not your pleasure to fulfill my small petition, let him be deposited in the church of Blessed Clement, whose body he discovered and brought here by his own great labor and effort. The most holy Bishop assented to this petition, and with a great throng of Clergy and people gathering, with immense joy and great reverence, together with the marble coffin in which the aforesaid Pope had previously placed him, In the church of St. Clement, they placed him in a tomb prepared for this purpose in the basilica of Blessed Clement, on the right side of the altar, with hymns and praises, rendering the greatest thanks to God, who works many wonderful things in that same place, Where he also becomes illustrious for miracles. to the praise and glory of his name, through the merits and prayers of his Saints, who is blessed and glorious forever and ever, Amen.

p. Pope St. Nicholas. Pope St. Nicholas died in the year 867 on November 13, on which day his name is inscribed in the Roman Martyrology.

q. The Martyrologies we have so far seen do not mention him on that day; but, as we said above, on March 9, on which he is venerated together with St. Methodius.

LIFE OF THE SAME SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS

from the Blaubeuren manuscript.

The Khazars, Bulgarians, Moravians, and Bohemians converted through them: the body of Pope St. Clement brought to Rome: the use of the Slavonic language in sacred rites: adversities inflicted on Methodius.

Cyril, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

Methodius, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

BHL Number: 2074

[1] In the time of the Emperor Michael, there was a certain man of noble birth, born in the city of Thessalonica, named Constantine, who on account of his marvelous genius was called the Philosopher (he, Constantine the Philosopher on the fiftieth day before his death, by the permission of the Supreme Pontiff, imposed upon himself the name Cyril, asserting that this name had been divinely revealed to him). When he had grown up, he was endowed with great devotion and wisdom, and obtained the honor of the priesthood there. At the same time, envoys of the Khazars came to the aforesaid Emperor at Constantinople, He is sent to imbue the Khazars with the faith. beseeching him to deign to send them some learned man who would truly teach them the Catholic faith, adding among other things how now the Jews, now the Saracens, were striving to convert them to their own faith. Then the Emperor, having taken counsel with the Patriarch, sent the aforesaid Philosopher there, trusting greatly

in his wisdom, praiseworthy conduct, and purity of morals.

[2] The illustrious man set out on his journey and came to Cherson, which was near to and contiguous with the land of the Khazars; and there, for the purpose of learning the language of that people, He learns their language at Cherson: he lingered for a while. Meanwhile, by God's inspiration, he asked the inhabitants of that place about the body of St. Clement. But since they were newcomers rather than natives, they professed not to know. For the miracle of the sea's recession had long since ceased on account of the sins of the inhabitants, and because of the incursion of barbarians the temple had been destroyed. Thereupon the holy man turned to vigils, fasting, and prayers, He finds the body of St. Clement by divine guidance, beseeching the Lord that what he could not discover through human agents, he would deign to reveal to him by divine revelation. Then, with the sea divinely dried up, he entered the church long since consecrated to him, and finding the body of Pope and Martyr St. Clement together with the anchor, And carries it with him: he reverently took it up and carried it with him wherever he went.

[3] After this, setting out on his journey, he arrived in the land of the Khazars. He converts the Khazars: He sowed the prophetic and evangelical seeds among the people, and shone forth with virtues and examples, refreshing the hearts of all who hungered with the sweet words of his preaching — so that he brought that land from the error of idolatry back to the way of truth. And they, greatly delighted and strengthened in the Catholic faith, gave thanks to Almighty God and to his servant Constantine, because they had been delivered from the error of the flame-breathing dragon, offering the Philosopher the greatest gifts; who, as a true Philosopher, Refusing gifts, he asks for captives and obtains them. refused them all, and asked them that in place of those gifts, they should release as free all the Christian captives they held in servitude; which was immediately fulfilled. This done, the Philosopher returned to Constantinople.

[4] When the Prince of Moravia heard what had been done by the Philosopher in the province of the Khazars, Sought by the Moravians, he too, taking thought for his own nation, sent messengers to the aforesaid Emperor, asking him to send a true teacher to his people, who could fully show them the true faith, the order of the law, and the way of truth. The Emperor, assenting to his prayers, sent the aforesaid Philosopher there together with his brother Methodius, ordering that ample provisions be given them for the journey. Setting out therefore, he first came to the Bulgarians, whom, with divine grace cooperating, With Methodius he preaches to the Bulgarians on the way; he converted to the faith by his preaching.

