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SS. Cyril and Methodius
Two Planters of the Name of Christ
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
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July is the usual time for articles about SS. Cyril and Methodius, whose feast is kept on July 7th. Most of these are written by Czechs who think of the two brothers as their own and other Slavs’ apostles. It is true, of course, that these two Greeks did bring the gospel to the eighth-century Slavs living in central Europe, but excessive concentration on that aspect of their life and work may make us forgetful of their much wider significance. Perhaps it is not a bad thing to think of them, for a change, not primarily as the men who brought Christianity to a particular people nor in connection with their feast and die ‘Apostolate of SS. Cyril and Methodius’ but as men whose lives contributed to the growth and the unity of the Church. The Church indeed grows and is made one in a particular place among definite people, but the importance of that growth and unity comes from its universality, not from its particularity.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1960 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
Duo … Chrisli nominis propagatores; Leo XIII's encyclical Grande miinus, September 30th, 1880.
References
2 Works consulted include: a study by Jean Decarraux in La Vie Spirituelle, Oct, 1957; Les Légendes de Constantin et de Méthode Vues de Byzance, Prague 1933, by F. Dvornik; Les Slaves, Byzance, et Rome, au IXe Siécle, Paris 1926, by F. Dvornik; and an article by the same writer in Novy Zivot, Rome 1958, p. 120.
3 The lives of SS. Cyril and Methodius were a part of a very complex but fascinating texture of problems, political and religious, which had to be left out in a brief essay. The justification for doing so is provided by these words from Butler's Lives: “The political and ecclesiastical rivalries behind these events have a long and complex history, and, in spite of all the recent work on the conflicting evidence, it is difficult to disentangle the details'.
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