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The ancestors of Czech and Slovaks became united in the early 9th century in the Great Moravian Empire. It was around this time when Christianity was spread by two Greek missionaries Cyril and Methodius, who came to the country after the Moravian leader Count Rostislav appealed in 863 to the Emperor Michael of Byzantium to send clergy capable of expounding the Christian faith in the language of the Slavs. The brothers preached in the Slav language, created a new Slav alphabet and translated religious texts that laid foundations for further development of Slav literature.

After the death of Rostislav, his sucessor allied himself with German clerics and the Slav liturgy was replaced with the Latin-Germanic. Moravia and Bohemia came under the influence of Roman Catholic Church and the Slav liturgy and script were driven eastwards.

At the beginning of the 10th century the Great Moravian Empire did not withstand the Magyar invasion and broke up. Its southern part, Slovakia, came under Magyar rule and was incorporated into the new country the Magyars created. This rule was to last for a whole millennium, until the emergence of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Moravia, on the other hand, became integrated into Bohemia, which was in the meantime developing into an important power in its own right.

From the end of the 9th century, Bohemia was ruled by the Premyslid dynasty which was to stay in power until 1306. Many of the dynasty's members feature in surviving legends, such as the one about Ludmila or her pious grandson Wenceslas, who was made Count of Bohemia in 921 and murdered by his brother Boleslav eight years later, at the age of 22.

The Premyslid influence culminated in the 13th century when Premysl Otakar I managed to extract from the Holy Roman Emperor a Golden Bull which granted him and his descendants the title of king. This was also time of rapid ecomic growth when most of Bohemia's major towns were founded and gold and silver mines established throughout the country. The silver mines at Kutna Hora were to make the Bohemian court one of the wealthiest in Europe.

The Premyslids died out in 1306 and the throne of Bohemia went to the House of Luxembourg. John of Luxembourg, the first of the Luxembourgs on the Bohemian throne, did not show much interest in the country and soon passed its government to his son Charles who was in time to bring it to an unforseen prosperity, often referred to as the "Golden Age of Bohemia". Charles IV was a man of many talents and great political insight. He became King of Bohemia in 1346 when his father died in a battle, in 1347 he also became King of Germany and in 1355 Holy Roman Emperor. During his reign Prague became a cultural capital of Europe and the whole country flourished economically. Charles enlarged the boundaries of his kingdom and strengthened its independence, reorganised the country's legal and administrative systems, founded the archbishopric of Prague, as well as the New Town of Prague and established Prague University, the first university north of the Alps in 1348. Many magnificent buildings date back to this period, such as Prague's remarkable Charles Bridge, castle of Karlstejn or St. Vitus' Cathedral.

Charles also supported a generation of reformist preachers who were advocating use of Czech over Latin and called for a return to the pious simplicity of the Early Christians.