The Apostles of the Slavs

John Paul II's fourth encyclical, dated 2 June 1985, the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, and issued for the eleventh centenary of the death of Saint Methodius. It recalls that in 1980, by the apostolic letter Egregiae Virtutis, he had proclaimed Cyril and Methodius co-patrons of Europe, and it sets the two brothers from Thessalonica before the Church as models of missionary work. After an introduction it gives a biographical sketch of the brothers, then treats them as heralds of the Gospel and as founders of the Church among the Slavs, their 'Catholic sense' of a Church at once Eastern and Western, and their use of the Slavonic language in the liturgy as an example of the relation between the Gospel and a people's culture. A chapter on the meaning of the Christian millennium in the Slav world precedes the conclusion. The question of how the Gospel enters a culture without losing itself runs through the letter.