To Rome and the Death of Cyril

Carrying the relics of St. Clement of Rome, the brothers traveled to Rome (arriving c. 867–868), where Pope Hadrian II received them and the relics with honor, approved the Slavonic books and liturgy, blessed the Slavonic Scriptures placed on the altar of St. Mary Major, and ordained the brothers’ disciples. But Constantine, exhausted by his labors and falling ill, took the monastic habit and the name Cyril, and died in Rome on 14 February 869, charging Methodius to continue the work; he was buried in the church of St. Clement. This file sets out the Roman vindication of the Slavonic mission and the death of the elder apostle of the Slavs.

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

The Journey and the Welcome

After the Moravian mission and the debate at Venice, the brothers continued to Rome — the natural and necessary destination once the legitimacy of the Slavonic liturgy was in question, for Rome was the see whose judgment the Western clergy were bound to accept (Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs, 1970, ch. 5; Tachiaos, Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica, 2001, ch. 7). They had been summoned, or invited, to the city; the sources indicate that the pope then reigning at their arrival was Hadrian II (pope 867–872), Nicholas I having died in 867 during the period of their journey (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom, 1970, ch. 2).

The brothers came bearing a gift of incomparable value to the Roman Church: the relics of St. Clement, the martyr-pope, recovered by Constantine years before at Cherson (see Relics of Clement of Rome). The Vita Constantini reports that the pope, learning that the brothers brought the relics of his holy predecessor, went out to meet them in solemn procession with the clergy and people, and the relics were received into the city with great honor (Vita Constantini 17; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). This reception transformed the brothers’ standing: they came not as suspect provincials with a dubious novelty, but as the restorers of a martyr-pope’s body, predisposing the Papacy to hear their cause favorably (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see Relics of Clement of Rome).

The Papal Approval of the Slavonic Liturgy

The decisive act came next. According to the Vita Constantini, Pope Hadrian examined the Slavonic books the brothers had made, approved them, and — in a gesture of public blessing — laid the Slavonic Scriptures on the altar of the Roman church of St. Mary (Sancta Maria ad Praesepe, i.e. Santa Maria Maggiore), consecrating the Slavonic liturgy by his authority (Vita Constantini 17; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). The Life adds that the pope directed that the Slavonic liturgy be celebrated in several of the great Roman basilicas, and that the brothers’ Slavic disciples were ordained to the priesthood and other orders, so that the Slavonic worship was sung in Rome itself (Vita Constantini 17; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 7).

This papal approval was the great triumph of the mission and the formal refutation of the trilingual doctrine: the Apostolic See, the very authority the Frankish clergy invoked, blessed the Slavonic liturgy and so declared lawful what the trilinguists had condemned (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see The Trilingual Dispute). It is worth weighing the irony and the significance together: a Byzantine mission, sent from a Constantinople then in or just emerging from schism with Rome, secured from the Roman pope the charter of the Slavonic Church. [Disputed: the unconditionality of the approval is debated — the Slavic Vitae present the papal blessing of the Slavonic liturgy as unqualified and triumphant, whereas later papal letters (especially John VIII’s Industriae tuae of 880) reveal Rome attaching conditions — for instance requiring that the Epistle and Gospel be read first in Latin and then in Slavonic — so that some scholars (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6) read the Roman position as a qualified toleration of Slavonic alongside Latin rather than the wholesale endorsement the Lives suggest; the Vitae’s account is hagiographically heightened, while the papal chancery documents show a more cautious, conditional policy.]

The Profession and Death of Cyril

Constantine did not live to carry the victory home. The Vita Constantini reports that in Rome he fell ill, and, knowing his end was near, he took the monastic habit and with it a new name — Cyril — by which the Church has venerated him ever since (Vita Constantini 18; trans. Kantor 1983; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 7). The Life records his last days in the manner of a holy death: prayers, a final exhortation, and above all his charge to his brother. He is reported to have begged Methodius not to abandon the Slavic work for the quiet of the monastery but to persevere in the mission they had begun: in the Life’s words, the two of them had been “like two oxen drawing one furrow,” and now Methodius must not forsake the field (Vita Constantini 18; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). This deathbed charge is the hinge of the whole story, for it bound Methodius to the mission for the sixteen hard years that remained to him (see Archbishop and the Frankish Conflict).

Cyril died in Rome on 14 February 869, at about forty-two years of age (Vita Constantini 18; Kantor 1983; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 7; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5). The date, 14 February, is securely transmitted and is the day on which the Western Church and (with the Eastern reckoning) the Orthodox commemorate him in his own right, distinct from the joint feast in May (see Feast and Equal-to-the-Apostles). The Vita reports that, after some discussion of where he should be laid, he was buried in Rome in the church of St. Clement, beside the relics of the martyr-pope he had carried so far — a fitting close, joining the apostle of the Slavs in death to the holy pope whose recovery had won his mission its Roman blessing (Vita Constantini 18; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; see Relics of Clement of Rome). The ninth-century frescoes later painted in the lower basilica of San Clemente, depicting scenes of Cyril’s burial and the translation of Clement’s relics, preserve the Roman memory of the event (Dvornik 1970, ch. 5; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 7).

The Work Passed On

With Cyril’s death the mission entered its second and more embattled phase. The elder brother, Methodius, now bore alone the burden the two had shared — but he bore it strengthened by the Roman approval Cyril’s last journey had secured. Hadrian II soon consecrated Methodius and sent him back to the Slavs as the Papacy’s own envoy and, before long, as archbishop, charged with the very territory the Bavarian Church regarded as its own (Dvornik 1970, chs. 5–6; see Archbishop and the Frankish Conflict). The Slavonic liturgy had been blessed at Rome and sung in its basilicas; whether it could survive in the Slavic lands against the determined hostility of the Frankish hierarchy was the question that would consume the rest of Methodius’s life.

See Also

References

  • Vita Constantini (Life of Constantine), chapters 16–18. Trans. in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983.
  • Vita Methodii (Life of Methodius), chapters 6–8. Trans. in Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives, 1983.
  • Pope John VIII, Industriae tuae (880). Discussed in Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs, ch. 6.
  • Dvornik, Francis. Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970, chs. 5–6.
  • Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, ch. 7.
  • Vlasto, A. P. The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, ch. 2.