The Trilingual Dispute

The Slavonic liturgy ran headlong into a doctrine widely held among Frankish clergy: that God might rightly be praised in writing and worship only in three “sacred” languages — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — the three tongues in which Pilate had written the title on the Cross. Constantine met this “trilingual” claim head-on, most famously in a debate at Venice recorded in the Vita Constantini, marshalling Scripture and the example of the many nations who already worshipped God in their own tongues. He branded the doctrine the “Pilatian heresy.” This file sets out the objection, Constantine’s refutation, and the theological stakes.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equals-to-the-Apostles)

The Doctrine of the Three Sacred Languages

The objection the brothers faced was not mere xenophobia but a position with a rationale. Its proponents held that the languages fit for the worship of God and for the writing of Scripture were three and only three — Hebrew, Greek, and Latin — and they grounded the claim in the Gospel detail that the inscription Pilate set over the crucified Christ, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” was written in those three languages (John 19:19–20; Luke 23:38) (Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs, 1970, ch. 5; Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom, 1970, ch. 2). On this view the three tongues of the Cross were divinely marked out as the only proper vehicles of the sacred, and to render the Liturgy and the Scriptures into a “barbarian” Slavic speech was an impiety. The doctrine was congenial to a Latin West for which Latin was in fact the universal language of Church and learning, and it gave the Frankish clergy of Moravia — already affronted by a rival mission — a principled-sounding ground on which to attack the Slavonic worship (Vlasto 1970, ch. 4; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5).

The brothers regarded this teaching as false and dangerous, and Constantine in particular treated it as a heresy to be refuted, not a custom to be accommodated. The Vita Constantini has him call those who hold it “trilinguists” or “Pilatians” — the latter a pointed coinage, since the only authority for the supposed sanctity of the three languages was the act of Pilate, the judge who condemned Christ (Vita Constantini 16; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). To rest the limits of sacred language on Pilate’s titulus was, in Constantine’s framing, to honor the act of an unbelieving Roman governor as if it were a divine ordinance.

The Debate at Venice

The Vita Constantini stages the fullest refutation at Venice, where Constantine, on the journey toward Rome, was confronted by an assembly of Latin clergy — “bishops, priests, and monks” — who “fell upon him like ravens upon a falcon and raised the trilingual heresy” (Vita Constantini 16; trans. Kantor 1983). The scene is dramatized in the manner of the Lives, a set-piece disputation displaying Constantine’s learning, and it should be read as the Vita‘s worked-up presentation of his arguments rather than a verbatim transcript (METHODOLOGY §3.5; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; Tachiaos, Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica, 2001, ch. 6). But the arguments it puts in his mouth are coherent and are the tradition’s record of how the brothers answered the trilingual claim.

Constantine’s reply, as the Life gives it, rests on two pillars: the witness of the many peoples who already worshipped God in their own languages, and the testimony of Scripture.

The example of the nations. Constantine confronts the trilinguists with the fact that numerous Christian peoples possessed Scriptures and worship in their own tongues — he names, among others, the Armenians, Persians, Abasgians (Abkhaz), Georgians (Iberians), Sogdians, Goths, Avars, “Tursi” (Khazars/Turks), Arabs, Egyptians (Copts), and Syrians — and asks how, if God willed worship in only three languages, all these nations had long been praising Him in their own (Vita Constantini 16; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). The list is the brothers’ empirical refutation: the universal practice of the Christian East already gave the lie to the trilingual rule.

The witness of Scripture. Constantine then marshals a chain of biblical texts against the doctrine. He cites the Psalms’ summons to all the earth and all nations to praise the Lord — “O sing unto the Lord, all the earth” and “Let every breath praise the Lord” (cf. Psalm 95/96:1; Psalm 150:6) — and the prophetic and apostolic promise that the Gospel is for all peoples (Vita Constantini 16; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). Above all he appeals to St. Paul’s teaching on intelligible worship in 1 Corinthians 14: that in church it is better to speak five words with understanding, to instruct others, than ten thousand in an unknown tongue (1 Corinthians 14:19), and that “if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken?” (1 Corinthians 14:8–9; cited in Vita Constantini 16; Kantor 1983). The whole Pauline argument — that worship must be intelligible so that the assembly may say “Amen” (1 Corinthians 14:16) — became the charter text of the Slavonic cause (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see Liturgy in the Slavonic Tongue).

The Theology at Stake

Beneath the disputation lay a genuine theological question about the nature of the Church and the gospel. The trilingual doctrine implied that the sacred was bound to particular sacred languages — a kind of linguistic holiness — whereas the brothers held that the gospel transcended every language precisely because it was for every nation. Their position drew on the deepest current of the New Testament: the gift of Pentecost, when the Spirit enabled the apostles to be heard by every nation “in our own tongues” the wonderful works of God (Acts 2:6–11), and the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; Obolensky, The Byzantine Commonwealth, 1971, ch. 4). For Constantine, to confine worship to three languages was to reverse Pentecost and to deny the catholicity of the Church — to make of the gospel a possession of three peoples rather than the inheritance of all. This is why he treated the matter not as a question of discipline but of doctrine, and why he was willing to carry it all the way to Rome (Tachiaos 2001, ch. 6).

The dispute also had a sharp ecclesial edge. Because the trilingual doctrine was the banner of the Frankish clergy who opposed the mission, the theological argument was inseparable from the jurisdictional contest over who should evangelize the Slavs and in whose language (see Rastislav and the Request). The brothers’ decision to seek vindication at Rome — the Apostolic See whose authority the Franks themselves acknowledged — was a shrewd recognition that only Rome could overrule the Bavarian clergy on their own ground (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see To Rome and the Death of Cyril). That the Papacy decided the question in the brothers’ favor — approving the Slavonic liturgy and so rejecting, in effect, the trilingual claim — was the decisive vindication of their cause, even though the struggle on the ground would continue for decades (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see Archbishop and the Frankish Conflict).

See Also

References

  • Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine), chapter 16. Trans. in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983.
  • Scripture: John 19:19–20; Luke 23:38; 1 Corinthians 14:8–9, 14:16, 14:19; Acts 2:6–11; Matthew 28:19; Psalm 95/96:1; Psalm 150:6.
  • Dvornik, Francis. Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970, ch. 5.
  • Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, ch. 6.
  • Vlasto, A. P. The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, chs. 2, 4.
  • Obolensky, Dimitri. The Byzantine Commonwealth. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971, ch. 4.