02 — Mission Before Moravia
Before Moravia made them famous, the brothers served their missionary apprenticeship on the empire’s eastern and northern frontiers. This section treats the embassy to the Khazars — the disputations with Jewish and Muslim scholars at the khagan’s court, rendered at length in the Vita Constantini — and the episode that would later prove decisive for the brothers’ standing in the West: Constantine’s recovery, at Cherson in the Crimea, of relics believed to be those of St. Clement of Rome, the third bishop of Rome, which he carried with him to the end and which earned the Moravian mission its welcome at the papal court.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equals-to-the-Apostles)
The Khazar mission is where the brothers first worked together as a missionary team, where Constantine’s philological and disputational gifts were tested against rival faiths, and where — at Cherson — he is said to have prepared himself by learning Hebrew and Samaritan and to have begun the kind of linguistic labor that would issue in the Slavic alphabet. The finding of the Clementine relics, recounted in Constantine’s own lost report and preserved in the Italian Legend, gave the brothers a precious gift to bring to Rome and a personal bond to the Roman see that shaped the later course of their mission. These files set out both episodes and weigh what can be known of them.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Khazar Mission | The Khazar embassy to Constantinople and the brothers’ journey; the stay at Cherson and Constantine’s linguistic preparation; the disputations with Jewish and Muslim scholars at the khagan’s court as the Vita Constantini renders them; the historical question of the mission’s outcome. |
| Relics of Clement of Rome | The tradition of St. Clement of Rome’s exile and martyrdom at Cherson; Constantine’s recovery of the relics; the Italian Legend and Constantine’s lost account; the relics’ role in winning the brothers a hearing at Rome. |
See Also
- The Photian Age — the missionary policy that sent the brothers to the Khazars
- The Invention of the Alphabet — the philological work the Cherson sojourn prefigured
- To Rome and the Death of Cyril — where the Clementine relics earned the mission its welcome
- The Byzantine Church — the Church whose diplomacy framed the embassy
References
- Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine), chapters 8–12. Trans. in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983.
- Italian Legend (Vita cum translatione S. Clementis). Discussed in Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs, 1970.
- Dvornik, Francis. Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970, chs. 2–3.
- Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, chs. 3–4.
- Obolensky, Dimitri. The Byzantine Commonwealth. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971, ch. 4.