Bulgarisch - „Großmährische" Interaktionen und die Kyrillo-Methodianische Mission
Bulgarian - Great Moravian Interactions and the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission

Summary/Abstract: On the basis of copious material the author discusses the interactions between Mediaeval Bulgaria and Great Moravia, which played the role of a buffer zone between the Bulgarian State and the Frankish Empire. He traces the history of the principality of Great Moravia and unlike most scholars so far propounds the view that the centre of that state was neither in Moravia nor in Slovakia. According to this hypothesis the Moravians (Moravljane) did not belong to the Western Slavs but as a South Slavic people from the valley of the river Serbian or South Slavic Morava they set up their state in the north, in what is today Eastern Hungary, after the Avars were destroyed in 800 A. D. The study points out that the mission of Cyril and Methodius was directed against the political upsurge of the Empire of Charlemagne. Special attention is devoted to the question about the areas under the jurisdiction of Methodius, whom the pope called "Archbishop of Pannonia". The reply is provided by the fact that as early as the 6th century historical sources disclose an expansion of the geographical meaning of the name "Pannonia". The author is inclined to believe that in the 2nd half of the 9th century it was entirely possible for the territory of a Moravia that lay in the Hungarian plain to have been covered by that name.

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