The origins of Christianity in Slavonic countries north of the Middle Danube Basin

Abstract

According to written sources, Christianity had come to the Slavs in the Great Moravian State already before the arrival, in A.D. 863, of the Byzantine mission led by Constantine and Methodius. The foundations of stone‐built churches, excavated at Great Moravian fortified centres since 1949, show various types of sacral architecture, some of them of unique form (e.g. the two‐apse rotunda or the rotunda with four conchae, both discovered in Mikulčice). The origins of these church forms may be sought in the West (e.g. Bavaria), in the Adriatic regions (the Aquileian Patriarchate), or in the Low Danube Basin. The hypothesis of Insular influence (the church at Modrá) has not been generally accepted. Neither church plan shows typical elements of Byzantine architecture. The problem of the presumed church centre of Great Moravia in the ninth century has not yet been solved (the three‐nave basilica at Mikulčice, or the church complex at Uherské Hradišste‐Sady?). The Great Moravian State collapsed at the beginning of the tenth century and the churches were destroyed, their forms failing to survive in following centuries.