The depiction of Constantine-Cyril and Photius at the Magnaura School brings together teacher and student, each destined for a remarkable future – one to create the alphabet of the Slavs, and the other to become the future Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In the Long Life of Constantine-Cyril by Clement of Ohrid, this episode reveals the student’s extraordinary intellect and remarkable ability to learn:

“In three months he mastered grammar and turned to the other sciences: he studied Homer and geometry, and under Leo and Photius – dialectics and all the philosophical sciences, as well as rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, music and all the other Hellenic arts. And he mastered all these sciences so quickly, as though he had studied only one of them.”

Later, both Constantine-Cyril and Photius were canonised as saints of the Orthodox Church.