The Cyrillic Alphabet: Tailor-Made for Slavic Languages

"We don't understand Latin or Greek. Please send us someone to teach us in our language."

This was the message Prince Rostislav of the Slavic-speaking Moravians (of central Czechoslovakia) sent to the Byzantine emperor at Constantinople in A.D. 861.

Rostislav asked the Byzantine Church for assistance because they taught each nation in its own language, while the Church of Rome, at the time, used only Latin.

The emperor sent two Greek brothers, Cyril and Methodius, who knew both Slavic and Greek, to translate the Bible and liturgy. Two alphabets emerged (which Cyril himself may or may not have created). One soon fell into disuse.

The Cyrillic alphabet is a masterful piece of work, based on the Greek with borrowings from the Coptic and Hebrew.

According to tradition, the Apostle Andrew had introduced the Scyths, Sarmatians, and Slavs to the Christian faith on the hills of Kiev in the Ukraine. Some eight centuries later, it is said, Methodius went to Kiev and founded a great center of learning. He took with him the Bible which he and Cyril had translated, and introduced it and the Cyrillic alphabet to the Russians. This alphabet is now used in parts of Eastern Europe and most of the former Soviet Union.