Background
The brothers were born in Solun (the modern ThessalonĂki), principal city of Macedonia, and their father Leo was a Byzantine military commander.
The brothers were born in Solun (the modern ThessalonĂki), principal city of Macedonia, and their father Leo was a Byzantine military commander.
When Constantine was 14 years old he was sent to the Byzantine court at Constantinople, where he was given a fine education in the classics, geometry, dialectics, rhetoric, astronomy, and music.
He was appointed librarian to the patriarch of Constantinople but resigned to enter a monastery, where his brother was studying, and later was ordained a priest. Emperor Michael III sent them as missionaries to attempt the conversion of the Jewish Khazars, north of the Crimea, and then of the Bulgarians. Having acquired a knowledge of Old Bulgarian, a Slavic language, they were sent to teach the gospel to the Slavs of Moravia. Although their efforts to Christianize this people were successful, the brothers were opposed by both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities among the neighboring Germans, who charged them with preaching heresy. They were recalled by Pope Nicholas I and eventually exonerated. Both brothers began, and Saint Methodius finished, the translation of the liturgy and the Bible into Old Church Slavonic. In this work they used a modified Greek alphabet. Although it is not certain if Cyril invented it, his name has since been attached to it, and the Cyrillic alphabet is used in Russia and several other Slavic countries. He died in Rome in 869; his feast day is February 14.