BOGOMILS
OF
BULGARIA AND
BOSNIA;
_____________
The
Early Protestants of the East.
AN ATTEMPT TO RESTORE SOME
LOST LEAVES OF
PROTESTANT HISTORY.
BY
L. P. BROCKETT, M. D.,
Author
of
"The Cross And The Crescent," " History
Of Religious
Denominations," etc.
_________________
PHILADELPHIA:
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION
SOCIETY,
1420 CHESTNUT STREET.
Entered to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by the
AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION
SOCIETY,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.
CONTENTS.
_______
SECTION I.
PAGE
Introduction.—The Armenian and other Oriental churches. 13
SECTION II.
Dualism and
the phantastic theory of our Lord's advent
in the Oriental churches.—The doctrines
they rejected.—
They held to baptism…………………………………..… 18
SECTION III.
Gradual decline of
the dualistic doctrine.—The holy and exemplary lives of
the Paulicians…………………….….... 22
SECTION IV.
The
cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the Empress Theo-
dora.—The free state and city of Tephrice……………..… 25
SECTION V.
The
Sclavonic development of the Catharist
or Paulician churches.—Bulgaria, Bosnia,
and Servia its
principal
seats.—Euchites,
Massalians, and Bogomils.....………….. 27
SECTION VI.
The
Bulgarian Empire and its Bogomil czars…………… 30
CONTENTS.
SECTION VII.
A
Bogomil congregation and its worship.—Mostar, on the
Narenta
………………………………………………….... 32
SECTION VIII.
The
Bogomilian doctrines and practices.—The Credentes
and Perfecti.—Were the Credentes baptized?..….…..……
37
SECTION IX.
The orthodoxy of the Greek and Roman churches rather theological than practical.—Fall
of the Bulgarian Empire.. 43
SECTION X.
The Emperor
Alexius Comnenus and the Bogomil Elder
Basil.—The
Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena…… 46
SECTION XI.
The
martyrdom of Basil.—The Bogomil churches rein-
forced
by the Armenian Paulicians
under the Emperor
John Zimisces……………………………………………. 50
SECTION XII.
The
purity of life of the Bogomils.—Their doctrines
and practices.—Their
asceticism………….…………………. 54
SECTION XIII.
The missionary spirit and labors of
the elders and Per-
fecti.—The entire absence of any
hierarchy……………… 58
CONTENTS.
SECTION XIV.
Page
The
Bogomil churches in Bosnia and the Herzegovina.—
Their doctrines
more thoroughly scriptural
than those
of
the Bulgarian churches.—Bosnia as a banate and
kingdom………………………………………………..….. 60
SECTION XV.
Bosnian
history continued.—The good Ban Culin……..….
63
SECTION XVI.
The
growth of the Bogomil churches under Culin.—Their
missionary
zeal and success………………………………. 66
SECTION XVII.
The authorities from whose testimony this
narrative is
drawn.—Its
thorough corroboration by
a cloud of
witnesses………………………………………………….. 68
SECTION XVIII.
The era of persecution.—The crusades against the Bogomils.—Archbishop of Colocz…………..…………… 72
SECTION XIX.
Further crusades.—The hostility of Pope Innocent
IV.—
More lenient, but not more effective, measures
…………... 76
SECTION XX.
The establishment of the Inquisition in
Bosnia.—Letter
of
Pope John XXII.—Previous testimony of
enemies to
the purity of the lives of
the Bogomils……………….…… 78
CONTENTS.
SECTION XXI.
PAGE
Further
persecution.—A lull in its fury during the over-
lordship
of the Serbian Czar Stephen Dushan.—The
reign
of
the Tvart‑ko dynasty...……………………………….…. 81
SECTION XXII.
The Reformation in
Bohemia and Hungary a
Bogomil movement.—Renewal of persecution under Kings Stephen Thomas and Stephen
Tomasevic.—The Pobratimtso…… 85
SECTION XXIII.
