LITMIR.BIZ

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      It is reported that there came ambassadors from the Khazares, a Hunnic-Tartaric tribe, to the emperor Michael, to ask for a teacher in Christianity. On the recommendation of Ignatius, Constantine was chosen for this mission, as being particularly qualified by his eloquence and piety. On the road he stopped for some time in Cherson on the Dnieper, where he learned the Khazaric language. The empire of the Khazares extended from the Volga and the Caspian Sea, across the Caucasian isthmus and the peninsula of Taurida, as far as to Moldavia and Walachia. Several Slavic tribes were tributary to them; but about the middle of the ninth century, at the time of Cyril's mission, their power began to decline; their vassals became their enemies, and gradually their conquerors; until towards the end of the tenth and at the beginning of the eleventh[pg.33] century, their empire became entirely extinct.^[42] Constantine converted and baptized their Khan, whose example was followed by a great part of the nation. It was probably after he had returned from this mission, that Cyril went to convert the Bulgarians. At this time, or just before, according to Dobrovsky's opinion, he invented the Slavic letters, and translated the Gospels, during his stay in Byzantium. This however is nothing more than an hypothesis, against which other hypotheses have been started by other scholars. Between A.D. 861 and 863, there came another embassy to the emperor from the Moravian prince Rostislav, who asked for a teacher, not only to instruct his subjects in Christianity more perfectly than it had been done before, but also to teach them to read. Most of the Moravians were already baptized. Constantine, accompanied by his brother Methodius, was sent to Moravia, where the people received them with expressions of joy. They introduced here the Slavic liturgy, and preached in the Slavic language.

      One peculiar circumstance served to give to their persons a more than common sanctity. Constantine had been so fortunate as to discover in Cherson the bones of the holy Clement, relics which he every where carried with him. After three or four years, the pope invited the two brethren to Rome, where the possession of these relics procured them great honour and distinction. The pope Adrian, followed by the clergy and people, met them and their treasure before the gates of the city. Both the brothers were consecrated as bishops; those of their Moravian disciples who had accompanied them to Rome, were made priests and deacons. Constantine received the consecration, but did not accept the diocese allotted to him. With the permission of the pope, he adopted the name of Cyril, and died forty days afterwards,[pg.34] Feb. 13, A.D. 868. His remembrance is cherished as holy by the Slavic nations; and even as early as A.D. 1056, we find, in the calendar of the Evangelium of Ostromir, the fourteenth of February set down for the celebration of his memory.

      Methodius returned to Moravia the same year, A.D. 868. He was what was called an episcopus regionarius, and had therefore no fixed residence. In the letters of pope John VIII, he is called bishop of Moravia and Pannonia. The first of these countries was at this period the theatre of bloody wars; the Slavic inhabitants of the other had been already converted to Christianity by German priests, as early as A.D. 798. In consequence of this, Methodius found the Latin worship established here, and the Latin language in use. The innovation made by him, however, was of course greatly favoured by the people; who for the first time heard the gospel read to them in a language they understood. But he met with the more opposition from the priests. The whole jealousy of the Romish church seems to have been awakened by Methodius' proceedings. He found however a protector in the pope himself; who feared perhaps an entire alienation of the Slavic population, and their transition to the Oriental church; but was at the same time desirous to preserve the whole authority of the Latin language. In a letter to the Moravian prince Svatopluk, he enjoins expressly, "that in all the Moravian churches the gospel, for the sake of the greater dignity, should be read first in Latin, and afterwards translated into Slavic for the people ignorant of the Latin."