[5] Proceeding from there, he came to the land of Moravia, carrying with him the body of St. Clement. And he began to apply himself zealously to accomplishing that for which he had come — namely, to wield the sickle of his eloquence for the correction of the various errors that he had found among the people, Then to the Moravians, and to uproot from that field the pestiferous thorns of vices, and to sow the seeds of the divine word. Whence daily, together with his brother Methodius, he traversed the villages and hamlets, towns and cities, instilling words of life in the ears of the faithful, teaching the people to receive through Baptism the forgiveness of sins, and truly proclaiming that they could not otherwise be saved. While the man of God preached these most salutary words, Whom they baptize together with their King, and grace, divinely inspired, had already shone in the hearts of the King and his people, the King himself, firmly strengthened by this teaching together with the multitude of his people, making no delay on the way, doubting nothing in the faith, with great gladness of spirit and great hope of present and future salvation, pressed with his inmost entreaties that he be initiated into the Catholic faith with firm Sacraments. When the holy men heard this, weeping for joy, they prayed all the more earnestly to the Lord for their conversion and desire; then, cleansed by the wave of holy Baptism, they offered the mortal King as an acceptable gift to the Eternal King. And when the men of God, with devout solicitude, had completely called the King himself together with his people to the light of the faith, And translate the Scriptures and other sacred things into Slavonic for them: then, expounding to them the Old and New Testaments and instructing them, translating many things from Greek and Latin, they established the public chanting of the Canonical Hours and Masses in the Slavonic language in the Church of God.

[6] They remained in Moravia for four and a half years, during which they directed the people of that land onto the way of salvation. When all these things were heard, Pope Nicholas, gladdened by what had been reported to him — namely, the conversion of the Bulgarian nation and of Moravia, They are summoned to Rome by Pope Nicholas: and the discovery of the relics of St. Clement — marveled, however, on the other hand, that the priests of the Lord had dared to chant the Canonical Hours in Slavonic. Wherefore he commanded by Apostolic letters that they should come to him at Rome. They immediately set out and arrived at Rome, After his death, they are received by Hadrian II, the Pope meanwhile dying. When Pope Hadrian heard that Cyril was bringing the body of St. Clement with him, greatly delighted, he went out with the Clergy and people to meet them and received them honorably together with the sacred relics. Meanwhile, in the presence of the holy relics, Offering the relics of St. Clement innumerable healings began to occur through the power of Almighty God, so that anyone oppressed by any kind of illness, upon venerating the holy relics of the holy Martyr, was immediately healed. And they buried the holy body in the church that had been built in his name long before.

[7] The Apostolic Father, however, and the other Rectors of the Church reproved Blessed Cyril — namely, why he had dared to establish the Canonical Hours in the Slavonic language and to alter the institutions of the holy Fathers. But he, humbly responding, [They give an account of why they translated and sang the Hours and Masses in Slavonic,] said: Attend, you Brothers and Lords, to the words of the Apostle who says: Do not forbid speaking in various languages. Following the Apostolic teaching, which you oppose, I instituted this. But they said: Although the Apostle urged that speaking in various languages should be permitted, he did not thereby intend that the divine solemnities should be sung in the language you have established. 1 Cor. 14:39 But when on account of this institution the dispute between them grew more and more, Blessed Cyril brought forward a saying of David, saying: For it is written: Let every spirit praise the Lord. Ps. 150:6 And if every spirit praises and magnifies the Lord by praising him, why then do you forbid me to chant the solemnities of the sacred Masses and the Hours in Slavonic? For if we could have come to the aid of that people in any other way, together with the other nations, in the Greek or Latin language, I would absolutely not have decreed what you reprove; Which finally the Pope approves with the council. but finding them completely unlettered and ignorant of the ways of God, only this device, with the grace of the bountiful Holy Spirit inspiring my heart, by which I have also won an innumerable people for God. Wherefore, Fathers and Lords, consider more carefully whether it is expedient to change this rule of my institution. And they, hearing and admiring the industry and faith of so great a man, after careful deliberation decided that in those parts which Blessed Cyril had won for God, just as he had established it, the Canonical Hours together with the solemnities of the Mass should henceforth be thus celebrated, in the aforesaid order and language.

