CYRIL

(Constantine of Thessalonica or Constantine the Philosopher) (826 or 827--869 A.D.)--Enlightener of Eastern Christianity, Greek representative in the Khazar polemic, one of the apostles of Slavic literacy. Seventh child of Leo Drungar, who conducted military and administrative affairs for the Byzantine court in Thessalonica, Constantine held a number of official and diplomatic posts and was raised amid the stark icon-free churches of the iconoclasts who were then in power in Constantinople. They included a number of Thessalonicans, and Constantine learned from men who were leading iconoclasts. Leo the Mathematician, who taught him Homer, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, was an iconoclast and a relative of Constantinople's Patriarch (837-843 A.D.), the iconoclast John the Grammarian; he maintained ties with the Saracens and their Caliph Mamun. Another of Constantine's instructors, the famous philosopher and later Patriarch Photius, who taught him grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, and philosophy, was called the Christian Aristotle and, along with Leo the Mathematician, helped to launch the humanistic renaissance in which the Byzantine world once again considered itself a descendant of ancient Hellenic lineage. Photius practiced hermetic and proscribed sciences, astrology and magic; the Byzantine emperor called him "Khazar face", and there was a legend circulating at court that in his youth Photius had sold his soul to a Hebrew sorcerer.

Constantine loved languages; to him they were as eternal as the winds, and he changed them as the Khazar kaghan did women of different faiths. In addition to Greek, he studies Slavonic, Hebrew, Khazar, Arabic, Samaritan, or languages written in the Gothic or "Russian" script. He grew up and later lived with an insatiable wanderlust. He always carried a rug with him and used to say, "My home is where my rug is"; he spent the better part of his life among tribes so wild that, after shaking hands, he always had to count his fingers. Only illness provided some sort of island of peace in his life. As soon as he fell ill, he would forget every other language save his own. There were always at least two causes for his illnesses. When the Thessalonican party of iconoclasts was removed from power in 843 A.D. and the cult of icons was reintroduced following the death of Emperor Theophilus, Constantine was forced to take shelter in a monastery on the coast of Asia Minor. He thought, "And God has retreated to make room for the world. Our eye is the target of objects before it. They will aim at it, not the opposite." He was then compelled to return to the capital, to speak out publicly against his own formers teachers and countrymen, and to defend icons. "It is only an illusion that out thoughts are in our heads," he then concluded. "Our thoughts and we as a whole are in our thoughts. We and our thoughts are like the sea and the stream that runs through it--our body is the current in the sea, but our thoughts are the sea itself. Hence, the body makes room for itself in the world by forging through thoughts. And the soul is the seabed of the one and the other . . . ."

He then abandoned yet another of his former teachers--his elder brother Methodius, who had never attacked anyone of like mind. Cyril saw himself leaving behind his one-time spiritual father and brother, and taking the lead.

ST.CYRIL, FROM A 9TH-CENTURY FRESCO

In his service to the Constantinople court, first he was archon of a Slavic province, then he studied at the imperial school in the capital, as a priest he became the patriarchate's librarian at the church of St. Sofia in Constantinople, where, owing to his exceptional erudition, he was granted the honorable title of "Philosopher", which he carried to his death. But he held fast to a different view and to the seaman's conviction that the meat of a smart fish is harmful and tougher than that of a stupid fish. Only the stupid eat both the stupid and the smart, whereas the smart pick and eat the stupid.

Having spent the first half of his life fleeing from icons, he spent the second half carrying them like a shield. It transpired, however, that he could grow accustomed to the icon of the Holy Mother, but not to the Holy Mother herself. Many years later, in the Khazar polemic, when he compared her to the servants in the kaghan's entourage, he compared her not to a woman but to a man.

Then half his century passed and half his life was spent.

He took three gold coins and placed them in his bag, thinking, "The first I will give to the horn blower, the second to the church singers, and the third to the singing angels on high." So he set out on his endless journeys. Never was he able to mix the crumbs from lunch with the crumbs from dinner. He was constantly on the move. In 851 A.D. he went to the Arab caliph in Samarra, near Baghdad, and when he returned from his diplomatic mission, he saw in the mirror the first wrinkle on his forehead and called it "the Saracen wrinkle". The year 859 A.D. was drawing to a close, and he became coeval with Alexander the Great, who died at thirty-three, which was Constantine's own age now.

