Download PDF | Maddalena Betti - The Making of Christian Moravia (858–882)_ Papal Power and Political Reality-Brill Academic Publishers (2013).
267 Pages
Foreword
The history of central Europe in the early Middle Ages, and not only in that period, has tended to be a closed book for most medievalists. There are three reasons for this regrettable gap in general knowledge. First, the extant sources are few in number, often late in date, and partially in Slavonic, a language rarely commanded by medievalists. Second, a great deal of the relevant scholarship exists in Slavic languages that are rarely read by medievalists.
Third, the territories that form the subject matter of his book, lands lying above and below the Danube to the east of modern Austria and well into modern Hungary and Bulgaria, seem somehow less interesting, less important than the Carolingian Empire to the West and the Byzantine Empire to the East. Phrased a little differently, this blank page in early medieval history is perhaps an unintentional by-product of unfamiliarity. With the publication of Maddalena Betti’s The Making of Christian Moravia the prevailing situation should change dramatically for the better.
Because she controls all the relevant sources as well as the scholarship in a host of languages, Betti’s original and important book makes a series of valuable contributions. At the core of the book stands a re-examination of the careers of Cyril and Methodius. Betti is able to demonstrate that the long-standing interpretation of the famous missionary brothers rests on flimsy foundations. Partly, current views depend on local, regional, national, and ethnic traditions, convictions, and collective memory that cannot stand up to the test of historical scrutiny. Partly, those views are a mish-mash of early and late sources blended so as to ‘prove’ the positions that one author or another started out with.
The book opens with a fascinating discussion of the relevant Slavic historiography from the eighteenth century to the present. Historians who do not read Slavic languages—I myself am such an historian—will be very grateful for this concise and knowledgeable resumé. Again at the beginning, and then repeatedly throughout, Betti devotes an acute Quellenkritik to the Latin and Slavonic sources. Her discussion of the sources is an independent contribution of real value, but it is also crucial to the task of achieving a proper understanding of Cyril and Methodius. Betti does not dispute that Cyril and Methodius were sent as missionaries to the Danubian basin by the Byzantine emperor. But having launched the brothers on their mission, she eschews romantic Slavic patriotism and connects them tightly to several Slavic princes (especially Kocel and Svatopluk) and a series of popes (Nicholas I, Hadrian II, and John VIII).
In Betti’s telling, the mission was fundamentally a papal project and the role of John VIII (872–882) was absolutely critical. Betti shows how Methodius in particular, Cyril having died in 869, was drawn into what she calls a ‘papal project.’ That project had two dimensions. In one respect, the popes, with Methodius as their agent and collaborator, were negotiating a sensitive ecclesiastical situation where local, Byzantine, and Carolingian interests were in tension. In another respect, the popes were negotiating a political situation where competing Byzantine and Carolingian interests were complicated by the ambitions of local Slavic princes. Betti shows that Nicholas I and Hadrian II were so focused on the ultimately unsuccessful Bulgarian mission that they devoted little attention or energy to Moravia.
John VIII, by contrast, realized that Bulgaria was lost to Rome and turned his attention purposefully to Moravia. Here Methodius and Svatopluk were to be his agents in the establishment of a new church province independent of both the Byzantines and the Carolingians. One of the chief contributions of Betti’s book consists precisely in its fine-grained assessment of Pope John VIII. In short, Betti creates a more credible account of the establishment of a Moravian church than anyone before her has ever been able to accomplish. Along the way, Betti makes many other contributions. She intervenes forcefully in the occasionally heated debate about the location of Moravia.
She assesses that debate judiciously and offers some comments of her own but specifically says that evidence pertaining to Methodius can only point to lands north of the Danube and then only after 880. Betti’s reading of the contested ecclesiastical situation permits her to make a number of fresh observations about papal ecclesiology, particularly during the pontificate of John VIII. Betti does a masterful job of identifying, differentiating between, and interpreting ancient and medieval, ethnic and geographical terminology. Her discussion of the evolving language used by John VIII is especially worthy of note. Betti is not afraid to speculate when her evidence does not permit straight-forward conclusions. I always found her speculations to be plausible and sometimes found them to be completely convincing.
There is a certain irony here. Betti shows that in reality much of what has been ‘known’ about Cyril, Methodius, and early Christianity in Moravia is actually based on speculation prompted by romantic Slavic nationalism and collective memory. She does not credit this kind of speculation at all but instead, struggling heroically with her scanty sources, she just occasionally suggests how a blank might be filled in.
The most challenging instance of such speculation comes early in the book when Betti proposes that Pope Stephen V (885–891) might have expurgated the records of his predecessors and, in the process, created some of the gaps in the record that make interpreting Popes Nicholas I, Hadrian II, and John VIII so very difficult. Each reader will decide whether or not Betti is persuasive. Some of her arguments will doubtless prove controversial, but they will do so in the best sense of the term. Betti’s book will be powerfully instructive but it will also spark reflection and discussion. Thomas F. X. Noble University of Notre Dame
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