[8] When therefore the fame of the man of God was magnified among the people, fearing lest he should be celebrated by the fickle favor of the populace, Cyril becomes a monk: with great vigilance he determined rather to be known to God alone than to be exalted by the praises of men. Wherefore, renouncing the episcopate, he put on the monastic habit, and by Apostolic authority left after himself his brother St. Methodius, to be glorified by glorious virtues; to whom, as a devout teacher to his disciple, out of the bond of eternal charity, he commended with loving devotion the pastoral care — in whom truly abided the munificence of charity, the religion of an excellent life, Methodius as Bishop zealously cares for the salvation of his people. and the urgency of the word of God. Having therefore become the Bishop and Light of the Moravian homeland, he admonished, taught, and corrected with discreet piety the flock committed to his care, uprooting harmful things, sowing salutary ones, raising up the Churches of God to the summit of highest honor, performing wonders, and persuading each one to depart from polluted religion and to put on the Baptism of Christ. Moreover, the man of God governed with urgency the Church committed to him. Thus through his saving doctrine the most holy name of Christ resounded in the mouths of all; thus all rested in the beauty of peace, all rejoiced in the knowledge of the truth, all were gladdened in the holiness of religion.

[9] The younger Sventopulk conspires against the life of the pious King, his uncle, But the devil, that mocker of souls, seeing that a people always enslaved to his service was being taken from him and attached to Christ the King, armed with the weapons of wickedness, stirred up those hateful to God to such a degree of malicious treachery that the seditious Prince Sventopulk, that master of deceit, raged together with his adherent accomplices in fraud to such an extent that he secretly sought to kill his religious uncle the Prince by a draught of poison, so that he might reign in his place. But the pious King, having unknowingly taken the lethal drink, In vain: with divine grace protecting him, felt no harm in his body.

[10] But after the devout King had been overtaken by a natural death and Sventopulk was governing the kingdom of Moravia, Having later obtained the kingdom, he persecutes the faithful: puffed up by his ferocity and inflamed by the pride of arrogance, together with the ministers of Satan who were joined to him in equal conspiracy like the most rabid dogs, he asserted that the teaching of the man of God was worthless, and labored to exterminate those whom the man of God had, together with them, recalled from their errors to the way of truth, salvation, and grace. But the most constant herald of Christ admonished the people faithful to God to persist in the way of truth, and they received his salutary admonitions with eager hearts and open minds. But the rebels contumaciously spurned the law of the Lord, inflicting many injuries upon the priests of the Lord.

[11] But the angelic Father, with deep consideration weighing St. Methodius excommunicates him together with his followers. how the splendor of light had kindled some to devout belief, and how dark gloom had engulfed others who believed impiously and detracted; and how the followers of good run toward glory, and the faithless are dragged to punishment — declining their obstinacy, he abhorred them as enemies of the Catholic religion, detesting all their conduct, and sustained by the eloquence of David, he said within himself: Henceforth I will not sit with the counsel of the wicked, and with the sinful I will not remain; but I will cleave to the innocent and surround the altar of my God. Ps. 25:4 Wherefore he hurled the sentence of excommunication against the brazen Prince Sventopulk and his satellites and against all his territories.

[12] After doing this, wishing to go to Rome and to bring Blessed Cyril with him, but finding him dead, The body of St. Cyril, the Pope refusing, he petitioned the Pope that he might at least carry the lifeless body of his brother back to Moravia, for the devotion of the people recently converted there. When the Apostolic Father did not assent to this petition, Blessed Methodius stayed secretly at Rome for the time being, and finally one night entering the church of St. Clement, He secretly carries it away from Rome, in which his brother's body had been buried, secretly taking it up, he wished to carry it with him to Moravia. And when he had been carrying the holy body with him on the road for some days, But is stopped on the way by divine power, and was resting in a certain pleasant place, and afterwards wished to proceed further with the holy body, he could by no means depart from that place.

Blessed Methodius, persisting in prayers, asked that it be divinely revealed to him whither the sacred body ought to be carried. And warned by the dead man, he carries it back: Then St. Cyril, raising his right hand, showed his brother Methodius, with many people watching, that it ought to be carried back to Rome. When it was brought back, the Pope together with the Roman people met the holy body and, receiving it reverently, buried it again in the church of St. Clement, where it had lain before.