Overtures to the sultan.—The surrender of Bosnia to
Mahomet
II. under stipulations.—His base
treachery and faithlessness.—The cruel
destruction and enslavement
of
the Bogomils of Bosnia and, twenty years
later, of those
of the Duchy of Herzegovina………………………..…… 89
SECTION XXIV.
The
Bogomils not utterly extinguished.—Their influence on society, literature, and
progress in the Middle Ages.—Dante,
Milton, etc.—The Puritans.—Conclusion……………….. 92
APPENDIX: I.
A liturgy of the Toulouse Publicans in (probably)
the
Sixteenth
Century…….………………………………..… 103
APPENDIX II.
Were the Paulician and Bogomil churches Baptist Churches? 107
NOTES……………………………………….…..………. 119
PREFACE.
THE belief that there had existed through all the ages since
the Christian era churches which adhered strictly to scriptural doctrines and
practice—churches which were the true successors in faith and ordinances of
those founded by the apostles, and had never paid homage to Greek patriarch or
Roman pope— was firmly impressed upon the minds of the Baptist church‑historians
of the first fifty years of the present century. They believed also that these
churches were essentially Baptist in their character, and some of them made extensive researches among the works of
secular and ecclesiastical historians of the early centuries to find tangible proofs to sustain their conviction. They were partially, but only partially, successful, for the historians of those periods
were ecclesiastics of either the Greek or Roman churches, who added, in most cases, the bitterness
of personal spite,
PREFACE
from their discomfiture by the elders
of these churches, to their horror at any departure from papal or patriarchal
decrees.
For
the last twenty‑five or thirty years the ranks of the Baptist ministry
have been so largely recruited from Paedobaptist churches—all of which had
their origin, confessedly, either at the Reformation or since—that many of our writers have been disposed to
hold in abeyance their claims to an earlier origin, and to say that it was a
matter of no consequence, but there was no evidence attainable of the existence
of Baptist churches between the fourth and the eleventh or twelfth centuries.
To
the writer it has seemed to be a matter
of great consequence to be able to demonstrate that there were churches of
faithful witnesses for Christ who had never paid their homage or given in their
allegiance to the anti‑Christian churches of Constantinople or Rome. Even
in idolatrous Israel, in the reign of its worst king, Ahab, the despairing
prophet was told by Jehovah, "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel,
all the knees
which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him " Was it possible that
PREFACE
among these
many millions of misguided souls who had given themselves over to the delusions
of the Greek and Roman churches, there was not at least as large a proportion,
who had not been partakers in the sins or these anti‑Christian churches,
but had washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb?
It was true
that both the Greek and Roman churches had put the brand of heresy on every
sect which had dared to deny their dogmas; but might it not be that beneath
that brand could be discerned the lineaments of the Bride of Christ?
My attention was
first called to the possibility of discovering more than had hitherto been
known in regard to these early Protestants of the Eastern lands some two years
since, While engaged in some studies for a work on the Eastern Question. In the
Christian churches of Armenia, Bulgaria, and Bosnia I believed were to be found
the churches which from the fifth to the fifteenth century were the true successors of the churches founded
by the
apostles' in all matters of faith and practice. The "Historical Review of Bosnia,"
PREFACE
contained
in the second edition of Mr. Arthur J. Evans' work on Bosnia in 1876, first
opened my eyes to the wealth of the new historical discoveries thus brought to light in
Bosnia and Bulgaria. Mr. Evans is a member of the Church of England, an eminent
scholar, thoroughly devoted to archaeological investigations, and had made very
patient and successful researches on this very subject. While he had explored
the libraries of Mostar and Serajevo, as well as of the Greek and Roman
Catholic convents throughout Bosnia and the Herzegovina, I found that a
considerable portion of his facts were gleaned from two recent historical
works—Herr Jirecek's Geschichte der Bulgaren
(Berlin, 1876), and M. Hilferding's Serben
used Bulgaren, originally published in the Sclavonic language, but
translated into in 1874. Jirecek is a Bohemian, and, I believe, a
Roman Catholic, but a man of
great fairness. Hilferding is‑ a Russian, and attached to the Greek
Church. Both treat largely (as they are under the necessity of doing) of the
Bogomils, as these early Christians were called, since their history is very largely the history of the
two nations for five
PREFACE
or six centuries. Both give very minute
descriptions of the faith and life of these people, and most of the historical
facts given in the following pages are derived from them. But wherever Mr.
