Now Christianity had been definitely introduced into Dalmatia in the
fourth century, but it was not until several centuries later that it
made any headway with the Slavs, of whom the Croats, in the ninth
century, were baptized by Frank missionaries. The arrival of the
Slavs, by the bye, had been sometimes looked upon with scanty favour
by the Popes: in July of the year 600 we find Gregory I. saying in a
letter to the Bishop of Salona that he was much disturbed at the news
he had just received "de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde imminet,
affligor vehementer et conturbor." Similarly, the Council of Split
branded the Slav missionaries as heretics and the Slav alphabet as the
invention of the devil.[6] ... While the Croats were falling[7] under
the dominion of the Franks, the holy brothers St. Cyril and St.
Methodus, who had been born at Salonica in 863, were carrying the
first Slav book from Constantinople to Moravia, whither they travelled
at the invitation of the Prince of Moravia, Rastislav, St. Cyril going
as an apostle and theologian, St. Methodus as a statesman and
organizer. This famous book was a translation from the Greek, but it
was written in Palaeo-Slav characters, the Glagolitic that were to
become so venerated that when the French kings were crowned at Reims
their oath was sworn upon a Glagolitic copy of the Gospels;[8] and the
spirit of that earliest book was also Slav: it expresses the political
and cultural resistance of Prince Rastislav against the State of the
Franks, that is, against the German nationality, of whom it was feared
that with the Cross in front of them they would trample down for ever
the political liberties of the young Slav peoples. German theologians
were giving a more and more dogmatic character to Western
Christianity, whereas the Christianity of the East was at that time
more liberal; it gathered to itself the Slavs of Ra[vs]ka and of the
neighbouring regions, such as southern Dalmatia, while the influence
which it exerted was so powerful that when the Croats, after
vacillating between the two Churches, finally joined that of Rome,
they took with them the old Slav liturgy that is used by them in many
places on the mainland and the islands down to this day. Thus their
Church became a national institution, and that in spite of all the
long-continued efforts of the Vatican, as also of the Venetian
Republic. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, by the way, is endeavouring to
have this liturgy made lawful in the whole of Yugoslavia; the only
opponent I met was a Jesuit at Zagreb who foresaw that the priests,
being no longer obliged to learn Latin, might indeed omit to do so.
Pope Pius X. was likewise an opponent of the Slav liturgy, because a
Polish priest told him that it would lead to Pan-Slavism and hence to
schism; but it is thought--among others by the patriotic Prince-Bishop
Jegli['c] of Ljubljana--that the late Pope would have given his
consent, had it not been for Austria, which recoiled from what would
have probably strengthened the Slav element. One of the cherished
policies of Austria was to utilize in every possible way the religious
differences between the Southern Slavs.