The Great Moravian Period

The Great Moravian Period, roughly 833 to 907, was the era of Great Moravia, the first major state to unite Slavic peoples of Central Europe, formed when Mojmir I merged the principalities of Moravia and Nitra and reaching its greatest extent under Svatopluk I in the late ninth century, when its influence stretched across much of the modern Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and neighboring regions. The state is best remembered for inviting the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius in 863, whose mission introduced Slavic-language liturgy and the Glagolitic script, the ancestor of Cyrillic, laying foundations for Slavic literary culture across Central and Eastern Europe. Great Moravia collapsed in the early tenth century under pressure from invading Magyars, and its former territories were absorbed into emerging Bohemian, Polish and Hungarian states.