Until A.D. 1029, they were as
a people entirely separated from the Bohemians. They had formed
different petty states; their chiefs were called _Kniazi_, like those
of their eastern brethren. The ancient Moravia, however, spread far
beyond the limits of the present country of this name, and extended
deep into Hungary. Hence this portion of the Slavic race was also
generally comprised under the name of the Pannonic Slavi. We have
shown above, in the history of the Old Slavonic language, that
Moravia, then for a short period a powerful kingdom, was the principal
theatre of Methodius' exertions.[6] As at this time Christianity had
been already introduced into these regions, and the kings Rostislav
and Svatopluk, as well as most of their subjects, were already
baptized, it is very probable that they were induced by motives of
policy to send to Constantinople for a Christian teacher. Oppressed by
the Germans, the usurpations of whose emperors were in a certain
measure sanctioned by the chair of Rome, they desired to secure for
themselves in the Byzantine court a powerful ally. After the
dissolution of the Moravian kingdom in A.D. 1029, the present Moravia
fell to Bohemia; was separated from it repeatedly in the course of the
following centuries; and at length, in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, became together with this kingdom an ingredient
part of the Austrian states.
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