"There are more people my own age below ground than above," he thought now, "people from all time periods, from the era of Ramses III, from the labyrinth of Crete, from the time of the first siege of Constantinople. One day, when I am below ground, I too will be the same age as many of the living. But, aging here, above ground, I betray the dead who are younger than I am."

And then came yet another siege of the city whose name he bore. While the Slavs besieged Constantinople in 860 A.D., Constantine was setting a trap for them in the quiet of his monastic cell in Asia Minor's Olympus--he was creating the first letters of the Slavic alphabet. He started with rounded letters, but the Slavonic language was so wild that the ink could not hold it, and so he made a second alphabet of barred letters and caged the unruly language in them like a bird. Only later, when hit had been tamed and taught Greek (for languages learn other languages), could the Slavonic language be caught in the original Glagolitic, rounded letters . . . .

Daubmannus related the following story about the genesis of the Slavic alphabet.

That same year, the Byzantine Emperor Michael III received a legation from the Khazar kaghan, who had requests that a person capable of explaining the fundamentals of Christian doctrine be sent to him from Constantinople. The emperor turned for advice to Photius, whom he called "Khazar face". It was an equivocal move, but Photius took the request seriously and recommended his protege and disciple Constantine the Philosopher, who, with his brother, Methodius, set out on a second diplomatic mission, called the "Khazar mission". On the way, they stayed in Kherson, in the Crimea, where Constantine studied the Khazar and Hebrew languages, preparing for the diplomatic assignment that awaited him. He thought, "Every man is the cross of his own victim, but nails go through the cross too.: When he arrived at the court of the Khazar kaghan, he met representatives of the Moslem and Jewish religions, who the kaghan had also invited, and Constantine entered into the polemic with them, holding the "Khazar Orations" which Methodius later translated into Slavonic. Having refuted the arguments of the rabbi and the dervish representing Judaism and Islam respectively, Constantine the Philosopher persuaded the Khazar kaghan to accept Christianity, taught him that is does no good to pray to a broken cross, and left with a second, Khazar wrinkle on his face.

As the year 863 A.D. drew to a close, Constantine became a contemporary of the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who dies in his thirty-seventh year, which was now Constantine's own age. He completed the Slavic alphabet and left with his brother for Moravia to be among the Slavs he knew from his native land.

He translated church writings from Greek into Slavonic, and a crowd of people gathered around him. They had eyes where horns had once obviously been, wore snaked around their waists, slept with their heads turned south, and tossed fallen-out teeth over the house. He watched them pick at their snot with their fingers and whisper prayers as they ate it. They washed their feet without taking off their shoes, spat into their food before meals, and added their barbarian masculine and feminine names to every word in the "Our Father", so that the "Our Father" rose like bread and simultaneously disappeared, and every three days it had to be cleaned of the chaff and could be neither heard not seen for all the wild names that swallowed it. They found the smell of carrion irresistible; they were quick witted; they sang most beautifully, and he cried as he listened to them and watched his third, Slavic wrinkle trickle down his forehead like a drop of rain. . . . After Moravia, in 867 A.D. He went to the Pannonian Prince Kostel, and from there to Venice, and he entered in debate with the Trilinguists, adherents of the view that only the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages were worthy of the liturgy. The Venetians asked him, "Did all of Judas kill Christ, or not quite all?" And Constantine felt a fourth, Venetian wrinkle appear on his cheek, cutting and crossing his face with the older Saracen, Khazar, and Slavic wrinkles, like four nets thrown over the same fish. He gave the first gold coin to a trumpeter to start blowing his horn and asked the Trilinguists how the army would respond to the call if the trumpet's signal was not understood. The year was now 869 A.D., and Constantine's thought turned to Boethius of Ravenna, who had died at the age of forty-three. He was now the same age. The Pope invited him to Rome, where he succeeded in defending his principles and his Slavonic liturgy. With him were Methodius and his students, who were baptized in Rome. Reflecting on his life and listening to the chanting in the church, he thought, "Just as a man gifted for a job performs it reluctantly and clumsily when he is ill, so a man not meant for a job will perform it with equal reluctance and clumsiness though he be healthy . . . ." The Slavonic liturgy was sung in Rome on this occasion, and Constantine gave his second gold coin to the singers. In the age-old manner, he placed the third coin under his tongue, entered one of the Greek monasteries in Rome, and dies under his now Monastic name, Cyril, in the year 869 A.D.