Evans could find anything in the early secular or ecclesiastical writers of the
Dark Ages or medieval times bearing on this subject he has carefully gleaned
it, even though it were but A single sentence. This has been done, on his part,
solely from a love of archaeological research, for he has evidently no special
sympathy with the people about whom he writes; but he is entitled to the praise
of manifesting a judicial fairness as between them and their persecutors.
My own labor
on the subject has not been confined to the
verification of Mr. Evans' quotations and references, but has extended in
certain directions which he had left untouched, such as a careful study
of all those affiliated sects whose
connection with the Bogomils he had demonstrated, and the tracing up, so far
as possible, all hints in regard to their special tenets. Among these I have found, often in unexpected quarters,
the. most conclusive evidence that
these sects were all,
PREFACE
during their earlier history, Baptists,
not only in their views on the subjects of baptism and the Lord's Supper, but
in their opposition to Paedobaptism, to a church hierarchy, and to any worship
of the Virgin Mary or the saints, and in their adherence to church independency
and freedom of conscience in religious worship. In short, the conclusion has
forced itself upon me that in these " Christians " of Bosnia,
Bulgaria, and Armenia we have an apostolic succession of Christian churches, New Testament churches, and Baptist churches, and that as early as
the twelfth century these churches numbered a converted, believing membership as
large as that of the Baptists throughout the world to‑day. I have chosen
in the narrative to present only the facts ascertained, without making any
deductions from them. They are so plain that the wayfaring man can comprehend
their significance. In the Appendix (II.) I have endeavored to summarize these
facts and to show their significance to Baptists. I now offer the whole as a
humble contribution to Baptist church history.
L. P. B.
Brooklyn N. Y., February 1,1879.
THE BOGOMILS
OF
BULGARIA AND
BOSNIA.
SECTION I.
THE ARMENIAN AND OTHER ORIENTAL CHURCHES.
THE
wars which from time immemorial are devastated the fair lands of Eastern Europe
and Western Asia have had in most cases a religious basis. At first, in pagan
times, the worshippers of the gods of the hills attacked the adherents of the
gods of the valleys or of the plains; later, the devotees of Bel or Baal made
war upon the worshippers of the one living and true God. When Christianity
became the religion of the state, its emperors and generals turned their arms
against the pagan Avars and Bulgarians, or, full as oft, upon those Christian
sects which from their purer worship were
denominated heretics by the orthodox.
This condition of warfare on religious grounds
has continued through-
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
out all the centuries of the Christian era, even down to our own time, sometimes assuming the form of a fierce and bloody persecution against the protesting churches who refused obedience to the Roman or the Greek Church, and sometimes. raging in terrible conflict against the Turk. Even in the war recently in progress, the cross of the Greek Church was arrayed against the Mohammedan crescent.
It is,
however, only one division of this series of religious conflicts which
specially concerns us—that which relates to the power claimed by the self‑styled
orthodox Greek and Roman churches to put down, by force and bloodshed, every
form of faith which they were pleased to denounce as heresy.
No sooner was the Christian church, by the conversion of Constantine, relieved from the pressure of persecution, than its bishops and leaders began to magnify what it had previously regarded as trifling errors into heretical dogmas which threatened not only the peace, but the very existence, of Christianity. The Bishop of Rome, the Bishop of Alexandria, the Bishop of Carthage, and the Bishop of Nicomedia were ranged against each other in
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
hostile array; council succeeded council; the emperor sided now with Arius and now with Athanasius—first with the iconoclasts and next with the makers and worshipppers of images; and in a few years the followers of the Prince of peace were wielding the weapons of a carnal warfare against each other. These hostilities and conflicts continued through the following centuries, until they culminated in the separation of the two bodies in the East and in the West, since known as the orthodox Greek and the Roman Catholic churches.
