Lecture 24: Eastern Orthodoxy—Holy Tradition
o In 862, the emperor Michael III sent them to Moravia (a
territory east of the present Czech Republic), where they began
to teach in the vernacular they had earlier learned.o Cyril then invented the Glagolithic alphabet (Cyrillic), which
became the medium for the translation of the Bible into Slavic
and the development of a substantial ecclesiastical literature
in Slavic.• Christianity took a firm hold in the Ukraine and Russia through the
grand prince Vladimir (d. 1015), who held sway over those lands.
He came to the assistance of the emperor Basil II and then married
into the imperial family by taking Basil’s sister as his wife in 989.
Adopting Orthodoxy, he subsequently imposed it on the territories
he had conquered.• Almost immediately after the fall of Constantinople to the Muslims in
1453, the Russian city of Moscow was declared by its propagandists
to be the “New Rome” or the “Third Rome,” in the manner that
Constantinople had inherited the mantle of the first Rome.
o Subsequent history shows how closely the relationship of the
Russian patriarch in Moscow and the czars (“Caesars”) mimed
the dance of caesaropapism characteristic of Constantinople.
Indeed, as the title of a recent study of Stalin suggests (The
Court of the Red Czar), such influence continued even after the
fall of the Russian Empire.o Nevertheless, Orthodoxy was able both to survive and thrive
in this new geographical context and escaped eradication
by Islam.The Liturgy of the Orthodox Tradition
• Orthodoxy in Byzantium also had great internal energy. The most
visible and, in many ways, the most impressive expression of
faith within the Orthodox tradition is its public worship, or liturgy.
Through the centuries, the liturgy has provided a powerful attraction
to this version of Christianity.