Post by qnzkid711 on Aug 7, 2005 14:53:23 GMT -5
Bogomil ('Beloved of God') is supposed to have been a 10th century Bulgarian priest who founded a puritan sect teaching that the material world was evil, and that virtue thus consisted in practicing a rigid ascenticism. As a herasy it incurred the hostility of Roman and Orthodox Churches, and it was equally suspect to the secular authorities of its contempt for wordly power. In a society where civil and religious authority were borh consciously oppressive, such a movement was popular. It spread throughout Southeast Europe and came to threaten the established order. So it was generally persecuted, and those who remained faithful to it took refuge in the less accessible mountain districts such as Bosnia (under the name of Patarenes) and southern France (The Albingensians). Where it could be exterpated, ir was; and among the instruments used were new medicant orders of the Roman Church - the Franciscans and Dominicans - who could not be accused of wordliness. Being disinterested they proved the ideal instrument of persuasion, especially when the threat of persecution and massacre followed in the shape of secular armies.
The significance of Bogomilism in Bosnian history is however hardly religious at all, but almost wholly political. Hungary, who covered the country from the north, was Roman Catholic; Serbia, who threatened from the east, was Orthodox, and each of them denied the existance of Bosnia as a separate national unit. But the Bosnians had early of independant statehood; under her first ruler the Ban Kulin - a bon Roi Rene of the Balkans - joined the Patarenes. He was forced to recant in 1203 under papal and Hungarian pressure; but the pattern for the future had been established. After a series of Crusades against them by Hungarian armies and proletising Dominica priests, Patarenism became the national religion; and when both Roman and Orthodox states before the Turks, it was a comparatively simple matter for the Patarenes to become converted to Islam, especially as they then became more favored subjects of the Ottomans than the Christain neighbors who had so long despised and persecuted them.
The significance of Bogomilism in Bosnian history is however hardly religious at all, but almost wholly political. Hungary, who covered the country from the north, was Roman Catholic; Serbia, who threatened from the east, was Orthodox, and each of them denied the existance of Bosnia as a separate national unit. But the Bosnians had early of independant statehood; under her first ruler the Ban Kulin - a bon Roi Rene of the Balkans - joined the Patarenes. He was forced to recant in 1203 under papal and Hungarian pressure; but the pattern for the future had been established. After a series of Crusades against them by Hungarian armies and proletising Dominica priests, Patarenism became the national religion; and when both Roman and Orthodox states before the Turks, it was a comparatively simple matter for the Patarenes to become converted to Islam, especially as they then became more favored subjects of the Ottomans than the Christain neighbors who had so long despised and persecuted them.
