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Cyrill led to the conversion of the Slavonians to christianity; and, in a truly popular spirit, Cyrill occupied himself in translating the bible into the language of the people, and got severely lectured by Pope John VIII. for celebrating the mass in an intelligible tongue. "Audimus etiam quod missam cantes in barbara (Slavina) lingua. Unde jam literis per Paulum Episcopum Anconitanum tibi directis prohibuimus ne in ea lingua sacra missarum solemnia celebrares, sed vel in latina vel in græca, sicut Ecclesia Dei toto terrarum orbe diffusa et in omnibus gentibus dilatata cantat."[1] However, on a representation made personally to his holiness by Method, he was allowed to sing slavonic masses, and to explain "in auribus
- ↑ The apprehension that heresy would clothe itself in slavonian garments seems to have been constantly present to the church of Rome. It would indeed have been a dangerous experiment to have allowed polemical writings in languages which at Rome could find, probably, no interpreters. In the eleventh century, the monk of Sazawa talks of "per Sclauonicas literas hæresis secta hypocrisisque aperte irretitos ac omnino peruersos"—and Pope Gregory VII. in 1830, urgently counsels Wratislaw against the imprudence of employing slavonians in religious services.
