The Presidential Library’s collections illustrate Saints Cyril and Methodius

The Slavic Literature and Culture Day is celebrated annually on May 24. This holiday is associated with the names of the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles brothers Cyril and Methodius - educators, preachers, founders of the Church Slavonic language, who played a crucial role in the development of Slavic literature and culture. All this is reflected in old editions and documents from the collections of the Presidential Library "Cyril and Methodius - Slavic Educators". Presented research papers, essays, speeches tell about the feat of the brothers in the difficult missionary field. The selection also includes a photograph depicting the monument to Cyril and Methodius in Kiev and the Decree of the President of Russia on the celebration of the Slavic Literature and Culture Day.

The works such as “The Word on the Day of St. Cyril and Methodius, equal to the apostles, educators of the Slavs, in the presence of Slavic guests, said in Isaac’s Cathedral by the Rector of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, Archpriest John Yanyshev” (1867), the work of the Moscow professor O. Bodyansky “On the Time of Slavic Writings” (1855) and other rare editions tell how more than a thousand years ago the brothers Cyril and Methodius, at the behest of the Greek Tsar Mikhail and with the blessing of the Church of Constantinople, went to the Slavic lands: Bulgaria, Moravia, Serbia, and later, after the death of Cyril, Methodius came to our ancestors, who were faced with a choice: either to remain in paganism, or to take the Christian dogmas and liturgy in the language of other people around them from the West.  

“Having known how insufficient one oral sermon for the Christian education of entire nations is, and not finding literacy among our ancestors, the new Apostles created the Cyrillic alphabet, translated the Word of God and the liturgical books into their native language, taught our ancestors to read and understand what was read, taught them to pray and find solace in prayer, taught to believe and live by this faith”, - writes John Yanyshev.

Cyril and Methodius were deeply worshiped in Ancient Rus’. Their lives are mentioned in The Tale of Bygone Years according to the Laurentian Codex, the oldest chronicle about the history of the Russian land, an electronic copy of which is available in the Presidential Library’s collections. After the Christianization of Rus’, the language created by the brothers became pan-Slavic. In pre-revolutionary Russia, the Day of Cyril and Methodius was annually celebrated both in big cities and in small villages. In the middle of the XIX century, the 1000th anniversary of the creation of the Slavic alphabet was celebrated publicly. At that time, in Russia, due to the growing interest in the origins of native culture, in particular writing, a considerable amount of research appeared on the circumstances of the brothers' life and the meaning of everything they did for Russian culture.

Already in the 19th century, disagreements on the origin of Cyril and Methodius were outlined among Slavic scholars. According to the most common version, the brothers were Greeks. However, some authors insist on their Slavic origin.

The famous Russian scientist and journalist Mikhail Pogodin devoted a whole study to this issue. His book "St. Cyril and Methodius are Slavs, not Greeks”, published in Moscow in 1864, leads the reader to the conclusion that the holy brothers were Slavs, although there is no indisputable evidence of this: “There is no direct, positive evidence in the first sources - as in favor of the Greek, so in favor of Slavic origin: we must look for it through considerations and guidance. It seems to me that they were Slavs”.

The views of Pogodin are convincingly developed by Vasily Aprililov in his essay “Bulgarian Scribes, or Which Slavic tribe actually owns the Cyrillic alphabet?” of 1841 which tells that Cyril and Methodius had Roman names.

The contribution of Cyril and Methodius to the culture of the Slavs is great, and for many centuries it has been the vector of its development. This was described by a specialist in Slavic studies Platon Kulakovky in his essay of 1885 "The history of attempts to resolve the issue of a single literary language among the Slavs" (1885): "In the history of culture it is difficult to point out their equal giants whose educational activities would leave such great traces. Cyril and Methodius initiated the idea of the literary unity of the Slavic peoples, so separated from each other in their future history”.