The Byzantine mission of saint brothers Cyril and Methodius had a major impact on the spiritual history of Great Moravia. In the centuries that followed, their works paved the way for the political ...and historical development of the Slavic nations, mainly in South-East and East Europe. The mission, which reached Great Moravia in 863, had several dimensions. The most important were evangelism and the cultural and civilizational dimensions. Translations of the Gospel and liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic intensified the religious life of our ancestors and laid the foundations of literature and culture for almost the entire Slavic world. From this point of view, research should be focused on the role and reflection of this historical and cultural heritage in the ecclesiastical and spiritual, national and cultural life of the Slavic nations. The aim of this article is to assess the significance of Christian and Byzantine cultural values in terms of the collective Slavic identity. The Cyrillo-Methodian idea manifests itself in the history of the Slavic world as a complex but solid foundation, capable of renewing the sleeping or inhibited energy and values in the areas of faith, culture, literature, arts, education, upbringing, as well as national consciousness.
The Cultural Route of Saints Cyril and Methodius was established in 2021 as a certified route within the program of Cultural Routes managed by the Council of Europe. The idea was to connect places ...with the Cyrillo-Methodian and Great Moravian traditions. The development of this cultural route is managed by the European Cultural Route of Saints Cyril and Methodius with a Permanent Secretariat in Zlín in the Czech Republic. The association currently has 23 members from 8 countries (CZ, SK, GR, SI, HU, BG, HR and IT). The Cultural Routes Program of the Council of Europe, which has been in development since 1987, is an expression of the basic principles of the Council of Europe: human rights, cultural democracy, cultural diversity and identity, mutual dialogue, mutual exchange and enrichment across borders and centuries. Certified cultural works are expected to initiate innovative projects in the field of cultural tourism and sustainability of cultural development. The aim of this paper is to point out how the European Cultural Route of Saints Cyril and Methodius can contribute to the development of cultural tourism – at international, national, regional and local level. These co-patrons of Europe are closely linked to Slovakia, specifically to the city of Nitra where the Bishopric of Nitra was established in 880 by Pope John VIII. From a methodological perspective, this work is based on qualitative approach (excerpts from print and electronic information sources of varying provenance; comparative analysis; authors’ own experiences with creation of strategic documents). The critical approach to information was supported by fieldwork and communication with stakeholders. The results of our research show that Saints Cyril and Methodius are part of everyday life in Slovakia in various forms – spiritual, landscape, cultural and economic. Religious tourism, which is also associated with their cult, significantly contributes to the visibility of several municipalities and cities and supports their development, especially in connection with the construction of infrastructure. The European Cultural Route of Saints Cyril and Methodius has great potential to connect not only some of the most important European locations / points with a strong legacy of Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples spreading their ideas, emphasising the authenticity and uniqueness of this legacy in each of the countries involved, but also, and above all, human generations throughout the centuries.
On the occasion of the first centenary of the death of Antonin Cyril Stojan, Archbishop of Olomouc from 1921 to 1923, the article provides an original interpretation of some relevant aspects of his ...spiritual legacy. In analysing a number of documents kept in the Vatican Apostolic Archives (Archivio Apostolico Vaticano) and in the Archive of the Congregation for Oriental Churches (Archivio della Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali), the author outlines the peculiarity of Stojan’s contribution to the quest for unity among Christians. The organization of the seven Union Congresses of Velehrad, held from 1907 up to 1936, based on Stojan’s intuition, took place in a very difficult political and social context, including the First World War. Stojan showed how hope for a future good is not only linked to the present external conditions: it can be concretely cultivated in the forms granted by the age in which one lives. For this reason, even after his death, during the pontificate of Pius XI, the cycles of Congresses and moments of prayer and study of the Eastern Churches of the Byzantine liturgical tradition that Stojan had begun, continued. Regarding this original way of approaching interconfessional relations, some significant documents kept in the aforementioned Archives can shed light on two relevant dimensions of these cycles of Congresses, which remain faithful to the Catholic Church and rejecting proselytism as a means of spreading Catholicism.
The relevance of the given problems is due to the church, state and socio-cultural veneration of the saints Cyril and Methodius as the creators of the Slavic alphabet and translations of the Holy ...Scriptures and hymnography into the Slavic language, which distinguishes the Slavic world into a separate cultural type, which often interacts with the multicultural paradigm of the modern European paradigm of the civilizational space. A significant place in the article is occupied by the problem of broadcasting the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Catholicism in the coverage of official documents of the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, the encyclical as a separate type of papal documents that correspond to the social concept of the Roman Catholic Church. The purpose of the study is to analyze the encyclicals of the popes Leo XIII and John Paul II in different languages, discovering the general and the particular in their structure, which will serve as an incentive for further interpretation of the cult of the Holy brothers in the Roman Catholic world in the context of the formation of ecumenical communication of Christian churches and interfaith dialogue. The objective of the study is to identify the reception of the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Western Christian religious culture. The novelty of this research is an attempt to analyze and interpret the structure and composition of papal encyclicals and the subsequent identification of the reception of the cult of the saints in Western European religious culture due to the absence of such works in Russian science. The methodological basis of the research is, first of all, an interdisciplinary approach, as well as historical, comparative historical, chronological and textological methods. All analyzed documents raise questions of the primacy of the Pope, missionary work, Catholic piety and the establishment of liturgical veneration of Saints Cyril and Methodius. An analysis of the texts shows the significance of these documents in the context of the formation of the Cyril and Methodius tradition in the West and the dialogue between East and West. The results obtained allow us to speak about the significance of the cult of Saints Cyril and Methodius in the context of individual Slavic countries and the entire Christian world as a whole.
PDF
