Edited For History
From very early on, man wanted to be able to capture his word on a material, in order to give it perpetuity and not be “words that the wind took away”. That was how the cuneiform writings of the assyrians who wrote them on small clay tablets. For their part, the Egyptians invented their hieroglyphics that they wrote on papyrus and on the walls. The Chinese, a great ancient culture, also had their way of writing on tablets where they captured their words with ideograms. In our western culture, there were the Greeks who created their alphabet and later Rome which, with its great conquests, imposed Latin and its alphabet, the language from which our Spanish descends.
Around the years 600 and 700, tribes from the Caucasus began to arrive in Eastern Europe, the Slavs, who had their own dialects. Before that, the Emperor Constantine not only accepted the Catholic religion as a state religion, but also created a second empire with its capital, Constantinople, in order to divide the Roman Empire in two, already ungovernable because of how big it was. With the passage of time, the church of Constantinople and that of Rome had differences regarding the liturgy. The schism between the two ways of seeing Christianity had not yet occurred when, in the city of Thessaloniki, present-day Greece, two brothers were born: Constantine and Methodius. They were the oldest and youngest brother of a brotherhood of 7 brothers, sons of a high society family of officials of the Byzantine empire. On the death of their father, they were supported by the Emperor of Constantinople himself. That is how Constantine becomes a great intellectual and philosopher, while Methodius decides to dedicate himself to the priesthood.. They were so important to the emperor that they were sent as ambassadors to the caliph of Baghdad and later, at the request of the can of the northern territories of the Black Sea, the emperor sent them to spread the word of the Lord.
In the center of Europe, the Holy Roman Empire was taking shape. Another of the states of that time, adjacent to the Germanic territories, was the Moravian Empire, which today is only part of the territory of the current Czech Republic. there, the Prince Rostislav he asked the emperor of Byzantium for enlightened people to come and spread the word of the Lord. The priests who were already on mission in Moravia were Germans, Rostislav wanted to distance himself from them. At the request of the prince of Moravia, Constantine and Methodius were sent, who considered that the best way to teach the natives the Divine Word was in their own native language. Constantine and Methodius’ mother was a Slav and they spoke that language. Then there were no big differences in the different parts of Europe where that language, Slavonic, was spoken. Besides, the three languages in which Mass might be said were Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Cyril and Methodius wanted to say mass in Slavonic so that everyone might understand them. It was then that they set regarding the task of creating an alphabet that would collect all the sounds of that language and translate the divine scriptures and the different liturgies.
It is believed that they initially created an alphabet that is known as the Glagolitic. Among the Germanic priests who were displaced in Moravia there was enormous discontent and they claimed that it was heresy to say mass in a language that was not one of the three designated ones. Constantine and Methodius came to Rome and it was the Pope Adrian II who approved the manner of Constantine and Methodius. It is in Rome that the Pope ordains Constantine as a priest, adopting the name of Cyril. For his part, the Pope appoints Methodius Archbishop of Pannonia, a former Roman province and present-day Hungary. After 50 days of being in Rome, Cyril died and Methodius returned to Moravia to continue his evangelizing task. Upon the death of Methodius, his disciples, headed by Clement of Ocrida, went to what was then the first Bulgarian empire and which occupied the lands of present-day Bulgaria up to the Adriatic coast. There they were enthusiastically received by Tsar Boris I.
Historians do not quite agree on whether Cyril and Methodius created only the Glagolitic alphabet or they also created the Cyrillic alphabet. Other historians claim that it was his disciples who actually created the Cyrillic alphabet we know today and named it following his teacher.
Today, this alphabet is used in those Slavic countries that had a greater influence from Byzantium (Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus…), while the Slavic countries that had a greater influence from Rome (Poland, Slovenia , Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Croatia…) eventually adopted the Latin alphabet. The Cyrillic alphabet is not only used for Slavic languages, but many languages from the former Russian, and later Soviet, area of influence adopted this alphabet. I speak of languages of the Turkish family such as Azeri and Uzbek, even adopted by Mongolian and Moldovan, a language of Latin origin and which is nothing more and nothing less than a variant of Romanian.
Today, Cyril and Methodius are remembered on February 14, the day of these saints, in the countries of Eastern Europe. This is a celebration of their writing, their education and their culture, but this date also reflects the spiritual awakening and the aspirations for cultural improvement of these peoples. In 1980, Pope John Paul II named these brothers Patrons of Europe, next to Saint Benedict. Now, when he sees a script with Cyrillic characters, he will remember the origin of this alphabet.
We invite you to read more from the author: