Saint Cyril and Methodius, the patron saints of the Polish Seminary at Orchard Lake, only became Catholic saints in 1880. The Seminary was established five years later, in 1885. It was first located in Detroit and then moved to Orchard Lake in 1909.
The two eminent Greek teachers, theologians, philosophers, missionaries and linguists (!) were recognized as saints by EasternOrthodox Christianity immediately after their death (Cyril died in 869 and Methodius in 885) and are known as “Equal-to-the-Apostles, teachers to the Slavs”. Since 1980 Saints Cyril and Methodius have been also patron saints of Europe.
“International Mother Language Day”, celebrated on February 21, a week after the feast of St. Cyril and Methodius, encourages reflections on one’s native tongue. While we are thinking about the Polish language, we could ask a question: why do we use the Latin, not the Cyrillic alphabet for writing Polish?
The answer seems to be fairly simple: we all know that the Latin alphabet arrived in the illiterate Polish lands in the tenth century with the missionaries who came there to spread Christianity. As Poles well remember, they came to us not directly from Rome, but by way of the Duchy of Bohemia (today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia) which was Christianized a century earlier.
But if the history of this part of Europe had taken a different turn, we might have ended up using the Cyrillic alphabet …
A century before the official “Christianization of Poland”, i.e. in the times of Cyril and Methodius, the lands of the countries known to us today as the Czech Republic and Slovakia belonged to Great Moravia, one of the very first western Slavic state. At that time Poland did not yet exist as a state; it is assumed that some parts of today’s regions of Little Poland and Silesia were also under the control of Great Moravia.
It is precisely in Great Moravia where Konstantin (today known mainly as Cyril) and his older brother Methodius arrived in 863. The brothers most likely grew up in Thessaloniki (today Greece, in their time Byzantine Empire), and they set off for Great Moravia at the invitation of its ruler Rastislav, who earlier requested that the Byzantine emperor send him missionaries capable of teaching Christianity in a language understandable by his subjects. Rastislav’s request had a very important political context. By allying himself and his country with the Byzantine Empire, Rastislav wanted to strengthen his rule which was contested by the neighboring Germans who also sent to his lands missionaries answering to Rome and using the Latin language in the liturgy.
At the time many Slavs lived in the lands of Byzantium, therefore it was not difficult for the brothers to learn from them a “Slavic language”. What they learned was, however, some kind of Bulgarian-Macedonian dialect which belonged to the Southern Slavic language group, while the people in Great Moravia spoke Western Slavic languages. Which means that Konstantin and Methodius did not learn exactly the language their future disciples spoke, but a language similar enough to it, as the Slavic languages back then were even closer to each other than they are now.
A crucial part of their preparation for the mission was a translation of the most important parts of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Psalms into the Slavic language.
After learning the Slavic language, the brothers now faced a big challenge: how to write down this language, which did not yet exist in a written form.
Most likely it was Konstantin (Cyril) who got the idea of using Greek letters for this purpose. He modified some of them, used letters from other alphabets as well, and in the end, he found a way to “imitate” the sounds of the “Slavic language” known to him. The alphabet he invented is known as “Glagolitic”. The name of this oldest Slavic alphabet stems from the word “glagol” which in Old Church Slavonic means both, “word” and “letter”. More about the Old Church Slavonic later in this article.
The brothers, equipped with the language understandable to the inhabitants of Great Moravia, and with the texts of the Scriptures translated into the Slavic language and written in the Glagolitic alphabet, started their mission in Great Moravia.
Unfortunately, the complicated political situation, but primarily the competition between the proponents of the Christian Latin rite, which had been in Great Moravia long before Konstantin and Methodius arrived, and the proponents of the liturgy in the native Slavic tongue, introduced by the brothers, forced Konstantin and Methodius to leave Great Moravia, and their mission ended up a failure.
Soon Konstantin, accepting earlier the monastic name Cyril, died in Rome, but the work of bringing Christianity to Slavs in their native tongues was continued by his students.
We already know that Konstantin (i.e. Cyril) created the Glagolitic alphabet. Who then and for what reason invented the Cyrillic script?
