Historical Figure

Cyril of Thessalonica

Also Known As Constantine the Philosopher His name until he took monastic vows at Rome shortly before his death in 869. The Glagolitic Description names him this way. · Saint Cyril Venerated as a saint in the Orthodox and Catholic churches, jointly with his brother, as an apostle of the Slavs.

Clergy, Theologians & Religious Officials

The younger of the two brothers from Thessalonica who made the first Slavic alphabet and the first Slavonic liturgy. Born around 826 and named Constantine, he taught philosophy at Constantinople and was sent on embassies to the Arabs and to the Khazars before the Moravian mission of 863. For that mission he devised the Glagolitic alphabet, an original system rather than an adaptation of Greek, and translated the Gospels and the service books into the Slavic speech of the region. He defended the right of a people to worship in its own language against the position that only Hebrew, Greek and Latin would serve, and died at Rome in 869 having taken the monastic name by which he is now known.

Facts

Origins

Place of Origin

Thessalonica, in the Byzantine empire 1

Founder

With his brother Methodius, devised the Glagolitic alphabet, the first script created for the Slavic languages. 1

Defining Moment

Their 863 mission to Great Moravia at the invitation of Prince Rastislav, undertaken to provide a Slavic-language liturgy independent of Frankish and Latin clergy. 1

Publications

Notable Publication

Together with Methodius, translated the liturgy and parts of the Bible into Old Church Slavonic for their mission to Great Moravia. 1

Classification

Nationality

Byzantine Empire (Historical) 1

Life

Lifespan or Floruit

to 869 1

Lifespan or Floruit

c. 826 to 14 February 869 1

The death date at Rome is recorded. The birth year is an estimate and is given as 826 or 827 by different authorities.

Place of Activity

Constantinople, the Khazar lands, Great Moravia, Venice and Rome 1

Disputed

Lifespan or Floruit

from 826 1

The source gives this birth year as approximate (circa), while the death is dated to a specific day.

Identity

Also Known As

Constantine the Philosopher, the name he carried until he took monastic vows shortly before his death 1

Also Known As

Cyril 1

Gender

Male 1

Attestation

Historicity

Historically attested 1

A documented ninth-century Byzantine scholar and missionary. The Lives written soon after his death are hagiographic in form but rest on a historical record and on papal correspondence.

Learn More

Constantine the Philosopher

He was born Constantine at Thessalonica around 826, in a city sitting on the edge of a Slavic-speaking hinterland, which is the usual explanation for how two Greek brothers came to know Slavic well enough to translate into it. His father held a military office in the city. The younger son went to Constantinople for his education, studied in the circle around Photios, and took a post as librarian at Hagia Sophia and then as a teacher of philosophy. The epithet the Philosopher is contemporary, and it stayed attached to him.

Before Moravia he was twice sent abroad on the empire's business, first towards the Arabs and then, around 860, to the Khazars north of the Caucasus, on both occasions to argue the Christian case in a formal disputation. The Khazar journey produced no conversion, but it did produce a find. At Cherson in the Crimea he identified relics as those of Clement of Rome, and he carried them with him from then on. They were eventually deposited in Rome, and they are part of why the brothers were received there as well as they were.

In 862 Prince Rastislav of Moravia asked Constantinople for teachers who could instruct his people in their own tongue, wanting a church that did not arrive with Frankish clergy attached. The emperor sent the brothers. The request was political and the answer was political too, and what came out of it was a writing system and a literature.

An Alphabet Made for a Liturgy

The Glagolitic alphabet is an invention rather than an adaptation. Its letters are not Greek letters with additions but an original set, and its inventory was built to the sounds of ninth-century Slavic instead of inherited from a language that lacked several of them. That is rare. Most scripts are borrowed and then patched. This one was designed, and designed for a particular job, which was to carry the Gospels and the liturgy.

The translation work began before the brothers left for Moravia and continued there. What came out of it is the language now called Old Church Slavonic, the first literary Slavic language, and it became the liturgical language of a large part of the Orthodox world.

The opposition came from the Frankish clergy already working in the region, and it was doctrinal as well as territorial. The argument, which later writers call the trilingual heresy, held that scripture and worship belonged properly to Hebrew, Greek and Latin, the three languages of the inscription on the cross, and to no other. Constantine argued against it at Venice and then at Rome, where Pope Hadrian II approved the Slavonic books and had them laid on an altar in the city. He did not leave Rome again. He took monastic vows and the name Cyril shortly before his death there on 14 February 869, and he was buried in the basilica of San Clemente.

Connections

Associated With

Thessalonica

Home city of Cyril, who devised a Slavonic alphabet and translated the liturgy for the Moravian mission.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of World ReligionsJohn Bowker (ed.)

Attributed Works

Glagolitic

Devised around 863 for the Moravian mission, an original system rather than an adaptation of Greek.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity

Depicted In

Fresco of the Translation of the Relics of Saint Clement (Lower Basilica of San Clemente, Rome)

Source The Frescos of the Lower Basilica, Basilica di San Clemente

Namesake Of

Cyrillic

Cyrillic is named in his honour. He did not devise this script. Cyrillic was developed by his brother's disciples in Bulgaria after 885. The name records where the tradition begins, not whose hand drew the letters, and taking it as authorship is one of the most persistent misattributions in the history of writing.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)