[13] After this, Sventopulk, led by repentance for the things he had unjustly inflicted on the holy man, He is recalled to Moravia: sent messengers to the holy man, through whom he asked that he return to his Church, promising to amend his errors. Then the man of God hastened to visit again his flock, which he had left in body but not in affection. At his arrival, the nobles together with the citizens of the homeland came to meet him, and turning to a wondrous joy of exultation, they gave thanks to God: You have visited, O Lord, your land, you have gladdened it, sending back to us our Pastor of souls.

[14] And it happened that King Sventopulk, at a certain banquet, placed the Duke of Bohemia, named Borzivoj, beneath his table in detestation of his paganism, He baptizes the Duke of Bohemia, asserting that it was improper for a pagan to eat with Christians. The holy Bishop Methodius converted him to the Catholic faith, foretelling to him with a prophetic voice that if he were baptized, he and his successors would become more powerful than all princes and kings. Consenting to his words, Duke Borzivoj asked to be baptized together with thirty of his companions. Having been baptized, and taking priests with him, he returned to Bohemia And prophesies good fortune for him. and had his wife, St. Ludmila, baptized together with a multitude of the Bohemian people. Living in the faith of Christ, after many years they rendered their souls to Christ, leaving behind holy examples for posterity to this day, to the praise and glory of Almighty God, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen.

ECCLESIASTICAL LESSONS ON THE SAME SAINTS CYRIL AND METHODIUS,

from the old manuscript Breviary of Olomouc.

Cyril, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

Methodius, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

BHL Number: 2075

LESSON.

[1] Blessed Cyril, Greek by nation, trained in both Latin and Greek letters, after the Bulgarians had believed, undertook, St. Cyril converts the Moravians: in the name of the Holy Trinity and undivided Unity, to preach the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Moravian people as well. And with divine grace cooperating, after he had won them for Christ, he also devised new letters or characters He devises letters for them and translated the Old and New Testaments and many other things from Greek or Latin into the Slavonic language; and moreover established that Masses and the other Canonical Hours should be chanted in the Church. He sings Masses in Slavonic. Which is practiced to this day in the regions of the Slavs, especially among the Bulgarians, and many souls are thereby won for Christ the Lord.

[2] And when at a certain time the aforesaid Cyril had gone to Rome for the sake of devotion, Reproved by the Pope for this, he was rebuked by the Supreme Pontiff and by the other Rectors of the Church for having dared, contrary to the decrees of the Canons, to institute the singing of the solemnities of the Mass in the Slavonic language. When he humbly made his defense to them but could not fully appease them, taking up the psalter, he recited in their midst the verse of the Psalmist He induces him to permit it by an apt response; in which it is said: Let every spirit praise the Lord. Ps. 150:6

[3] And alluding to that verse, he said: If every spirit praises the Lord, why, chosen Fathers, do you forbid me when I celebrate the solemnities of the Mass to chant in Slavonic, or to translate any other things from the Latin or Greek word into their speech? For if I could have come to the aid of that people, as with other nations, in the Latin or Greek language, I would by no means have presumed to do this. But finding them completely unlettered and ignorant of the ways of the Lord, only this device, with Almighty God inspiring my heart, did I discover — by which I also won many for God. Wherefore pardon me, Fathers and Lords; for Paul too, the Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles, in his epistle to the Corinthians says: Do not forbid speaking in tongues. And they, hearing and admiring the holiness and faith of so great a man, by their authority established and confirmed that in those parts the solemnities of the Mass and the other Canonical Hours should be sung in the aforesaid language. 1 Cor. 14:39

[4] He becomes a monk, Cyril himself, moreover, persisting there, having taken the monastic habit, ended his days, leaving in the above-mentioned parts his brother named Methodius, And transfers his episcopate to his brother Methodius: a vigorous man adorned with every holiness. Who also, after he had gathered many sheaves for Christ, was established by the very Prince who then ruled in those parts and commanded the entire land as a magnificent Emperor, to become the Supreme Pontiff, having under him seven bishops of the same holiness.

[5] But because from the very beginning of the world, after the first man tasted the bitterness of the forbidden fruit, the enemy of the human race does not cease to this day to pour forth the seed of discord between humility and pride, The younger Sventopulk conspires against the life of his pious uncle the King. between love and hatred, and between the remaining fragrances of the virtues and the stench of the vices; grieving that a people always enslaved to his service was being taken from him and won for Christ the Lord, the true King — armed with all the weapons of wickedness, he approaches new and ignorant satellites with such great treachery of warfare, casting the poisoned seeds of discord among the very chief men and rulers, and preparing the fiery darts of avarice and pride.

