On May 24 the Orthodox Church celebrates the
memory of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, the Equal-to-the-Apostles and teachers of
the Slavs, who are considered the creators of the Slavonic alphabet and
literary language. Much from the history of their lives and mission remains
unknown to this day. For more on these holy brothers, we present the following
interview with Anatoly Arkadyevich Turilov, Senior Researcher at the Department
of Medieval History at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy
of Sciences.
Anatoly Arkadyevich, what exactly did Sts.
Cyril and Methodius do in educating the Slavic peoples?
First of
all, they created the literary Slavonic language on the basis of Bulgarian
dialects, as well as the Slavonic written language, although this wasn’t the
same alphabet we use now – it wasn’t the modern Cyrillic alphabet. They also
translated Holy Scripture into Slavonic and laid the basis for both Slavonic
divine services and Slavonic literature.
What kind of people were they? What do we
know about their characters and personalities?
The
brothers came from the family of a mid-ranking Byzantine military official
living in Thessalonica. It was a fairly well-to-do, educated family. Methodius
was the eldest, a good bit older than Cyril. According to the life, Cyril was
the youngest, the family’s seventh child.
In
character, to the extent that we can deduce from their lives and other
materials, they were fairly different people.
Cyril
was, as they say, a God-given philologist. He learned languages well and loved
doing so. Moreover, Cyril probably knew quite a few languages. Apart from
Slavonic, he knew Hebrew. During one of his journeys, when he accompanied a
mission to the caliphate as an interpreter, he became acquainted with Arabic.
It’s obvious that, to some extent, he knew Latin as well as Syriac. St. Cyril’s
knowledge of Syriac is the key to his subsequent creation of the Slavonic
alphabet. It’s worth noting that not many people then knew Syriac, which again
testifies to how highly educated he was. Building thereon, St. Cyril was
subsequently able to model a literary language based on the spoken Slavic
languages – because, as you know, literary language differs from spoken
language. It had to be normalized and oriented on some model and, since Cyril
was Greek, the orientation came from Greek.
Methodius
followed the typical career of a Byzantine official from the beginning. In
those days military and administrative service were not, in principle, separate
things. He was appointed to oversee a certain district inhabited by Slavs. He
clearly proved himself to be a good administrator. After the loss of his
family, however, he was tonsured to monasticism and settled in Asia Minor, on
the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara. It was from there that he later began
to accompany his brother. Thus, the combination of a learned philologist with
an administrator was a very successful one, leading to good results.
It’s also
worth stating that the brothers were successful educators and teachers: they
were able to leave an entire generation of disciples behind them. In this case,
the activity of their disciples was as important as that of the brothers
themselves. The holy brothers’ disciples, who came to Bulgaria in 885, created
a large range of translations and new literary texts. It can be said that,
without this generation of disciples, their mission wouldn’t have had the
results that were eventually attained.
How reliable is the information about the
saints that has come down to us? What is historically accurate and what is
legendary?
The
historical evidence in this case is fairly limited.
Apart
from their lives, there are very few other sources, nearly all of which are
Latin.
On the
one hand, little information from Byzantium has come down to us. Judging from
the surviving historical evidence, no one was particularly interested in the
mission. For example, Cyril was a disciple of Patriarch Photius, but there is
no mention of either Cyril himself or of his mission in either the epistles or
sermons of Photius. Therefore, the information here is limited.
On the
other hand, from the moment that the hagiographies began to be studied,
practically all researchers noted their high degree of reliability. Of course,
some doubts can arise here. So, for example, Cyril’s life dedicates a great
deal of space to his polemics with the heterodox and heretics. Whether this
took place as described can be called into question. It’s more likely that the
life made use of separate polemical treatises by Cyril, but that he didn’t
actually speak like this as an orator.
As for
legends, as a rule they arise later. So, for example, while the later
hagiographical tradition calls Cyril an archbishop, this isn’t borne out by
anything. It’s known that he didn’t hold the episcopal rank.
Another
example: during the “nationalization” of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Bulgaria
in the twelfth century, it began to be claimed that they were Bulgarian through
their mother. This is also a legend, not borne out by anything. In principle,
the mechanism behind these versions is clear: “only one of our own could’ve
created a written language for our people.”
