The Byzantine Mission to Moravia FRANCIS DVORNIK Before trying to trace the origin of the Moravian State, let us recall one of the most perilous years in the history of Byzantium - the year 626, in the reign of the Emperor Heraclius. Constantinople was then in mortal danger. The Persians, who had allied themselves to the Avars, a Turkic tribe which at that time occupied the Old Pannonia and Dacia, sub- jugating the Slavs, the Gepids, and the Bulgars settled there, together with the Slavs of Dalmatia, Moravia, and Bohemia, besieged the city by land and sea. The Patriarch Sergius kept high the morale of the anguished people by holding all-night vigils and processions, while the garrison was manning the walls and repulsing the attackers.1 The City was saved by the defeat of the Slav fleet by the Byzantine navy; this defeat later enabled Heraclius to pursue the Persians to their own territory and to secure one of the greatest triumphs ever won by a Byzantine Emperor. It was about the same year 626 that Heraclius, fearing an attack from two sides - from the Persians and from the Avars - was looking for allies who would, in particular, remove the danger from the Avars. He con- cluded an alliance with the Bulgar Khagan Kuvrat,2 and it was most probably about this time that he invited the Croats, a Slavicized Sarmathian tribe settled on the territory of present-day Galicia, to expel the Avars from Dalmatia, offering them new habitats in that province. Constantine Porphyrogenitus has recorded this invitation.3 It appears that the movement of the Croats speeded up the retreat of the Avars from the Byzantine territory. It is most probable that the new allies 1 See for details: G. Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State (New Bruns- wick, 1957), p. 92. 2 Cf. ibid., pp. 93, 94; F. Dvornik, The Making of Central and Eastern Europe (London, 1949), p. 287. 3 Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De administrando imperio, chs. 29-36, Ed. Gy. Moravczik and R. J. H. Jenkins (Budapest, 1949) vol. 1, with English translation, p. 123 ff. See especially the commentary on these chapters by Dvornik in the second volume, Ed. R. J. H. Jenkins (London, 1961), p. 93 ff. 1108 Francis Dvornîk appeared in Macedonia about that same fateful year, and pushed on from there to Epirus; joined here by the Serbs, they started to force the Avars out of Dalmatia and the southern part of the Pannonia. Thanks to this diversion, the Byzantines were able to push towards the Danube and to reoccupy Singidunum-Belgrade.4 The defeat of the Avars in Dalmatia also marked the beginning of two new Slavic political formations - Croatia and Serbia. The same fateful year of 626 seems also to mark the origin of yet another Slavic political grouping, on the northern boundary of the Avar Empire. The Frankish chronicler Fredegar reports that about this time the Slavs revolted against their masters, and under the leadership of a Frankish merchant, Samo, who happened to be in their country when the revolt broke out, defeated the Avars and elected Samo as their ruler.5 This revolt seems connected in some way with the defeat of the Avars under the walls of Constantinople. The question has even been asked whether Byzantine diplomacy was not responsible for the insurrection. This cannot be proved, although Fredegar speaks in his chronicle of embassies between the Byzantines and the Franks. The threat from the Avars may well have been the object of these embassies, because the Avars were making devastating incursions also into the Frankish territory. Specialists have for several decades been debating the question of where the center of Samo's realm lay. Recent archeological discoveries in Moravia and Austria have shown that these two countries were at the center of this political formation. One Austrian archeologist has even suggested that Samo's residence was in Vienna. Samo extended his sway over Bohemia and over the Sorbs in what is now Saxony, and he was able to defend the independence of his empire not only against the Avars, but also against the Franks and their King Dagobert. This political formation cannot be called a state in the proper sense of • This detail has, so far, been overlooked by specialists. Constantine Porphy- rogenitus mentions, however, that the strategos (commander) of Singidunum had convinced the Serbs to settle down in Macedonia. This indicates that the By- zantine army had chased the Avars beyond the rivers Sava and Danube. De administrando imperio, ch. 32, my commentary, vol. 2, pp. 133. 