[6] And this to such an extent that Sventopulk, who was the nephew of the religious Prince or King — who had been the kindly founder and director of all Christianity and religion — sought to assail his own uncle by treachery, to drive him from the kingdom, to deprive him of sight, and to take away his life by poison. But having drunk that pestilential draught, with divine grace protecting him, he suffered no harm. He despises Methodius, Then Sventopulk, having assumed tyrannical power, inflamed by the pride of arrogance, together with his fellow soldiers, spurned the preaching of Bishop Methodius as if it were honey, and did not fully accept his most sacred warnings; but caused his members — that is, his common people and populace — to serve partly Christ, partly the devil. He excommunicates his apostate subjects. Wherefore, by the aforesaid Bishop of blessed memory, his countryside and estates, together with their inhabitants, were struck with anathema, and together with their furrows and fruits, worn down by various calamities, they mourn to this day. These are from that manuscript, as far as they could be read.

THE CONVERSION OF THE BOHEMIANS THROUGH ST. METHODIUS, BISHOP,

from the manuscript of the monastery of Böddeken

in the Life of St. Ludmila, Martyr.

Cyril, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

Methodius, Bishop, Apostle of the Slavs, at Olomouc in Moravia (S.)

BHL Number: 5031

[1] Those unfortunate people, afflicted by the blows of pestilence, who are now the Slavic Bohemians, situated under the constellation of Arcturus, after having long lived without law, without a prince or ruler or city, wandering scattered about like brute animals, and having been deprived of the fruits of their land and of their other possessions, The pagan Duke of the Bohemian Slavs approached a certain pythoness, requesting from her the spirit of counsel and a response of divination. Having received this, they established a city, upon which they imposed the name Prague. Afterwards, finding a certain most sagacious and most prudent man, to whom the business of agriculture was most familiar, by the response of the pythoness they appointed him as the governor of their fields, surnamed Přemysl, joining to him in marriage the above-mentioned virgin pythoness. And so at last, delivered from plague and manifold pestilence, they set over themselves a Duke or Prince called Bořivoj, serving, as they had begun, the images of demons and raging in the profane arts of sacrifice. This Prince Bořivoj, therefore, when he was shining with the bloom of the most excellent and distinguished youth, [Though a guest, yet compelled by the Moravian to eat on the ground after the manner of the pagans,] at a certain time went, on account of his own affairs and those of the people committed to him, to the Duke or King Sventopulk — who, having been softened from his initial obstinacy, had firmly embraced the way of truth — then residing in Moravia together with Bishop Methodius. By this King he was kindly received and invited to the banquet together with the others. But a seat among the Christians was by no means granted to him; rather, after the manner of the pagans, he was ordered to sit on the floor before the table.

[2] Then Bishop Methodius, sympathizing with the insult, is reported to have said to him: On this occasion St. Methodius leads him to the faith of Christ, Alas, he said, that you, being such and so great a man, are not ashamed to be repelled from the principal seats, when you yourself hold a duchy in your authority — but rather prefer to lie upon the ground with swineherds on account of your abominable worship. And he replied: What danger do I suffer on account of this matter? Or what good will the Christian rite confer upon me? If, said Bishop Methodius, you renounce the idols and the demons dwelling in them, you will become the lord of lords, and all your enemies will be subjected to your dominion, And having instructed him with thirty companions, and your offspring will be increased like a very great river into which the streams of diverse rivulets flow. And Bořivoj said: If the matter is as you say, what delay is there in being baptized? None, said the Bishop; only be prepared to believe with your whole heart in God the Father Almighty, and in his Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Paraclete Spirit,

the illuminator of all faithful souls — not only for the sake of worldly substance, but for obtaining the salvation of your soul and acquiring the glory of eternity, and likewise for receiving the fellowship of the Saints and their ineffable joy. His mind, kindled by these and similar honeyed exhortations, the young man burned to receive the grace of Baptism. And so that no delay should occur, together with those who were accompanying him, he threw himself at the feet of the Bishop on the ground, urgently beseeching. What more? In the morning, Having completed the fasts, he baptizes them, catechizing the Duke himself and the thirty who had come with him, and having completed the customary solemnities of fasting, he initiated them at the most holy font of baptism; and fully instructing him in the faith of Christ, he allowed him, enriched with many gifts, to return to his own land, assigning to him a priest of venerable life, named Kaich. Returning to their homeland, they established the aforesaid priest in the stronghold He assigns a priest to him as he returns home. named Hradec, founding a church in honor of Pope and Martyr St. Clement, inflicting much damage upon Satan and winning much of the people for Christ the Lord.

