Svatopluk I - Early Years

Early Years

The Annals of Fulda refers to Svatopluk as a nephew of Rastislav, the second known ruler of Moravia. Svatopluk was most probably born around 840. His father's name was Svetimir, according to the late 12th-century Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja, a medieval historical work long dismissed as a collection of fact and fiction.

Svatopluk seems to have risen to power in Moravia in the early 860s. The Life of Methodius relates that Svatopluk and his uncle jointly requested the Byzantine Emperor Michael III to send missionaries who were familiar with the Slavic tongue to Moravia. Michael III chose two well educated brothers, named Cyril and Methodius, who were fluent in the dialect of Slavic spoken in the environs of Thessaloniki (Greece). They arrived in Moravia in 863 and immediately set to work educating and preaching. The two brother's translation of liturgical books into Old Church Slavonic was approved by Pope Hadrian II in 867.

And it came to pass in those days that the Slavic prince Rostislav together with Svatopluk sent emissaries from Moravia to Emperor Michael, saying thus: "We have prospered through God's grace, and many Christian teachers have come to us from among the Italians, Greeks and Germans, teaching us in various ways. But we Slavs are a simple people, and have no one to instruct us in the truth, and explain wisely. Therefore, O kind lord, send the type of man who will direct us to the whole truth." —The Life of Methodius

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