Cyril and Methodius

The apostles to the Slavs

Lived

c. 826–885

Era

Medieval

Where

Moravia and the Balkans

Tradition

The apostolic communities

An alphabet made so the Slavs could have scripture

Two brothers from Thessalonica sent from Constantinople to Moravia in 863, who translated the scriptures and the liturgy into Slavonic and devised an alphabet capable of writing it.

Why it matters

They were opposed by Frankish clergy who held that worship belonged in Hebrew, Greek or Latin only, and had to argue the case in Rome, where they won it. The script their pupils developed became Cyrillic, now used by hundreds of millions. The principle they established — that a people receives the faith in its own language — shaped the whole of Slavic Christianity, and is one of the clearest early precedents for what the Reformation would later insist on in the west.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.