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Biography of Saints Cyril and MethodiusName: Saints Cyril and MethodiusBirth Date: N/A Death Date: N/A Place of Birth: N/A Nationality: Greek Gender: N/A Occupations: missionaries, saints Saints Cyril and Methodius The Greek missionaries Saints Cyril (827-869) and Methodius (825-885) were the apostles of the Slavic peoples. Preaching Christianity in the native language, they brought the Slavic countries firmly into the sphere of the Christian Church.Methodius was 2 years old when his brother, Cyril, was born in Thessalonica in northeastern Greece in 827. Cyril was given the name Constantine at his baptism. Methodius entered the service of the Byzantine emperor and worked faithfully, if without distinction, for a number of years. Constantine studied at the imperial university in Constantinople but refused the offer of a governor's post and asked instead to be ordained a priest. He was more intellectually inclined than Methodius and spent some years as the official librarian of the most important church in eastern Europe, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He taught philosophy for a time at the imperial university and was sent by Patriarch Ignatius on one occasion to the Arabian …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…again in 878 by Pope John VIII. This time the influence of the Latinists was stronger. The Pope decreed that Methodius must first read the Mass in Latin, then translate it into Slavic. The bishop returned, subdued. He died in 885. Cyril and Methodius were considered heroes by the people and were formally recognized as saints of the Roman Catholic Church in 1881. Further Reading Most of the works on Cyril and Methodius are in Slavic or Russian. There are several helpful books in English, however. Francis Dvornik, The Slavs: Their Early History and Civilization (1956), describes the brothers' influence on the life and language of the people among whom they worked. Zdenek Radslav Dittrich, Christianity in Great-Moravia (1962), is a scholarly study of the history of the churches they helped found, and Matthew Spinka, A History of Christianity in the Balkans (1968), places their missionary results in the context of the history of eastern Europe. |