Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia

"Great Moravia" was regarded as an archetype of Czechoslovakia, the common state of the Czechs and Slovaks, in the 20th century, and its legacy is mentioned in the preamble to the Constitution of Slovakia.

Archaeological evidence does not support the alternative theories, because the existence of 9th-century power centers can only be documented along the northern Morava River, in accordance with the traditional view.

[7] Under the pope's decision, Moravia, the realm of Rastislav's nephew, Svatopluk, and the Pannonian domains of Koceľ fell within Methodius's jurisdiction, which caused conflicts with the archbishops of Salzburg.

[19] In 1963, official celebrations of the eleventh centenary of the mission of Constantine and Methodius in Czechoslovakia emphasized the continuity between the early medieval state and its modern successor.

[4][12] Studies published from the 1990s also dispute the argument that Moravia reached the level of an early medieval state (a lasting and stable polity) during its history.

[20] According to the traditional view, Moravia's core territory was located along the northern Morava River, a tributary of the Danube in present-day Czech Republic.

[21] Juraj Sklenár, an 18th-century Slovak historian, was the first to propose an alternative location; he argued that Moravia had originally been centered around Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia), from where it expanded to the north to the lands that now form the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

[25] After the death of Dobrovský in 1829 the dispute naturally ceased, and the theory was forgotten for more than a century; Italian linguist Sergio Bonazza argued in 2008 that this was caused by the fact that an influential Croatian Slavic scholar Vatroslav Jagić, a supporter of the conventional theory and the publisher of Kopitar–Dobrovský correspondence, harshly criticized the former, omissed most of his arguments from the historical monograph Istoriya slavyanskoy filologii (History of Slavic Philology) and mentioned Blumberger only in the context of Dobrovský's claim that he was Kopitar's assumed name.

[29] Scholars who support the traditional boundaries argue that no archaeological evidence substantiates the existence of a 9th-century power center in the lands where the alternative theories suggest Moravia's core region would have been.

[6][30][31] On the other hand, excavations proved that important centers of power existed at Mikulčice, Pohansko and other settlements north of the Middle Danube in the 9th century[6][31][32] as it was predicted by the traditional view.

[8] Curta emphasizes that the location of Moravia "may be understandably viewed as a matter of nationalist concern", because of "a quite recent history of shifting political frontiers" in Central Europe.

[4] Jiří Macháček, also an opponent to the alternative theories, argues that "the serious problems of geographical orientation raised by analysis of the written sources, which ultimately led Imre Boba and his followers to question the traditional location of Great Moravia, will have to be explained in some other way.

[36][note 1] According to Roger Collins, the dispute about Moravia's location "remains to be resolved"; he also argues that archaeological evidence should not be overemphasized against written sources.

[37] In 1784, Juraj Sklenár, a Slovak historian and teacher of rhetoric in Pozsony/Pressburg (today's Bratislava), published Vetustissumus magnae Moravie situs et primus in eam Hungarorum ingressus et incursus (English: The oldest location of Great Moravia and the first invasion and the arrival of the Hungarians into it).

He supported this argument with the writings of Constantine VII and especially his work De administrando imperio, which placed Great Moravia in the territory between Trajan's Bridge, Sirmium (today's Sremska Mitrovica) and Belgrade.

Sklenár's arguments and the dispute were well known to prominent Slavists like Josef Dobrovský or Pavel Jozef Šafárik,[43] but his theory did not find support among Slovak, Czech or Hungarian historians.

[52][53] Florin Curta, who does not accept Boba's analysis, says that the Annals of Fulda, written in a distant monastery, can hardly be regarded as a reliable source of information about the geography of Central Europe.

[57] According to his catalogue of the peoples that were the neighbors of the Hungarians, "great Moravia, the country of Sphendoplokos"[58][note 4] was located to the south of the Principality of Hungary.

[61] According to Boba, all descriptions show that Constantine thought that Moravia had been situated in the wider region of Trajan's Bridge (in present-day Drobeta-Turnu Severin in Romania), Belgrade and Sirmium.

This would make the southern location of Moravia impossible, because Methodius would not have approached the region of the Lower Danube (dominated by the Magyars in the 880s) if he had travelled between Sirmium and Constantinople.

[73] Wynfrith-Boniface started his missions as a simple priest; he was then ordained a missionary bishop for the "people of Germany and to those east of the river Rhine", but his see was not specified; finally, he received a pallium in token of his right to organize a new ecclesiastical province.

[74] She argues that, in a similar fashion, Methodius returned from Rome to the domains of Koceľ as a simple monk, that he was subsequently consecrated as a missionary bishop and that, finally, he received a pallium.

[75] According to Boba, Latin and Old Church Slavonic records of Methodius's title[note 5] show that he was ordained archbishop of the see in a town called Maraba or Morava.

[80] According to Maddalena Betti, Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius's History of the World, which was completed in the late 9th century, prove that Moravia was located to the north of the Danube.

[90] Toru Senga, a Japanese historian living in Hungary, likewise concludes that two polities named Moravia co-existed in the 9th century and were united under Svatopluk I.

[95] Egger's Moravians helped to defend the Frankish Empire against attacks from the east and they later founded their own domain around center near the confluence of the rivers Tisza and Mureș at present-day Cenad in Romania.

[100][101][102][103] Herwig Wolfram, Director of the Austrian Institute for Historical Research, who had an early access to his dissertation work not available yet to other experts, immediately pointed to some problems related to Egger's interpretation of written sources.

[104] According to his opinion, historians should rely mainly on such sources which are close to events in time and space (which was not fulfilled in Eggers's work) and he confirmed traditional localization.

[114] He writes that "Close and open minded study of the remarkably limited primary sources inevitably reveals that crucial structural elements of the intricate traditional construct are pure guesswork.

Freed says that he is inclined to accept Egger's (and Bowlus's) "arguments for a southern Moravia because such a location provides a better explanation for the East Frankish military structure and the Cyrillo-Methodian mission".