Excerpt from A Brief History of the Moravian Church, Vol. 1: A Series of Papers Prepared by Teachers of the Salem Home Sunday School for Use in the Classes But the Roman Church heard of their success, and determined to claim the work on the ground that the first introduction of Chris tianity into the country had come through its members. Cyrill and Methodius were summoned to Rome, but Pope Nicholas died before they arrived. His successor, Adrian II, thought it would be to'bis advantage to have Bohemia and Moravia comprise a diocese independent of both the German Bishops and the Greek Patriarch, and directly tributary to him, so he received the missionaries very graciously, approved of all they had done, and offered to make them Bishops. Cyrill, whose health was failing, declined the honor, and died a few weeks later, but Methodius promised him obedience, and was consecrated Archbishop of Pannonia, which was the ancient name of that diocese. He returned to Moravia, and under his guid ance the good work spread into Bohemia, and the first Christian church was built near Prague. The jealousy of the German bishops then became more intense, and they complained at Rome until Methodius was again called thither, and while he triumphantly vindicated his course the Pope ordered that the Gospels must be publicly read first in Latin and then in Slavonian, and a German suffragan, or assistant bishop, was appointed. From this small beginning the power of.the Roman Church increased until Bohemia and Moravia were entirely in their hands. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.