In 1881, celebrations took place in Rome to restore the cult of the two holy apostles of the Slavs in the Catholic Church; this cult was preached in and outside Rome by the Polish monk Piotr Semenenko, an acquaintance of Matejko. He was in Kraków in 1885 with his sermons and it is possible that he may have influenced the painter. Pan-Slavic ideas, on the other hand, were spread in the painter's closest circle by Marian Gorzkowski. From 1884, Matejko took part in the Krakow committee for the celebration of the millennium of Cyril and Methodius. Initially, he was to design a pheretron as a gift from Krakow to Welehrad. The resulting pheretron was sent to Rome, where, at the painter's request, it was consecrated by Pope Leo XIII on 26.06.1885. The painting, subsequently exhibited in Wawel Cathedral, was taken to Moravia at the end of the anniversary celebrations by Matejko himself and a Polish delegation. The painter did not forget the Czech roots of his family, which he proved, for example, in his composition of the "Battle of Grunwald". In the mid-1980s, he also made several designs for stained glass windows, which he intended to propose for St Vitus Cathedral in Prague in connection with its then ongoing restoration. These depicted the patron saints of Bohemia.

The painting is not typical in Matejko's oeuvre. The frontal representation of the saints, standing in front of the altar, and the symmetrical composition indicate an attempt at a conscious archaisation of the religious painting, which may have been related to the official character of the gift and its altar purpose. Typical, in turn, is the use of fanciful and splendidly decorated ancient costumes to create a rich colour palette. The painter's formulation of a Slavic political programme (perhaps in the context of the Austrian refusal to give the Welehrad celebrations state status) seems particularly interesting: in the background we see an image of Our Lady of Czestochowa, as well as the Piast eagle and the Lithuanian Pahonia. Beneath the painting was an ostentatious inscription: To the Slavs. "When Matejko painted Cyril's face," he said himself, "he wanted to express thought and reason in it, while in St Methodius's face he wanted to express the fulfilment of duty and action. (...) At the feet of the holy men there is a shattered statue of Swiatowid, clearly indicating that the times of pagan beliefs had just come to an end" (Elżbieta Matyaszewska). It is likely that Matejko painted a smaller and more sketchy replica of the painting on a board after taking it to Welehrad. In 1887, it was donated to the Mielżyński Museum in Poznań (now the National Museum in Poznań).