Great Moravia
Slavic principality on the middle Danube under Rastislav and Svatopluk, where Constantine and Methodius worked and where the liturgy was celebrated in Slavonic.
The realm is called simply Moravia in the Slavonic Lives. Pope John VIII addressed its ruler Svatopluk in 880, called Methodius archbishop of the Moravian church and consecrated a bishop for Nitra within it (John VIII, Letters, 255 (June 880)). The Kyivan chronicle remembered it as the land for which Slavonic books were first written (Primary Chronicle, years 888–898). Its chief places are not named in these sources; the marker stands in the valley of the river Morava, from which the land takes its name. See Cyril and Methodius among the Slavs.
What happened here
- AD 863 to AD 885, estimated dateCyril and Methodius among the Slavs
Two brothers from Thessalonica, sent from Constantinople to Moravia, give the Slavs an alphabet, the Scriptures and the liturgy in their own language. Rome’s attitude to the Slavonic liturgy shifts from approval to prohibition and back, and ends in a ban.