On the
whole, the ancient hagiographical tradition – that is, the lengthy lives of
Sts. Cyril and Methodius – are texts of very great historical authenticity.
What role did the brothers play in creating
an alphabet for the Slavs?
In fact,
it was only after the middle of the nineteenth-century that the view became
established that, despite the modern alphabet being called “Cyrillic,” it
wasn’t invented by Cyril. As you know, there are two Slavonic alphabets:
Cyrillic and Glagolitic.
What is
the evidence that Cyril created Glagolitic? Glagolitic is an artificial
alphabet, patterned on Eastern alphabets. Given that Cyril knew Eastern
languages, this isn’t surprising: if he knew the languages, he also knew the
alphabets. It’s this artificiality that suggests that a single person invented
it.
There is
other evidence as well. For example, the numeral system in Glagolitic is
completely independent, inasmuch as letters in Glagolitic also serve as
numerals. In Cyrillic, however, the numeral system follows the Greek: letters
missing from the Greek alphabet (for example, the Cyrillic letter “Be”) don’t
have a numeric value. The presence of this numeral system is further evidence
of the primacy of Glagolitic, because if Cyrillic had existed earlier,
Glagolitic would’ve followed it in this regard.
Cyrillic
is the result of the prolonged use of the Greek alphabet in Bulgaria from
before that country’s acceptance of Christianity. Its formalization as a
Slavonic alphabet took place at the turn of the ninth-tenth centuries AD. It
amounted to the simultaneous joining of the Greek alphabet with the
philological and linguistic principles that form the basis of Glagolitic.
Cyril’s
genius as a philologist consisted in the fact that he created a very successful
alphabetic system that takes into account the many particularities of any
Slavic language and even some of its neighbors. The particularity of his
Glagolitic, and then of the Cyrillic that adapted its principles, consists in
the fact that no supplementary signs are needed in representing the letters –
as, for example, in reproducing Slavonic letters into Latin. The letters are
sufficient to reproduce the particularities of all sounds.
Cyril was
able to take into account all the particularities of the different Slavic
dialects. This has been subsequently confirmed by the fact that wherever
various regional variants of the Cyrillic alphabet have been used, their
creators have been able to make use of St. Cyril’s alphabet without changing
hardly anything. Cyril succeeded in penetrating the formation and phonology of
Slavonic so thoroughly that a universal alphabet with enormous reserves of
potential was created. Moreover, these particularities were incorporated not
only into Glagolitic, but also into Cyrillic.
Was there an alphabet before them? Could
Slavic culture have arisen without the involvement of Christianity?
Before
Glagolitic, the Slavs had only various oral dialects, but there was no single
literary language. These dialects were similar in many ways, which allowed the
Greek and Latin contemporaries of the holy brothers to speak of the Slavs as a
single people with a relatively uniform language.
Legend
has it that when Cyril was on a diplomatic mission to Khazaria, he found a
certain book written in “Russian letters” in Chersoneses (the site of today’s
Sevastopol). For more than 150 years now, there’s been a debate about what
these “Russian letters” were. Most likely, it was a matter of transposed
letters: russkii [Russian] instead of sur’skii, that is, Syriac. As follows
from the subsequent description, the language in question is Syriac. Already in
the twelfth century, on the basis of this reading [of “Russian” rather than
“Syriac”], the “Tale of Russian Letters” was born, which asserted that Russian
letters were not invented, but rather sent by God to a certain Rusyn, who
showed them to Cyril. This, of course, is a legend. We don’t have any real
evidence of independent writing among the Slavs before the creation of
Glagolitic.
As for
the question of the emergence of Slavic culture without the persons of Sts.
Cyril and Methodius, this would’ve been possible in principle. However, this
wouldn’t have been possible without the Slavs’ acceptance of Christianity. The
fact is that all alphabets created after the Birth of Christ necessarily arose
on the basis of preceding ones, and this was connected with the
Christianization of peoples. Thus, for example, the creation of the Gothic
language and alphabet in the fourth century was connected with the Christianization
of the Goths. The creation of the Ethiopian language was connected with the
baptism of the Ethiopians, and so forth. Therefore the Christianization of
peoples, the creation of indigenous literary languages, and the creation of
alphabets are all part of a single inseparable process. This concerns the
Slavic peoples above all, because with them we can visually compare the seeds
sown by their holy first teachers with the mighty tree of Orthodox culture that
has grown from them.