But
there two churches, differ as they might, had yet many points in common. Their
greatest differences were that the Greek Church adhered somewhat more strictly
to the early forms of the primitive and apostolic church in its ordinances and
ritual, and that it did not recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. Both paid
divine honors to the Virgin Mary; both addressed their prayers and homage to
saints and angels; both used pictures, icons, statues, and crucifixes in their
worship. and both denounced as heretics all who differed from them in belief.
By both, also, the churches of the remote East were
regarded as
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
fountains of heresy. The Roman Church
considered them as guilty of all the seven mortal sins, and the Greek Church
proclaimed, that for those who
continued in these heretical doctrines there was no forgiveness in this world
nor in the world to come.
And
what were these fearful heresies? The positive doctrines of their belief are
hard to trace, since they are only recorded in the accusations of their
bitterest enemies. They probably differed considerably in different periods.
There had come down to most of these churches from the old Aryan inhabitants of
Persia some of the dogmas which had distinguished them, surrounded as they were
by idolaters, in their maintenance for more than three thousand years of a
purely theistic worship. These Aryans, like their descendants, the Parsees of
the present day, held to two principles which governed this world and all
worlds—the good principle, called also Ormuzd, and the evil principle or spirit, which they named Ahriman. Both they
believed to be subordinate to the Great First Cause, who dwelt in the light
unapproachable and had
delegated nearly equal
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
power to these two spirits. There is room for admiration that these thoughtful sages, without the light of revelation, should have approached so close to the truth as they did, and yet the great problem of the entrance of sin into the world, and the self‑evident fact of its continued existence and its terrible effects, might well, in the absence of purer light, have led them to this belief in dual divinities.
When the
religion of Jesus Christ was revealed to these orientals by the preaching of
the apostles and their followers and the diffusion of a few manuscript copies
of the Gospels, and, later, of the other books of the New Testament, it is not
surprising that they should have recognized in Jesus the Ormuzd of their old
faith, and in Satan their evil spirit, Ahriman, and, for want of better
instruction, should have attributed to them the qualities, powers, and
functions which their reformers and prophets had assigned to the two
principles; nor that some of the other fictions of their older faith, so dear
to Oriental minds, should have clung to their new doctrines, through the slow‑moving
centuries' till they were displaced by the clearer light of Revelation.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION II.
DUALISM AND
THE PHANTASTIC THEORY OF OUR LORD’S
ADVENT IN THE ORIENTAL CHURCHES.—THE DOCTRINES THEY REJECTED.—THEY HELD TO
BAPTISM.
As a matter of
history, we find that most of the Oriental churches, and indeed some of those
of Asia Minor which had been founded by the apostles, were permeated with these
dualistic doctrines, though in different degrees. It would not be far from the
truth were we to say that there have been traces of it among the most
evangelical churches of all the ages since, even down to our own time. As to
the doctrines which they did not believe, the evidence is more satisfactory.
They honored the Virgin Mary as the mother of our Lord according to the
flesh—though there were different opinions
even on this point but they refused any worship to her as a divine or
superhuman being. True to their old Aryan training, they repudiated alike
picture and icon, statue and image, crucifix
and crosier. They recognized no bishop
or high priest; their elders served them in their simple
ritual, and
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
expounded to them the word of God. The initiatory rite of their faith has been to some extent a matter of dispute; with nearly all there is ample evidence that it was as in the Greek Church, an immersion in water, though probably not a trine immersion, and without the anointing, and other ceremonies.