      The question, what part of the Scriptures was translated by Cyril himself, what by his brother, and what supplements were made by their immediate successors, can now hardly be answered in a satisfactory manner. The honour of the invention of the alphabet appears to belong exclusively to Cyril; but in the sacred work of translation, Methodius was not less active;[pg.35] and his merits in respect to the conversion and instruction of the Slavi, were more favoured by a longer life. According to John, exarch of Bulgaria, Cyril translated only selections from the Gospels and the Apostle, as the book of Acts and the apostolic epistles are together called in Slavic; i.e. a Lectionarium, or extracts from those parts of the Scriptures, arranged in such a way as to serve as a lesson for every sacred day through the whole year. The Russians call such a collection Aprakoss, the Greeks [Greek: evangelia, eklogadia]. A work of this description is the above mentioned Evangelium of Ostromir, of the year 1056, written out expressly for the domestic use of Ostromir. posadnik^[43] of Novogorod, a near relation of the grand-duke of Izjaslav. It is however held to be more probable, that Cyril translated at first the whole of the Gospels, as still contained in a Codes of A.D. 1144, in the library of the Synod of Moscow. The Presbyter of Dioclea, who wrote about A.D. 1161, ascribes to Cyril not only the translation of the Gospels, but also of the Psalter;^[44] and at a later period that of the whole Old and New Testaments, as well as of the Massa, i.e. the Greek liturgy of Basilius and Chrysostom. This opinion has since been generally received. In respect to the Old Testament, however, it is much to be doubted; since no ancient Codex of it exists, or has ever been proved to have existed. As to the New Testament, the Apocalypse must at any rate be excepted.

      What part of the translation was performed by Methodius does not appear. John, exarch of Bulgaria, who lived in the same century, translated the books of Johannes Damascenus into Slavic. In the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Russian and Servian princes called into their empires many learned Greeks, versed in the Slavic language, that they might[pg.36] continue the holy work of translation. From the historian Nestor it appears, that the Proverbs of Solomon existed in the twelfth century in Slavic. The book of Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, the Prophets, and Job, were translated in Servia in the thirteenth or fourteenth century; the Pentateuch in Russia or Poland A.D. 1400, or about that time. It is certain, that towards the close of the fifteenth century, the whole Bible was already translated into Old Slavic. According to Dobrovsky, the different parts of it were not collected until after A.D. 1488, when the Bohemian Bible of Prague was printed. This latter served as a model for the arrangement of the Slavonic Bible; what was wanting was at that time supplied, and those books of the Old Testament which had been translated from the Greek, were reviewed and corrected according to the Vulgate. The Codex of Moscow of A.D. 1499, the most ancient existing copy of the whole Bible in the Old Slavic, is probably at the same time the first which was ever wholly completed.

      The domains of the Old Slavic language, which seemed at first to be of very great extent, were soon, by the well known jealousy of the Romish church, limited to Russia and Servia. In Bohemia, which owed its conversion to German priests, the Slavic liturgy seems never to have been generally introduced; and the old Slavic church language has therefore exerted only an inconsiderable influence on the Bohemian. In Poland too, the Slavic liturgy was only tolerated, although the first books with Cyrillic types were printed there. In Moravia, Pannonia, and Illyria, the Slavonic worship was, after some struggle, supplanted by the Latin; in the two latter countries, however, the language was retained, and the occidental church service conducted in the Slavic language; i.e. in a language which at that time was perfectly intelligible to the Illyrians.

      It appears that the priests of this part of the country had never adopted the alphabet, which Cyril invented for the benefit[pg.37] of their brethren in Pannonia or Bulgaria;^[45] who, less advanced in civilization than the tribes bordering on Italy, could as yet neither write nor read; while the latter were already in possession of an alphabet of an ancient and mysterious origin. For the first appearance of the Glagolitic letters, (glagol signifies in Slavic word, or rather verb,) is still buried in perfect darkness. An almost fabulous antiquity has been ascribed to this alphabet by various old writers. According to some it was derived from the Goths or Getæ; according to others, from the Phrygians and Thracians; and a very common tradition made St. Jerome, who was a native of Dalmatia, the inventor of it. The sounder criticism of our age seems at last to have proved that all these opinions were untenable. The oldest Glagolitic manuscript known before 1830 was a Psalter of A.D. 1220; i.e. more than three and a half centuries younger than the Cyrillic alphabet, and evidently copied from a known manuscript

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