[3] Seeing which, that treacherous serpent, taking up his own weapons, renewed his ancient wars and kindled the entire Bohemian people to fury against the Prince The Bohemians rebel, because he was abandoning their ancestral customs and embracing a new and unheard-of law of Christian holiness. They rose up against him, therefore, with one mind and one purpose, and tried to drive him from their borders, or even to take his very life. Learning of this, the Prince withdrew from them and again sought out King Sventopulk or Bishop Methodius; The Duke withdraws to Moravia and is more fully instructed by Methodius: by whom he was received most splendidly and, as was fitting, most kindly; and staying with them for some time, he fully obtained the teaching of Christ. But the aforesaid populace, persisting in its wickedness, sent envoys from their people to a certain Duke Zreimir — whose name is translated into Latin as "Judge peace" — Zreimir is elected by the rebels, who was living in exile as a fugitive among the Germans, and brought him back to his homeland and established him as their Prince. But because the Truth is never deceived, which says in the Gospel: Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted; by its cooperation the counsel of the wicked was swiftly scattered. Matt. 15:13 For that very Duke whom they had elected, although he was born of them, yet his long exile had deprived him of the speech of his native tongue. He displeases them because he has forgotten his native language, Wherefore he was rejected by his own electors, who accused themselves first — namely, that they had chosen such a man whose voice and speech they could not understand, and whose cries could not penetrate ears unacquainted with his language.

[4] And since, by the disposing providence of God, the above-mentioned Prince Bořivoj, when he withdrew, had left behind many of his friends, by their counsel it was arranged that the fury of the raging populace should be mitigated toward their benign ruler, and should be instigated with every effort against the treacherous usurper unto his death. But since the greatest part of the treacherous party favored the tyrant, And the new treachery of his adherents being detected, they formed a plan to go to the metropolitan city of Prague and there, going out together into the open field, to diligently inquire what ought to be done, according to the pleasure of both parties. The party of the treacherous, therefore, acting wickedly, secretly carried weapons and coats of mail to that same field, so that if those who were on the side of Prince Bořivoj were unwilling to assent to them in all things, any one of them would proclaim in a loud voice a secret signal into the open, saying: Let us change, let us change — and thus, having donned the coats of mail and helmets which they had secretly brought, they would kill their opponents with swords. This most wicked counsel of theirs did not in the least escape the party of Bořivoj. And so they too, clad in coats of mail beneath their tunics, proceeded into the field for the purpose of settling the status of their Prince. And when the counsel of Bořivoj's party did not please the party of Zreimir, He is driven out with them: one of them raised his voice on high and proclaimed: Ho, our men, let us change! At which cry, recognized, the party of Bořivoj, who were armored beneath their tunics, said: Well, well spoken; behold, now you will appear variegated with diverse colors. And thus, having cut down that man with the sword, they compelled his armed associates to flee and expelled the false Prince from their homeland.

[5] Hastening then to Moravia, they brought back their former Prince Bořivoj and restored him to his rightful place. Bořivoj is recalled, Since the same Prince, while staying in Moravia, had made a vow to Almighty God that if the Lord should bring him back to his own land with honor, he would build a basilica in honor of the Blessed Mother of God and perpetual Virgin Mary, He builds churches, upon his return he lost no time in fulfilling his vow in the city of Prague. This Prince, I say, was the first founder of sacred places, gatherer of Clerics, and establisher of the small amount of religion that then existed. He also had a wife named Ludmila, daughter of Count Slavibor in the province of the Slavs, which antiquity called Speu, He promotes the faith with his wife St. Ludmila. but is now called by moderns Mělník, on account of a city newly built there. This Ludmila, indeed, just as she had previously been fervent in the error of paganism, sacrificing to images, so afterwards, imitating the virtues of her husband, having been converted to the Christian religion, she became a most fervent handmaid of Christ. The oft-mentioned Prince therefore fathered from her three sons and as many daughters, as Bishop Methodius had foretold to him with a prophetic voice, and he was strengthened day by day with increasing growth together with his whole people and kingdom.