But many of
their enemies, overlooking the fact that all their members received baptism on
their admission into the church, because it was not attended with the
ceremonials and adjuncts of the Greek Church, have spoken of their ceremony of
ordaining and setting apart their elders and "perfect ones " as a
spiritual baptism, called by them consolamentum
and administered by the simple
imposition of hands.1 The denial of their practice of water‑baptism
is due solely to this misapprehension. The strictness and ascetic character of
their doctrines led them to prohibit all architectural display. Their churches
were simple, plain, barn‑like buildings, without tower, steeple, or bell. They knew nothing of nave, transept, chancel, or
altar. The bare walls of the room had no ornaments; rude seats accommodated the
worshippers; a table covered with a
white
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
cloth, on which lay a copy of the New
Testament, or, if they were unable to obtain this, the Gospel of St. John,
sufficed instead of pulpit for their aiders.2
At first, with
but limited instruction, and with only a small portion of the New Testament in
their hands, there is no reason to doubt that their doctrinal views, whether
measured by the standard of the Christianity of those times or of our own, were
in some respects heretical. The leaders of the Paulicians in the fifth and
sixth centuries are reputed to have held these opinions: that God had two sons;
that the elder, whom they called Satanael, had been at first endowed with all
the attributes of deity and was chief among the hosts of heaven; that by him,
through the power bestowed upon him by the Father, the material bodies of the
universe—suns, moons, and stars—were created, but, in consequence of his
ambition and rebellion, he was driven from
heaven, and took with him the third part of the heavenly host. Then, they said,
God bestowed the power on his younger son, Jesus, whom he made the heir
of all worlds, and gave him
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
the power over all spiritual
intelligences. Satanael had created our earth, but Jesus breathed into man the
breath of life, and he became a living soul. Thenceforth there was a constant
conflict between Satanael and Jesus. The former compassed the death of the
latter after his assumption of the human form and nature, but by this very act
Satanael secured his own defeat, for Jesus rose from the dead, the conqueror
over his great enemy and all his foes, and was received into heaven in triumph,
having redeemed by. his death all who should trust in him.3 We see
in this system of doctrine—which it is only right to say comes to us through
their enemies—many traces of the old dualistic theory of the good and the evil
spirits, but the whole is illumined by a brighter and better hope—that of the
speedy triumph of the right and the good— than ever cheered the heart of
Zartusht or gleamed from the pages of the Zendavesta.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION III.
GRADUAL DECLINE OF THE DUALISTIC DOCTRINE.—THE HOLY AND EXEMPLARY LIVES OF
THE PAULICIANS
As the years
gathered into decades and the decades into centuries, and the number of copies
of the Scriptures was multiplied and
carefully studied by these diligent and simpleminded inquirers after truth,
their views of the divine revelation became clearer, their doctrines more
scriptural, while their lives were as pure as ever. Well might they assume the
title of Cathari—“the pure”—from that
beatitude of our Lord which they had from the first made their motto and their
rule of life: "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God."
Even their bitterest enemies and persecutors could not deny their exemplary
character, however strongly they might denounce their want of reverence for
images and icons, and their abhorrence of
Mariolatry. More than once their foes, even in the act of persecution, were,
like St. Paul, converted to their faith and became their leaders and martyrs.
But their pure and
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
blameless lives did not in the least degree protect them from cruel persecutions. They had become very numerous among the Armenians and the inhabitants of the Caucasus region, and as early as the beginning of the sixth century a considerable number of their leading men had sealed their testimony at the stake, victims of weak or dissolute emperors goaded to persecution by the persuasions or threats of ambitious and unscrupulous bishops.
Occasionally, when the emperor happened to be himself an iconoclast, or destroyer of the statues, images, icons, sculptures, and bas‑reliefs which abounded in all the churches which had sanctioned the Eastern or Greek ritual, there would be a temporary lull in the persecution, as was the case when Constantine. ("Copronymos," as the monks derisively called him) ascended the throne in 741, and signalized his acceptance by a general onslaught upon the statues and pictures of the Greek churches; but even he so far sympathized with the general hostility to the " Paulicians "—the name which their enemies then gave them—that he transplanted a large colony
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of them to
Thrace that they might vex and annoy his heathen subjects, the Bulgarians, a
mixed race, part Tartar and part Sclavonian.
