Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/16

 the Emperor Michael of Constantinople to request the presence of Slavonic Christian teachers, as the German priests were unable to instruct his people in their own language. Cyrillus and Methodius came themselves in answer to this petition. After four years and a-half of activity in Moravia, the brothers visited, and were well received by Pope Adrian II, at Rome. Cyrillus, the inventor of the so-called Cyrillic alphabet, on which the modern Russian is founded, died at Rome in 868, but his brother Methodius was appointed by the Pope to the dignity of archbishop in Moravia and Pannonia.

In 871 the Duke of Bohemia, Borzivoy, and his wife Ludmilla, the latter of whom has a statue and chapel, as a saint, in the cathedral at Prague, were baptized. The Slavonic and Latin liturgies appear to have both been in use in Bohemia from the earliest times. Borzivoy was succeeded by Spitihnew I, and he by his brother Wratislaw I, whose wife, Drahomira, could never be converted to Christianity. After the death of Wratislaw, Drahomira had her mother-in-law, Ludmilla, murdered, and excited her younger son, Boleslaw, to murder his Christian brother Wenceslaw in 936. Boleslaw the Cruel was a successful ruler and warrior, and left the crown to his son, Boleslaw II, surnamed the Pious, in whose reign the first monasteries were founded in Bohemia (967-999). Under the sons of Boleslaw II, Bohemia was conquered by Boleslaw the Brave, of Poland, who was afterwards expelled, and the old native dynasty of the Przemyslides replaced on the throne. The power of Bohemia was restored by Bretislaw I, who was followed by Spitihnew II, whose brother and successor, Wratislaw II, obtained a royal crown from the Emperor Henry IV, and the Pope in 1086. Under Wratislaw’s successor, Bretislaw II, the Slavonic ritual, which had long been upheld by