124 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



ment, and not in the uncouth, barbaric language of a pagan 

 tribe. 



In the year 867 Sts. Cyril and Methodius were summoned 

 to Rome by Pope Nicholas I in this matter, and, arriving 

 there after his death, were warmly received by his successor, 

 Pope Adrian II, to whom they gave a full account of their 

 missionary work. In 869 St. Cyril died in Rome, and was 

 buried in the Church of St. Clement, where there is now a 

 splendid chapel to his memory. St. Methodius was sent back 

 to the Slavonic tribes, and the Pope made him Archbishop of 

 Pannonia, or Eastern Austria. 



Again in 879 complaints were made against St. Methodius 

 on account of the use of the Slavonic language in the Mass, 

 and he was again summoned to Rome by Pope John VIII, 

 but he gave so good an account of his missionary efforts and 

 his success in converting the people through the services in 

 the Slavonic language, that the Pope said : "We rightly extol 

 the Slavonic letters invented by Cyril, in which praises to 

 God are set forth, and we order that the glories and deeds of 

 Christ our Lord be told in that same language. Nor is it in 

 anywise opposed to wholesome doctrine and faith to say Mass 

 in that same Slavonic language, or to chant the holy gospels 

 or divine lessons from the Old and New Testaments duly 

 translated and interpreted therein, or other parts of the divine 

 offices; for he who created the three principal languages, 

 Hebrew, Greek and Latin, also made the others for His praise 

 and glory." 



Thus the Slavonic language became one of the liturgical 

 languages of the Catholic Church, and the conversion of the 

 Slavonic tribes went on with great success. The offices and 

 liturgy of the Greek rite so translated into Slavonic have re- 

 mained substantially the same down to the present day, and 

 are used practically in the same form as Sts. Cyril and Me- 

 thodius left them in the ninth century. All the church books 

 in Russia, Bulgaria, Servia and in Austria-Hungary (whether 

 in the Greek Catholic or the Greek Orthodox churches) are 

 printed in the Old Cyrillic alphabet and in the Old Slavonic 

 tongue. The translation is accurate and follows the Greek 

 almost word for word. As has just been said, the Greek 

 Church did not sever its relations with Rome until 1054 — 

 nearly 190 years after Sts. Cyril and Methodius — and the 



