intelligible tongue? /... Whoever accepts these letters, / To him Christ speaks
wisdom,” reads the prologue to Constantine/Cyril’s translation of the Gospels.^1
However much Byzantium valued the Greek language, and however keen it was to
control all matters from Constantinople, it was nevertheless willing at times to work
with regional linguistic and cultural traditions. The Roman church, by contrast, was
more rigid, insisting that the Gospels and liturgy be in Latin. In the end, however,
Moravia opted for Rome.
But the Byzantine brand of Christianity prevailed in Bulgaria, Serbia, and later
(see Chapter 4) Russia. We have seen how hostile the relations between the Bulgar
khan and the Byzantine emperors were. Yet c.864, Khan Boris (r.852–889) not only
converted to Christianity under Byzantine auspices but also adopted the name of the
Byzantine emperor of the time, Michael III (r.842–867), becoming Boris-Michael.
How did Bulgaria end up in the Byzantine camp? To answer this question, consider
the position of the Bulgar khan. Leader of warrior nomads, he claimed heaven’s
mandate; but as ruler of a state that embraced a large Christian population of Greek-
speaking former Byzantines, he was obliged to take on the trappings of a Byzantine
ruler as well. He employed Greeks to administer his state, used Greek officials in his
writing-office, authenticated his documents with Byzantine-style seals, and adopted
Byzantine court ceremonies.^2 In addition, in the course of the ninth century, Bulgar
contact with Byzantines increased as a result of refugees fleeing—and war-prisoners
being forced—into the Bulgar state. The religion of these newcomers began to “rub
off” on the ruling classes. Finally, as questions Boris-Michael put to the pope in 866
suggest, the pagan religion of the Bulgars involved practices rather than dogma. It
was therefore possible (though hardly easy) to convert by exchanging one sort of act
with another: “When you used to go into battle,” the pope wrote, “you indicated that
you carried the tail of a horse as your military emblem, and you ask what you should
carry now in its place. What else, of course, but the sign of the cross?”^3
At the same time, it seems clear that when Boris accepted baptism, he had no
intention of becoming subservient to Byzantium. Just before his conversion he had
flirted with the Roman Christianity of the Franks, and two years later he was writing
to the pope (as above) about what insignia to take into battle, along with many other
detailed questions. By 870 he had arranged for an archbishop independent of
Constantinople to live near him at Pliska, his capital city.
CULTURAL FLOWERING AT BYZANTIUM