It is believed that it was Cyril’s disciples active in the lands of today’s Bulgaria and Northern Macedonia who saw a need to simplify the Glagolitic alphabet, hence they came up with an alphabet, which was easier to use and closer to the Greek. To honor their teacher, they named it “the Cyrillic alphabet”.
Very soon the Glagolitic alphabet was almost completely replaced by the newer and more efficient Cyrillic alphabet; only in Dalmatia (the coast of today’s Croatia) did it remain in the liturgy for centuries.
Today the Cyrillic alphabet is third in popularity among the alphabets used in the EU countries, after the Latin and Greek.
Even though the Glagolitic alphabet very quickly stopped being universally used, the “Slavic language” into which Constantin and Methodius translated the New Testament, is still being used in the liturgy of the orthodox churches in Slavic countries. This language is known as “Old Church Slavonic”.
Of course, if we compare the Old Church Slavonic used today by the Russian Orthodox Church to the Old Church Slavonic used by the Bulgarian, or Serbian Churches, we will notice considerable differences, as these liturgical languages changed over the centuries under the influence of the local vernaculars.
As a point of interest, it is worth noting that the Roman Catholic Church introduced the liturgy in the national languages only after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
Let’s go back to St. Cyril and Methodius as the patrons of the Orchard Lake Seminary.
The seminary was established a thousand years after Methodius’ death, in 1885. Earlier, in 1881, Rome experienced a large scale, pan-Slavic pilgrimage, organized as a show of gratitude to Pope Leon XIII, who a year earlier canonized Cyril and Methodius. Clergy and the faithful from all the countries where Slavic people lived (except for orthodox Russia) flocked to the Holy City. For days Rome heard prayers and singing in the Slavic languages. We need to mention here, that in 1881 only Russians had a sovereign state, while other Slavs lived in the lands administered by other nations. Poles lived in Russia, Austria or Germany; Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes and Croats in the Austro-Hungarian Empire; while Serbs, Bulgarians and Macedonians in the Ottoman Empire.
At the same time these Slavic people yearned for independence from their occupiers.
News of the boisterous celebrations most certainly reached Father Józef Dąbrowski, the founder of the Polish Seminary and a great Polish patriot. Father Dąbrowski must have been greatly moved by the example of St. Cyril and Methodius, the “Slavic Apostles”, who believed that religious ministry should be performed in the native tongue of the people, and who had laid a foundation for such ministries. No wonder Father Dąbrowski decided to choose them for the patrons of a Polish Seminary in the United States.
In the conclusions, let’s make some “wild” speculations:
Had … Konstantin’s and Methodius’ mission ended in success, and the Slavic language got established there as the language of the liturgy….
Had … the Great Moravian State not collapsed, but prospered, and Mieszko I brought Christianity to Poland from there …
Then … Poland would had entered the realm of the Eastern Orthodox Christianity and instead of the Latin script, most likely today, like many other Slavic people, we would have used the Cyrillic script.
By the way, a hypothesis exists, that a ruler of the Vistulians was baptized in Wiślica according to the Slavic rite, almost a hundred years before Poland officially adopted Christianity.
Selected bibliography:
Tadeusz Lehr-Spławiński, Konstantyn i Metody, Uzupełnił i słowem wstępnym poprzedził Franciszek Sławski, Warszawa, 1967
Ksiądz Józef Dąbrowski. Monografia Historyczna, opracował ks. Aleksander Syski, nakładem Seminarium Polskiego w Orchard Lake, Michigan, 1942
Photos:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Bascanska_ploca.jpg
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sv_Kiril_Metodij_Zahari_Zograf_Trojanski_mon_1848.jpg
Map of Great Moravia by Daniel Perout: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Great_Moravia_during_Svatopluk_(en).svg
Painting „Cyryl i Metody”, by Jan Matejko (1885): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Cyril_and_Methodius.jpg?20200429191601
The Glagolitic and Cyrillic scrips:
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In the picture is very clearly written “Bulgarian Books”.
St Cyril and Methodius were Bulgarians not Greek. Why Greek monks will promote another alphabet and land instead of Greek.
St Cyrilic was born Bulgarian as per few old books. His original name was Tzarco.