The Imprisonment

Around 870 the Frankish bishops seized Archbishop Methodius, tried him before a synod on charges centering on his intrusion into their jurisdiction and his Slavonic liturgy, and — when he refused to yield — imprisoned him in Swabia for some two and a half years, treating him with notable harshness. The Papacy, once it learned of the outrage, intervened with vigor: Pope John VIII demanded his release, suspended the offending bishops from their functions, and secured Methodius’s freedom in 873. This file sets out the trial, the captivity as the Vita Methodii and the papal letters attest it, and the papal intervention that ended it.

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

The Seizure and the Synod

With his Slavic patron Rastislav fallen and his jurisdiction bitterly contested, Methodius was exposed to his Frankish enemies, who moved against him directly. About 870 the Bavarian bishops took him into custody and brought him before a synod of Frankish prelates — convened, the sources indicate, in the presence of the East Frankish king Louis the German and presided over or dominated by the Bavarian hierarchy, including the archbishop of Salzburg and the bishops of Passau and Freising (Vita Methodii 9; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs, 1970, ch. 6; Tachiaos, Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica, 2001, ch. 8). The charge was, at bottom, that he had usurped their jurisdiction — exercising episcopal authority in territory they claimed — compounded by the standing grievance against his Slavonic liturgy (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom, 1970, chs. 2, 4).

The Vita Methodii depicts the trial as a confrontation in which Methodius bore himself with courage and gave as good as he got. It records a sharp exchange in which the bishops taxed him with teaching in their territory, and Methodius answered that he taught not in theirs but in lands not subject to them — and, in the Life’s telling, rebuked them so boldly that one of them, in anger, threatened him with a horsewhip, and Methodius retorted that he spoke the truth even to kings and did not fear it (Vita Methodii 9; trans. Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 6). The scene is shaped by the hagiographer to display the archbishop’s constancy and is reported here as the Vita’s testimony (METHODOLOGY §3.5); but the core — that Methodius was tried by a Frankish synod, refused to submit, and was condemned — is firmly attested across the Slavic Life and the later papal correspondence (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6).

The Captivity

Condemned, Methodius was not released but imprisoned. He was carried off to Swabia (southern Germany) and held in close and harsh confinement — the Vita Methodii and later sources speak of his being kept in a monastery or under guard, exposed to cold and ill-usage — for a period the sources put at about two and a half years (Vita Methodii 9–10; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 8). Throughout this time the Frankish bishops concealed the imprisonment from Rome, for they had acted against a papal archbishop without the Pope’s leave and knew their proceeding could not stand if the Papacy learned of it (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6). The captivity is the nadir of the mission: its leader, a consecrated archbishop holding a Roman commission, lay for years in a German prison while his Slavonic Church in Moravia and Pannonia was left without its shepherd and the Frankish clergy worked to undo his labors (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Vlasto 1970, ch. 2).

The Intervention of Pope John VIII

The deliverance came from Rome. By the time the truth of Methodius’s imprisonment reached the Papacy, Hadrian II had died and John VIII (pope 872–882) reigned; and John, once informed — apparently through Methodius’s friends and the news that filtered out — reacted with the full force of papal authority (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 8). He dispatched a legate, Bishop Paul of Ancona, to the East Frankish kingdom with sharp letters, demanding Methodius’s immediate release and his restoration to his see, and — in a notable assertion of papal discipline — suspending the offending Bavarian bishops from celebrating the sacred mysteries until they made amends, with threats of further censure (John VIII, letters of 873; discussed in Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Vlasto 1970, ch. 4). The papal letters frame the bishops’ action as an outrage against the Apostolic See itself: they had judged and imprisoned a bishop consecrated by Rome, which Rome would not endure (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6).

The intervention succeeded. Under papal pressure the Franks released Methodius in 873, after roughly two and a half years’ captivity, and he was restored to his archiepiscopal functions among the Slavs (Vita Methodii 10; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 8). The episode is a striking demonstration of the role the Roman see played as the protector of the Slavonic mission: twice now — first in approving the Slavonic liturgy under Hadrian, now in freeing Methodius under John — the Papacy had thrown its weight behind the brothers’ work against the Frankish hierarchy (Dvornik 1970, chs. 5–6).

The Qualified Victory

Methodius’s liberation did not end the conflict; it only changed its form. The Papacy’s support was real but inconsistent: even as John VIII secured Methodius’s release and, in 880, would issue the bull Industriae tuae confirming his archiepiscopal authority and again sanctioning the Slavonic liturgy, the same pope at times restricted that liturgy and was repeatedly worked upon by the Frankish party (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Vlasto 1970, ch. 2; see To Rome and the Death of Cyril on the conditional character of the papal approvals). [Disputed: the consistency of John VIII’s policy is debated — Industriae tuae (880) confirms Methodius and permits the Slavonic Mass, yet a letter ascribed to John in 873 and the later restrictions show the Papacy oscillating, leading some scholars to read Rome’s stance as genuinely supportive of Methodius personally while ambivalent about the Slavonic liturgy, and others (Dvornik 1970) to stress the underlying continuity of papal protection despite tactical shifts under Frankish pressure.] Worse, Methodius now had an enemy within his own province: the Swabian priest Wiching, whom John VIII consecrated bishop of Nitra as Methodius’s suffragan, intrigued ceaselessly against his metropolitan, even forging or misrepresenting papal letters to undercut him (Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Vlasto 1970, ch. 2; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 8).

Methodius bore these trials for the dozen years that remained to him, governing his Slavonic Church, completing the great work of translation (see What They Translated), and even, the Vita reports, journeying to Constantinople late in life, where the emperor and patriarch received him with honor (Vita Methodii 13; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 6). He died on 6 April 885, naming a Moravian disciple, Gorazd, as his preferred successor (Vita Methodii 17; Kantor 1983; Dvornik 1970, ch. 6; Tachiaos 2001, ch. 8). But Rome, under his successor’s pope, did not confirm Gorazd; instead Wiching and the Frankish party gained the upper hand, and the Slavonic clergy were driven out — the collapse in Moravia that scattered the mission’s fruit across the Slavic world (see The Expulsion and the Ohrid School). Methodius’s endurance through trial and prison had kept the Slavonic Church alive in his lifetime; its survival beyond his death would depend on the disciples he had trained and on the lands that received them.

See Also

• Archbishop and the Frankish Conflict — the jurisdictional collision that led to the seizure
• To Rome and the Death of Cyril — the Roman approvals and their conditional character
• What They Translated — the work Methodius completed in his final years
• The Expulsion and the Ohrid School — the fate of the mission after Methodius’s death
• The Byzantine Church — the Eastern Church that received Methodius with honor in his last years

References

• Vita Methodii (Life of Methodius), chapters 8–17. Trans. in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983.
• Pope John VIII, letters concerning Methodius (873) and the bull 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, ch. 6.
• Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, ch. 8.
• Vlasto, A. P. The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, chs. 2, 4.