St. Brothers Cyril and Methodius – the first Slavic teachers

Saints Cyril and Methodius created the Slavic script and translated the first liturgical books into it. St. Cyril first devised the Glagolitic script for the Western Slavs, and later the disciples of the holy brothers, Saints Clement and Naum, developed the script that is today known as Cyrillic. By translating liturgical books and the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular of the Slavs from the Thessaloniki region, Saints Cyril and Methodius laid the foundations of Slavic literacy and culture. They brought Eastern, Byzantine Christianity to the Slavs and successfully countered the hostile Latin clerics who espoused the trilingual heresy, claiming that only Biblical Hebrew, Greek, and Latin were permissible liturgical languages. Old Church Slavonic served as the literary language for most Slavs, functioning as a common Slavic literary language—among the Western Slavs in present-day Bohemia and Slovakia from the 9th to the 11th century, among the Southern Slavs from the 9th to the 18th century, and among the Eastern Slavs from the 10th to the 18th century. The missionary brothers not only translated liturgical and biblical books into the Slavic dialect of Thessaloniki but also, during the Christianization of Great Moravia, introduced this language into the Slavic state that encompassed the eastern part of present-day Bohemia (Moravia) and the western part of present-day Slovakia. On this basis, it is argued that Saints Cyril and Methodius eradicated paganism and introduced Christianity to the Carpatho-Rusins a century before the official Christianization of the Slavic people of Rus’ in Kiev in 988—that is, in the late 9th century rather than the late 10th century. The Cyrillic script is also used by the Rusins in in Vojvodina (Serbia) and Croatia, and services in Old Church Slavonic or Church Slavonic are still held today, alongside contemporary Ruthenian (ISO code: RSK), in Greek Catholic churches in Vojvodina (Serbia) and Croatia. Church Slavonic, in reduced forms and various recensions, continues to be used in the Greek Catholic and Orthodox Churches of the Rusins (Rusnaks/Lemkos).

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