St. MethodiusTheological Seminary Write to us

In preparation · admissions not open

First the letters. Then all of theology.

St. Methodius Theological Seminary is being built the way an open-course platform is built: structured programmes, study at your own pace, and a certificate that means something to the church that issues it.

How study will work Who St. Methodius was
Emblem of the seminary: St. Methodius holding an open book with the first letters of the Slavonic alphabet, on a navy shield with a gold border

How study will work

Three things the format promises. Each one is shown here the way it will look on the site, not described.

A programme is a sequence of modules

Specimen syllabus

Every programme is laid out in advance: modules in order, each with readings, lectures and a check of understanding. You can see the whole shape of a programme before you begin it.

  • 1Why an alphabet had to be invented
  • 2Glagolitic and Cyrillic: two scripts, one tongue
  • 3Reading the first six letters as a sentence
  • 4Check of understanding

Study at your own pace

A module opens when you open it. This page keeps time the same way: it counts what you have read.

Academic seal: St. Methodius Theological Seminary, Veritas · Unitas · Servitium

A certificate that means something

Completion is certified by the church that issues the programme, under its own seal, not by the platform.

Specimen lesson · programmes are being written

Lesson 1 · The letters

Every lesson on this site will look like this one. The old names of the first six Slavonic letters, the ones open in the book on our emblem, read as a sentence. Read it to the end and the lesson completes.

  1. АзI

    The first letter is named with the pronoun. Before anything else, the alphabet says that there is someone here who will learn.

  2. Букиletters

    Buky is the plural of letter and the root of the word for book. Literacy is the second thing named, right after the person.

  3. ВедиI know

    Three letters in, the alphabet has already made its first sentence: I know letters. Knowledge is claimed early and modestly.

  4. Глагольspeak

    Glagol is both the verb speak and the noun word. The script Methodius and Cyril devised took its name from it: Glagolitic.

  5. Доброgood

    Dobro is the good itself, and the ordinary word for kindness. What is spoken is measured against it.

  6. Естьis

    Yest closes the sentence. Six letters, six words, and the alphabet has stated a whole rule of study: I know letters. Speak: the good is.

Lesson complete

Аз буки веди. Глаголь добро есть. That reading of the letter names is centuries old and it is the seminary's whole method in six words: literacy first, then the word, then the good.

Areas of study being prepared

The classical disciplines of a theological school, written as open programmes. None is open yet; each will appear here with its syllabus when it is.

  • Holy Scriptureplanned
  • Patristicsplanned
  • Dogmatic theologyplanned
  • Liturgicsplanned
  • Church historyplanned
  • Pastoral practiceplanned
  • Homileticsplanned
  • Canon lawplanned
  • Church Slavonicplanned
  • New Testament Greekplanned

Methodius of Thessalonicac. 815 – 885

Born in Thessalonica, he left a post in the imperial administration for a monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia. With his younger brother Constantine, remembered as Cyril, he devised the first alphabet for the Slavonic tongue and translated into it the Gospels, the Psalter and the services of the Church.

In 870 he was consecrated archbishop of Moravia and Pannonia, and spent the rest of his life defending the right of a people to pray and to study in its own language, including two and a half years in a Bavarian prison for it. He died on 6 April 885. The seminary takes his name because its method is his: the letters first, and the whole of theology in the language people actually speak.

VeritasUnitasServitium

Truth, unity, service: the three words on the academic seal, and the three things every programme will be measured against.

The academic seal of the seminary with the motto Veritas, Unitas, Servitium

Where it stands

This page says exactly what exists and what does not, so that nobody mistakes an intention for an institution.

Exists

  • The name and the emblem
  • The format: open programmes, own pace, church-issued certificate
  • This page and a mailbox that is read

Does not exist yet

  • Programmes and a catalogue
  • Faculty, admissions and fees
  • Accreditation of any kind

When programmes open, this page will say so. Until then nothing is sold and nothing is collected here. If you teach, translate, or want to study, write to the office.

office@stmethodius.org