5 Fredegarius Scholasticus, Chronicon, Monumenta Germaniae Historien, Script, rer. Meroving, vol. 2. The problems of authenticity of this chronicle were dis- cussed by G. Labuda in the Polish work, Pierwsze Panstvo Slowianske (Poznan, 1948), pp. 52-93, 296-320. The author comes to the conclusion that the chronicle was written about 660 in Burgundy. See also V. Chaloupecky, "Considérations sur Samo, le premier roi des Slaves", Byzantinoslavica, 11 (1952), pp. 223-239. See also the remarks by W. Goffart, 'The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered", Speculum, 38 (1963), p. 206 ff. The Byzantine Mission to Moravia 1109 the word. Rather, it was a federation of Slavic tribes and it disintegrated after Samo's death, about the year 658. However, this short episode left permanent traces in Moravia, which was at the center of Samo's empire. When the name of Moravia is for the first time mentioned in Frankish annals in 822, the chroniclers call the Slav inhabitants of that country Moravians. We are not told about the presence in Moravia of any other tribe, contrary to what we hear about Bohemia, where the existence of different tribes is attested to as late as the tenth century. This indicates that even after Samo's death, the grouping of tribes brought about in the seventh century continued to exist in Moravia, perhaps under the leader- ship of one of Samo's numerous sons. The Avars were still dangerous neighbors in Pannonia and in the Danubian basin, and their presence prevented the disintegration of this nucleus of a political organization into independent tribes, such as existed before the Slav revolt of 626. The Moravians were finally liberated from this menace by the victo- ries of Charlemagne over the Avars at the end of the eighth century - between 791 and 796. Their anonymous ruler is supposed to have supported Charlemagne and his son Pippin in their campaign, and to have accepted Frankish supremacy. The first Moravian ruler whom we know by name is Mojmir, and he appears on the historical scene in about the year 830.6 He must have already been a Christian at that time, because when he decided to expel from modern Slovakia Pribina, the Prince of Nitra, who was still a pagan, the Franks did not intervene in Pribina's favor; yet the resultant annexation of territory meant a considerable extension of Mojmir's power. This is all the more remark- able since it seems, according to recent investigations, that this event cannot be regarded as marking the end of a tribal unification process. In present-day Slovakia this unification process had come to an end long before 830, and the Prince of Nitra appears to have been the head of yet another incipient Slav state.7 Again thanks to new archeological discoveries in Moravia and Slovakia, we are now better informed about the penetration of Christianity into these two countries. So far it has generally been believed that it was Constantine-Cyril and Methodius who were mainly responsi- ble for the Christianization of Great Moravia. This opinion must now be 6 See L. Havlik, Velkd Morava a stfedoevropsti Slovane [Great Moravia and the Slavs of Central Europe] (Prague, 1964), p. 186 ff. 7 On Pribina see Conversio Bagoariorum et Carantanorum, chapter 10, Ed. M. Kos (Lubljana, 1936), p. 135. Cf. the most recent study by J. Sieklicki, "Quidam Pribina", Slavia occidentalism 22 (1963), pp. 115-145. Ilio Francis Dvornik definitely abandoned: there have been found in Moravia the foundations of stone churches built before 863,® the year of the Byzantine mission's arrival in Moravia, which at that time comprised also a part of present- day Austria as far as the river Danube; it is probable, too, that Southern Slovakia may have been visited by Frankish missionaries as early as the end of the eighth century. It has even been suggested that the first missionaries on the territory of Moravia were Irish and Scottish monks from the Irish Bavarian monasteries.9 Salzburg even had an Irish Bishop, Virgil, from 745 to 784. At the same time, another Irish bishop, Sidonius, was in Passau. It is true that the Irish monks were spreading Christianity among the Slovenes in former Noricum in the Alpine region, but after the death in 784 of St. Virgil, Charlemagne appointed a Frankish bishop, Arn, to the See of Salzburg, and ordered the remaining Irish monks to accept the Benedictine monastic rule. From that time on, missions in Slavic lands neighboring on Bavaria were led by the Franks. It was Arn, Archbishop of Salzburg, who consecrated a church in Nitra in present-day Slovakia in about the year 828.10 The Frankish bishop of Passau regarded Moravia as his missionary field. But among the missionaries in that country there were also priests from Italy, as we learn from the Life of Methodius, and from Greece. The priests from Greece may have been Latin priests from the Dalmatian coastal cities, which were part of the Byzantine Empire. The priests from Italy could have been missionaries from Istria and also from Italy proper.