The Message of Ss. Cyril and Methodius
An extraordinary epoch of our national history was the union of the Principality of Moravia and the Principality of Nitra and the laying of the foundations of the first state formation on our territory, the Great Moravian Empire. The origins of our statehood are linked to the princes Pribino, Mojmir and Rastislav. Prince Rastislav stood out in the building of a sovereign state, whose main aim was to break free from the influence of the Frankish Empire. Determined to gain independence by building his own church organization and to base this challenging vision on an alliance with a strong state, Rastislav sent a message to the Byzantine Emperor Michael III asking him to send scholars who would develop the faith in the Slovene language.
With the ambition of forming not only a religious but also a political union with the aspiring Rastislav, the Byzantine emperor granted the Great Moravian request and entrusted it to the scholarly Constantine and his brother Methodius, who already had experience in diplomatic service, possessed a broad education and, above all, knew a language close to that of the Slavs, which was most likely instilled in them by their mother. Knowledge of the Slovene language was an essential prerequisite for fulfilling the daunting task that Constantine undertook back home. By compiling the alphabetic characters for recording the Slovene language - Glagolitic, by translating the Bible and religious books, the basic prerequisite was laid for the elevation of the Slovene language to the level of the three liturgical languages, Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The establishment of an independent Slavic ecclesiastical province headed by Methodius, the founding of a school, the education of pupils and the cultivation of the Slovene language and writing gradually fulfilled the intention of the missionary message.
After the death of Constantine, who took the monastic name Cyril on entering the Greek monastery, Brother Methodius continued the missionary work. The approval of the liturgy in the Slavonic language and the establishment of the Great Moravian ecclesiastical province, headed by Methodius as archbishop, was a thorn in the side of the German clergy, who sided with Prince St. After seizing the government, Svatopluk gradually fulfilled his political ambitions with bursts of power. For several decades the Great Moravian Empire became a strong, independent state, uniting almost all the western Slavs.
The Great Moravian tradition followed the tradition of King Svatopluk and the cultural legacy of the Cyril and Methodius tradition, later divided into Orthodox and Catholic branches. The basic works of Moravian-Pagan writing, the Glagolitic script, its additional adaptation to the Cyrillic script and the Old Slavonic language were essential attributes of the cultural tradition of the Thessalonian brothers.
For political and power reasons, the work of Sts. Cyril and Methodius could not continue to develop in its original environment of Great Moravia and Pannonia, but it found a solid base primarily among the Balkan Slavs, in the Bulgarian Preslav and in the city of Ohrid in the territory of present-day Macedonia, i.e. among the Eastern and Southern Slavs, and later also on the soil of the Hungarian kingdom among the Croats, Romanians and Ruthenians.
The environment of the monasteries, which actively cultivated the Glagolitic script and Old Slavonic as a liturgical language, was the bearer of the Cyril and Methodius faith and cultural legacy. The Cyril and Methodius tradition has a special legacy in our environment since the 17th century in connection with the study of archival documents on the earliest history of the Slovaks, with an emphasis on the cultural and spiritual significance of the Cyril and Methodius mission, which was all the more emphasised in the following periods and became the mainstay of the building of the national consciousness and identity of the Slovaks.
The cultural-spiritual dimension of the Cyril and Methodius mission affected the whole Slavic world. Its linguistic richness, which replicated the everyday life of our ancestors, took concrete form only with the recording of speech through writing. This moment can be seen as the most significant in the cultural progress of our environment. The unique social impact of the extensive spiritual and cultural work of the brothers of Thessalonica resonates to this day in the veneration of St Cyril and Methodius as co-patrons of Europe.
Our University, named after them, can thus proudly follow and develop the cultural heritage of Great Moravia, which is directly linked to today's environment and occupies an irreplaceable position, especially on campus.
Source:
Akademické obrady a insígnie Univerzity sv. Cyrila a Metoda v Trnave
Author: Mgr. Silvia Haladová, PhD.
ISBN 978-80-8105-857-
University of St. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava, year of publication 2017