notably Stephen V, were not so benevolent to the Slavonic cause;
the machinations of the German hierarchy (which included, even in those
days, the falsification of documents) were irresistible, and finally the
invasion of the Magyars, in 893, destroyed what was left of the Slavonic
Church in Moravia. The missionary brothers had probably passed through
Bulgaria on their way north in 863, but without halting. Many of their
disciples, driven from the Moravian kingdom by the Germans, came south and
took refuge in Bulgaria in 886, and there carried on in more favourable
circumstances the teachings of their masters. Prince Boris had found it
easier to adopt Christianity himself than to induce all his subjects to do
the same. Even when he had enforced his will on them at the price of
numerous executions of recalcitrant nobles, he found himself only at the
beginning of his difficulties. The Greeks had been glad enough to welcome
Bulgaria into the fold, but they had no wish to set up an independent
Church and hierarchy to rival their own. Boris, on the other hand, though
no doubt full of genuine spiritual ardour, was above all impressed with
the authority and prestige which the basileus derived from the Church of
Constantinople; he also admired the pomp of ecclesiastical ceremony, and
wished to have a patriarch of his own to crown him and a hierarchy of his
own to serve him. Finding the Greeks unresponsive, he turned to Rome, and
Pope Nicholas I sent him two bishops to superintend the ecclesiastical
affairs of Bulgaria till the investiture of Boris at the hands of the Holy
See could be arranged. These bishops set to work with a will, substituted
the Latin for the Greek rite, and brought Bulgaria completely under Roman
influence. But when it was discovered that Boris was aiming at the
erection of an independent Church their enthusiasm abated and they were
recalled to Rome in 867.

Adrian II proved no more sympathetic, and in 870, during the reign of the
Emperor Basil I, it was decided without more ado that the Bulgarian Church
should be directly under the Bishop of Constantinople, on the ground that
the kingdom of Boris was a vassal-state of the basileus, and that from the
Byzantine point of view, as opposed to that of Rome, the State came first
and the Church next. The Moravian Gorazd, a disciple of Methodius, was
appointed Metropolitan, and at his death he was succeeded by his fellow
countryman and co-disciple Clement, who by me