less dissimilar than they are now), and the two brothers were warmly
welcomed in Rome by Pope Adrian II, who formally consented to the use, for
the benefit of the Slavs, of the Slavonic liturgy (a remarkable
concession, confirmed by Pope John VIII). This triumph, however, was
short-lived; St. Cyril died in 869 and St. Methodius in 885; subsequent
Popes, notably Stephen V, were not so benevolent to the Slavonic cause;
the machinations of the German hierarchy (which included, even in those
days, the falsification of documents) were irresistible, and finally the
invasion of the Magyars, in 893, destroyed what was left of the Slavonic
Church in Moravia. The missionary brothers had probably passed through
Bulgaria on their way north in 863, but without halting. Many of their
disciples, driven from the Moravian kingdom by the Germans, came south and
took refuge in Bulgaria in 886, and there carried on in more favourable
circumstances the teachings of their masters. Prince Boris had found it
easier to adopt Christianity himself than to induce all his subjects to do
the same. Even when he had enforced his will on them at the price of
numerous executions of recalcitrant nobles, he found himself only at the
beginning of his difficulties. The Greeks had been glad enough to welcome
Bulgaria into the fold, but they had no wish to set up an independent
Church and hierarchy to rival their own. Boris, on the other hand, though
no doubt full of genuine spiritual ardour, was above all impressed with
the authority and prestige which the basileus derived from the Church of
Constantinople; he also admired the pomp of ecclesiastical ceremony, and
wished to have a patriarch of his own to crown him and a hierarchy of his
own to serve him. Finding the Greeks unresponsive, he turned to Rome, and
Pope Nicholas I sent him two bishops to superintend the ecclesiastical
affairs of Bulgaria till the investiture of Boris at the hands of the Holy
See could be arranged. These bishops set to work with a will, substituted
the Latin for the Greek rite, and brought Bulgaria completely under Roman
influence. But when it was discovered that Boris was aiming at the