Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs [Paperback]

Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001

At the height of the tumultuous developments taking place in Central and Eastern Europe in the ninth century, two Greek missionaries from Thessalonica came to the fore. Their work of acculturation among the Slavs had far-reaching and lasting changes upon European life. This book looks back over the life and work of these two outstanding figures and analyzes their ecclesiastical and cultural mission. Their presence in the Crimea was closely bound up with several aspects of Byzantium's ecclesiastical policy and programs of acculturation, and also with the Russians' first encounter with Christianity. In presenting the Slavs with an alphabet and the written word, the brothers transmitted to them the world, and this it was in Cyril and Methodius' time, and thanks to their work, that Great Moravia reached the height of its vigor and prosperity as a central European state. The Cyrillo-Methodian tradition lived on, spreading among the Slavic peoples and laying the foundation of their spiritual life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Meticulous scholarship and clear insight...a pleasure to read.” --Sobornost 23.2 (2001)

About the Author

Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos is Professor Emeritus of Slavic Ecclesiastical History and Literature, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has written extensively on cyrillomethodian problems and the influence of Byzantine hesychasm on the Slavs, and has been the editor of the review Cyrillomethodianum.

Product Details

• Paperback: 206 pages
• Publisher: St Vladimirs Seminary Pr (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0881411981
• ISBN-13: 978-0881411980
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,138,093 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the dispassionate, neutral scholarly tome you would hope to find, February 21, 2006

By 

Christopher Culver - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Paperback)

CYRIL AND METHODIUS OF THESSALONICA: The Acculturation of the Slavs is an overview of the lives of the Apostles of the Slavs, the work they did, and the Byzantine society in which they lived. It was written by Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, professor emeritus of Slavic ecclesiastical history at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

The book gives abundant attention to the work of the brothers before the mission to Moravia. Prof Tachiaos upholds the theory, stated before by Sir Dmitri Obolensky, that much of the work of translation was done years before the call from Rastislav, during the brothers' sojourn on Mt Olympus. The three theories on the nature of the writing that Cyril encountered in Kherson are presented, although the author rather rashly dismisses Vaillant's theory that "Russian" was misspelt for "Syriac". After recounting the end of the apostles' lives, the author goes on to discuss their legacy, mainly the continuation of Slavic philology in Bulgaria and their cult.

I found the work fairly unpleasant. For one, it reads like something from the age of colonialism, where the Slavs are portrayed as entirely uncouth people, pitiful before the arrival of Byzantine influence. Again and again Prof Tachiaos speaks of the Byzantines giving culture to the Slavs, as if they had none before. No Orthodox reader would deny that Christianity was an important addition to the Slavic world, but the Slavs indisputably had music, lore, a distinct pottery tradition, and so forth. Phrases like "the circle of civilized nations", with the Slavs and Bulgars placed outside, abound.

Furthermore, the work seems tainted by a bit of a Greek nationalistic bias, because the author insists that the brothers were not native speakers of Slavic, and ignores entirely the tradition that their mother was a Slav from the hinterlands of Thessaloniki. Other faults in the text include poor typesetting resulting in plenty of typos--even the placement of the wrong letters in some parts of Old Church Slavonic quotations--and a use of non-standard nomenclature such as "Mohammedanism" and "Old Slavic". Prof Tachiaos even uses the term "Turanian", which refers to the theory of genetic relation between the Uralic and Altaic language families, even though this fell out of favour decades ago.

I can't really recommend this book. If you are interested in the lives of Sts Cyril and Methodius, read the Vita Methodii or the Life of Cyril. Sir Dimitri Obolensky's portrait of St Clement of Ohrid in SIX BYZANTINE PORTRAITS (Oxford University Press, 1988) actually starts with a fairly extensive life of his teachers.