Cyril and Methodius (815–885) were two brothers and Byzantine Christian theologians and missionaries. For their work evangelizing the Slavs, they are known as the "Apostles to the Slavs".
Great Moravia, or simply Moravia, was the first major state that was predominantly West Slavic to emerge in the area of Central Europe, possibly including territories which are today part of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Germany, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine. The only formation preceding it in these territories was Samo's tribal union known from between 631 and 658 AD.
Knyaz Boris I, venerated as Saint Tsar Boris I (Mihail) the Baptizer, was the ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire in 852–889. At the time of his baptism in 864, Boris was named Michael after his godfather, Emperor Michael III. The historian Steven Runciman called him one of the greatest persons in history.
The Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia is a self-governing body of the Eastern Orthodox Church that territorially covers the countries of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The current primate of the Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church is Rastislav of Prešov, Metropolitan of the Czech Lands and Slovakia since 2014.
Svatopluk I or Svätopluk I, also known as Svatopluk the Great, was a ruler of Great Moravia, which attained its maximum territorial expansion during his reign.
Rastislav or Rostislav, also known as St. Rastislav, was the second known ruler of Moravia (846–870). Although he started his reign as vassal to Louis the German, king of East Francia, he consolidated his rule to the extent that after 855 he was able to repel a series of Frankish attacks. Upon his initiative, brothers Cyril and Methodius, sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863, translated the most important Christian liturgical books into Slavonic. Rastislav was dethroned by his nephew Svatopluk I of Moravia, who handed him over to the Franks. He was canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1994.
The Christianization of Bulgaria was the process by which 9th-century medieval Bulgaria converted to Christianity. It reflected the need of unity within the religiously divided Bulgarian state as well as the need for equal acceptance on the international stage in Christian Europe. This process was characterized by the shifting political alliances of Boris I of Bulgaria with the kingdom of the East Franks and with the Byzantine Empire, as well as his diplomatic correspondence with the Pope.
Mojmir II was a member of the House of Mojmir and since 894 the last known ruler of Great Moravia. He probably died in the beginning of the 10th century in a battle against the Magyars.
Mojmir I, Moimir I or Moymir I was the first known ruler of the Moravian Slavs (820s/830s–846) and eponym of the House of Mojmir. In modern scholarship, the creation of the early medieval state known as Great Moravia is attributed either to his or to his successors' expansionist policy. He was deposed in 846 by Louis the German, king of East Francia.
Pribina was a Slavic prince whose adventurous career, recorded in the Conversion of the Bavarians and the Carantanians, illustrates the political volatility of the Franco–Slavic frontiers of his time. Pribina was the first ruler of Slavic origin to build a Christian church on Slavic territory in Nitra, and also the first to accept baptism.
The Principality of Nitra, also known as the Duchy of Nitra, was a West Slavic polity encompassing a group of settlements that developed in the 9th century around Nitra in present-day Slovakia. Its history remains uncertain because of a lack of contemporary sources. The territory's status is subject to scholarly debate; some modern historians describe it as an independent polity that was annexed either around 833 or 870 by the Principality of Moravia, while others say that it was under influence of the neighbouring West Slavs from Moravia from its inception.
Kocelj was a ruler of the Slavs in Lower Pannonia. He was an East Frankish vassal titled comes (count), and is believed to have ruled between 861 or 864 and 876.
The history of Moravia, one of the Czech lands, is diverse and characterized by many periods of foreign governance.
In the 9th century, Christianity was spreading throughout Europe, being promoted especially in the Carolingian Empire, its eastern neighbours, Scandinavia, and northern Spain. In 800, Charlemagne was crowned as Holy Roman Emperor, which continued the Photian schism.
The Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum is a Latin history written in Salzburg in the 870s. It describes the life and career of Salzburg's founding saint Rupert, notably his missionary work in Bavaria, and the activities of the bishops and abbots in the Archdiocese of Salzburg. It concludes with a brief history of Carantania.
The history of Christianity in the Czech Lands began in the 9th century. Moravia was the first among the three historical regions of what now forms the Czech Republic whose ruling classes have officially adopted Christianity, between 830s and 860s. In 845 Bohemian chieftains or duces also converted to the new faith, but it was just short-lived political gesture ; real beginning of efforts to promote Christianity in Bohemian territory have to be put to the period after 885. Moravia was the earliest center of Old Church Slavonic liturgy after the arrival of Constantine (Cyril) and Methodius in 863, but their opponents, mainly priests of German origin, achieved the banishment of their disciplines in the 880s. Bohemia became the center of Christianization following the fall of Moravia in the early 10th century. Changes in burials and the erection of churches throughout the Czech Lands demonstrate the spread of the new faith in the 10th century.
Mikulčice-Valy is an archaeological site and a museum with remains of a significant Slavic gord from the times of the Great Moravian Empire. The site is located in Mikulčice in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic, near the river Morava, which forms the Czech-Slovak boundary.
The Archbishopric of Moravia was an ecclesiastical province, established by the Holy See to promote Christian missions among the Slavic peoples. Its first archbishop, the Byzantine Methodius, persuaded Pope John VIII to sanction the use of Old Church Slavonic in liturgy. Methodius had been consecrated archbishop of Pannonia by Pope Adrian II at the request of Koceľ, the Slavic ruler of Pannonia in East Francia in 870.
Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia propose that the core territory of "Great Moravia", a 9th-century Slavic polity, was not located in the region of the northern Morava River. Moravia emerged after the fall of the Avar Khaganate in the early 9th century. It flourished during the reign of Svatopluk I in the second half of the century, but collapsed in the first decade of the 10th century. "Great Moravia" was regarded as an archetype of Czechoslovakia, the common state of the Czechs and Slovaks, in the 20th century, and its legacy is mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution of Slovakia.
Radbod was the East Frankish prefect of the Eastern March, the Bavarian frontier towards the Slavs, appointed in 833. He had been appointed the office after Louis the German's conquest in 828, and subsequent Christianization of the Moravians (828–33). In 833, according to the Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, a Slavic prince, Pribina, had been "driven across the Danube by Mojmir, duke of the Moravians", and fled to Radbod in East Francia around 833. Radbod introduced him to King Louis the German, who ordered that Pribina should be "instructed in the faith and baptized", and that he serve with his followers in Radbod's army. Before long, however, Radbod and Pribina fell out, and the latter, fearing for his life, fled with his son Koceľ to the First Bulgarian Empire, and then to Lower Pannonia ruled by a Slavic duke, Ratimir. Since Lower Pannonia was part of Radbod's prefecture, Ratimir's harboring of Pribina was tantamount to rebellion, therefore, in 838, Louis the German sent Radbod at the head of a large Bavarian army to crush Ratimir, but Pribina and his followers took refuge with the count of Carniola, Salacho. In short time the latter brokered a reconciliation between Radbod and Pribina, and Louis solved the ongoing instability by appointing Pribina as his faithful dux with lands in around the Zala river. Radbod held contacts with Rastislav, ruler of the Moravians, who had long posed a danger to Bavaria. According to the Annals of St-Bertin, in 853 Charles the Bald, king of West Francia, bribed the Bulgarians to ally with the Slavs and together attack Louis the German's kingdom. In the course of the Bulgarian–Moravian attack, Louis the German deposed Radbod in 854 for infidelity, after an uprising. Radbod then formed a rebel alliance with Rastislav. In 855, Rastislav (Rastiz) rebelled, and Carloman was made prefect in Radbod's place in 856. Carloman's 858 campaign forced Rastislav to make peace.
