08 — Aftermath and the Disciples
The mission in Moravia did not survive its founder. Within months of Methodius’s death in 885 the Frankish party prevailed: his chosen successor was set aside, the Slavonic clergy were imprisoned, sold, or driven out, and Latin worship was restored. But the expulsion proved the seed of a wider harvest. The exiled disciples — Clement, Naum, Angelar, and others — found refuge in Bulgaria, where Prince Boris and his successor welcomed them; there, in the schools of Ohrid and Preslav, the Slavonic letters took permanent root and from there spread to Serbia and, in time, to the Rus. This section treats the collapse in Moravia and the transplantation, and the long diffusion of the Slavonic inheritance.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Equals-to-the-Apostles)
The aftermath is the paradox at the heart of the Cyrillo-Methodian story: a mission that failed where it began and triumphed where it was exiled. The Slavonic Church the brothers founded in central Europe was extinguished; the Slavonic Christianity they made possible became the faith of the Balkan and East Slavs for a thousand years. The instrument of this transmission was the band of disciples, above all St. Clement of Ohrid, who carried the books, the language, and the work of translation into Bulgaria and made it the foundation of a flourishing Slavic Christian culture. These files set out the expulsion and the Ohrid school, and the subsequent spread to Bulgaria, Serbia, and Rus.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Expulsion and the Ohrid School | The collapse in Moravia after 885; the setting-aside of Gorazd and the expulsion of the disciples; their reception in Bulgaria under Boris; Clement and Naum and the school of Ohrid; the Preslav school and the consolidation of Slavonic Christianity. |
| The Spread to the Slavs | The Bulgarian reception and the golden age of Old Bulgarian letters; the transmission to Serbia; the eventual inheritance of Slavonic Christianity by Kievan Rus; the brothers as founders of a Slavic Orthodox commonwealth. |
See Also
- The Imprisonment — the conflict whose final phase produced the expulsion
- The Textual Legacy — the language and books the disciples carried into exile
- St. John of Rila — patron of Bulgaria, the land that received the disciples
- The Baptism of Rus — the eventual Rus inheritance of Slavonic Christianity
References
- Vita Methodii (Life of Methodius), chapter 17. Trans. in Marvin Kantor, Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications, 1983.
- Vita Clementis (Life of St. Clement of Ohrid), attributed to Theophylact of Ohrid. Discussed in Obolensky, Six Byzantine Portraits, and Vlasto, The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom.
- Obolensky, Dimitri. The Byzantine Commonwealth. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971, ch. 4.
- Vlasto, A. P. The Entry of the Slavs into Christendom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, chs. 2–3, 5.
- Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001, chs. 10–11.