History does not record for certain who took the message of the crucified and risen Savior to that region north of the Danube. But it does say that in 836 the brothers, Cyril and Methodius of Constantinople and the Eastern Christian tradition went to Moravia as missionaries. The Latin church had preceded them there, but these industrious Greeks did something that the Latin missionaries had not done. Cyril invented an alphabet for the Moravian language and he and Methodius began translating the Bible for the people.

And they preached in the native tongue. "Their work sowed the seeds of that deep love for the truth, that passionate insistence upon having the Word in one's tongue and that willingness to suffer and die for the faith which found expression, a few centuries later, among the followers of Master John Hus" (from Through Five Hundred Years, "A Popular History of the Moravian Church," by Allen W. Schattschneider).

1400 John Wycliffe's revolutionary writings spread

1415 John Hus burned at the stake

1441 Slave trade with Africa begins

1453 Gutenberg first prints Bible

1457 Unitas Fratrum (Moravian Church) organized

(1483–1546) Martin Luther

1492 Columbus sails to New World

1498 Savonarola martyred

1500 First Protestant Hymnal

(1564–1616) Shakespeare

1579–1593 Kralice Bible translated by Bohemian Brethren

1611 King James Bible

1620 Plymouth Colony

1621 'Day of Blood'

1618-1642 Thirty Years War in Germany

John Hus (1369–1415)"Hus did not live to see the Protestant Church or any of its branches started, but he sowed the seed. His followers discovered that the Catholic Church would not change or reform so they felt they had only one choice: to make a new beginning," notes Edwin A. Sawyer. Ordained a Roman ...

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