Catholic holidays - Saints Cyril and Methodius Day

The famous Solun brothers Cyril and Methodius entered the history of Christianity as the first missionaries who conducted services in the Slavic language The date of their veneration in the Catholic Church is February 14 The enlightenment brothers were born in the 9th century in the Byzantine town of Thessaloniki (now the Greek city of Thessaloniki), in the family of a noble military nobleman Thessaloniki was a bilingual city: the Greek language and the Thessalonica dialect, spoken by local South Slavic peoples, were spoken there on equal terms Scientists have not come to a clear conclusion about the ethnicity of the brothers (for example, in Bulgaria they are considered Bulgarians), but it is known that they spoke both Greek and South Slavic languages ​​as their native languages Having received an excellent education, the brothers abandoned their secular careers and devoted themselves to church service And the main business of their lives was the Moravian mission In the 9th century, there was a large Slavic principality of Great Moravia in eastern Europe Bavarian Catholic missionaries were active there, conducting church services in Latin At that time there was no division of the Christian Church into Catholic and Orthodox (Great Schism of 1054), but things were already heading towards that The Moravian prince Rostislav sought to avoid the tutelage of the German clergy and asked the Byzantine emperor to send missionaries who would preach in a language understandable to the Slavs Cyril and Methodius, based on the Solunsky dialect, created the bookish and literary Old Church Slavonic language and a special alphabet - the Glagolitic alphabet - for recording liturgical texts In subsequent years, the brothers and their students translated the Bible and the main church books from Greek into Old Church Slavonic, conducted services in Moravia and neighboring countries, and also taught the local Slavs a new language and script for worship Over time, the Old Church Slavonic language transformed into Church Slavonic Before Cyril and Methodius, it was believed that it was permissible to address God only in three languages: Hebrew, Latin or Greek But thanks to the enlightenment brothers, the “heresy of trilingualism” was put to shame and Pope Adrian II allowed liturgies in the Slavic language Nevertheless, the confrontation between the German and Slavic clergy continued After the Great Schism, supporters of the Slavic rite were expelled in some places, and in others they coexisted with the Latin one In Catholic territories, Cyril and Methodius were revered for a long time only in the Czech Republic and Dalmatia in the status of “locally revered saints” Only in the 19th century, with the rise of national self-awareness of the Slavic peoples, did the veneration of the Thessalonica brothers spread to the rest of the lands of the Catholic Slavs Since 1880, Cyril and Methodius have been recognized as universally revered Catholic saints Tomb of St Methodia is located in the Czech city of Velehrad, which was once the capital of Great Moravia Now every year on February 14, magnificent celebrations are held there in memory of the Equal-to-the-Apostles brothers