Of
course! There is the Slavs’ acquisition of their own literary language, which
in Rus’ survived as a single entity in all spheres of life until the beginning
of the eighteenth century. There is also the acquisition of Slavonic liturgical
and independent literatures. And, it goes without saying, the main thing was
the translation of the Gospel into Slavonic, since the coming of Christianity
to the Slavs in their own language was of such global significance that we’re
probably incapable of fully recognizing its scale, inasmuch as we’re looking
back at it from within after more than one thousand years. This was better
understood and sensed by the authors of the lives of the holy brothers and
their disciples, who characterized this event in the words of the Bible:
“Following the word of the prophet, the ears of the deaf were opened, that they
might hear the words of Scripture, and the tongue of stammerers spoke plainly”
(Life of Cyril the Philosopher, chapter 15 [cf. Isaiah 35:5-6, LXX]). Here it
should be noted that Sts. Cyril and Methodius saw their mission as apostolic
and themselves as, in some sense, heirs of the Apostle Paul, since they were
carrying the light of Christ’s teaching not to any single people, but to the
Slavs in general.
How did the Greek East (Constantinople) and
the Latin West (Rome) react to the brothers’ activity?
It’s
difficult to say how Constantinople reacted, since – as I’ve already mentioned
– practically no information about this has survived. In the lives it’s stated
that they were sent to Moravia (the border of today’s Czech Republic and
Slovakia) by request of the local prince, but other Byzantine sources are
silent about them. We shouldn’t, however, regard such silence as anything
special, since the Byzantine sources generally say very little about any kind
of mission, wherever they may have been sent, so in this sense the mission of
Cyril and Methodius is no exception, but rather a confirmation of the rule.
There is a certain reticence about the history of the mission itself, since the
Moravian prince had asked for a “teacher and bishop,” but was sent only a
teacher, not a bishop.
As for
Rome, there are many difficulties here. It’s necessary to distinguish two
things: the position of Rome itself and the position of the German bishops,
since the holy brothers’ mission unfolded on lands on which German missionaries
from the neighboring East Frankish kingdom, who had used Latin liturgically,
had operated. Therefore, the question of competition was keener with regards to
the neighboring German dioceses, while Rome continually maintained a floating
policy. At times it supported the mission of Cyril and Methodius, while at
other times it forbad the performance of services in Slavonic, ultimately
banning it in 885. As has often happened in history, the mission became a card
in a complicated political game. At an early stage, it was advantageous to Rome
to support it and even to create a separate archdiocese (formally reviving an
old one, centered in the city of Sirmium, north of today’s Belgrade). By
agreement between the Papal See and the Moravian princes, Methodius was
assigned to this cathedra in 869 (Cyril had died six months earlier in Rome).
In some
sense, this option suited everyone. The Moravian princes got their bishop. The
situation was also good enough for Constantinople, because no one there doubted
Methodius’ commitment to the values of Byzantine Orthodoxy and the Emperor. The
Papal See, on the one hand, restricted the influence of the German bishops, who
carried out policies that didn’t always agree with Rome. On the other hand,
perhaps even more importantly, the establishment of the cathedra of Sirmium
with services in Slavonic opened up the possibility of spreading Papal
influence among the many Balkan Slavs and, potentially, for returning to the
authority of the Pope the entire diocese of Illyricum (the Balkan Peninsula
excluding Constantinople and its environs), which had been transferred to
Constantinople’s jurisdiction back in the first half of the eighth century.
However, with regard to the Slavonic services, Rome’s position – as has already
been stated – changed frequently (it was dictated by the political situation of
the given moment): from permission for the partial use of Slavonic in divine
services as a second language (after Latin) to a total ban. After the death of
Methodius in 885, there came a final ban, accompanied by the expulsion and sale
into slavery of the archbishop’s disciples. But the apparent defeat in the
lives of the holy brothers in Moravia was almost immediately replaced by the
triumph of their disciples’ joyful acceptance in Bulgaria.
Interview conducted by Sergei Milov.
Translated from the
Russian
CONVERSATION