But
this movement, if it was intended as a punishment, failed of effect. The
Armenian Paulicians won their way to the hearts of their heathen neighbors and
converted great numbers of them to their own faith, and such was the influence
of their pure and exemplary lives upon the emperor, that in the later years of
his ion,, reign he too was considered a Paulician.4 But on the
accession of his son, Leo IV. (775‑78O), and still more under the regency
and rule of the ambitious but infamously cruel Irene, his widow, the images and
pictures were restored to the churches and the relentless persecution of the
Paulicians was renewed. Irene was dethroned and banished in 802, but the
persecuting disposition continued amid the frequent changes of rulers till 815,
when Leo V. for five years renewed the rule of the image‑breakers, and
the Paulicians had a brief period of rest. For the next twenty‑two years
foreign wars attracted the attention of the emperors—Michael II. and
Theophilus—from very active persecution.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION IV.
THE CRUELTY AND BLOODTHIRSTINESS OF THE EMPRESS
THEODORA.—THE FREE STATE AND CITY OF TEPHRICE.
On the death
of Theophilus his empress, Theodora, became regent (her son, Michael III.,
being but five years of age), and for fifteen years ruled with a rod of iron.
It is a remarkable fact that the empresses and empress‑regents of these
Byzantine dynasties were always more cruel, destructive, and persecuting in
their dispositions than the emperors. Theodora was no exception to this rule.
She restored the images and pictures, convened a council of bishops at Nicaea,
which she compelled to register her edict for the maintenance of these
idolatrous pictures in the churches, and then turned her whole energies to the
destruction of the Armenian Paulicians. She issued her decree that all her
subjects should conform to the Greek Church, and when the Armenians refused she sent her armies into their land, put to death,
either by the sword or the stake, over one hundred thousand Paulicians (some accounts say two hundred
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
thousand), and drove the remainder into
exile.5
Satisfied at last that this cruel queen (whose private life was as infamous as her rule was imperious and despotic) meant nothing less than their utter extermination, the Armenians rose in rebellion, having as their leader a brave Paulician named Carseas, asserted their independence, and after driving Michael III. and the usurper Bardas out of Armenia and threatening Constantinople, established the free state of Tephrice with absolute freedom of opinion for all its inhabitants.6 From the capital of this free state, itself called Tephrice,7 went forth a host of missionaries to convert the Sclavonic tribes of Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Serbia to the Paulician faith. Great was their success—so great that a large proportion of the inhabitants of the free state migrated to what were then independent states beyond the emperor's control. The free state of Tephrice declined for some years, and finally became extinct by the emigration of most of its inhabitants and the surrender of the remainder to the Saracens. The times were not propitious to its permanence—for a higher
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
intelligence than then existed among the masses is essential to the existence of a free state—but it had lasted sufficiently long to demonstrate that the religious basis is the best on which to found a state, and that it was possible for a nation to exist while maintaining perfect religious freedom. More than seven hundred years later these problems were wrought out with a grand success on the coasts of a land in the far West, of whose existence no man then dreamed, the motives which prompted the establishment of a free state being the same in the latter as in the former case, and the doctrines professed by these exiles for their faith differing very slightly.
SECTION
V.
THE SCLAVONIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE CATHARIST, OR PAULICIAN, CHURCHES.—BULGARIA, BOSNIA, AND SERBIA ITS PRINCIPAL SEATS.—EUCHITES, MASSALIANS, AND BOGOMILS.
We have now
reached a stage in the history of
these Cathari, or Paulicians, when
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
their movement takes a new departure. Hitherto it has been mainly of Armenian origin; henceforward it becomes Sclavonic. Bulgaria has become an independent state—an empire, indeed—taking in both banks of the Danube and extending northward into what is now Southern Russia, and southward almost to the gates of Constantinople. More than once its czars, as its rulers were called, had knocked so loudly at those gates that the feeble successors of Constantine started back with affright and were ready to buy a peace by the payment of great sums of money. Two thousand pounds of gold, or nearly four hundred and fifty thousand dollars of our money (a vast sum in those days), was the tribute annually paid by one of these emperors to the Bulgarian czar. On the west and north‑west three other independent states were rising into prominence—Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. Their inhabitants were Sclavonians, and their government, at first patriarchal, had gradually taken on monarchical forms, till, though usually in accord, each state was practically independent; and for the most part all acted in concert with the semi‑Sclavonic empire of
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Bulgaria in resisting the inroads of
the Greek emperors. Later they
united, now under a Serbian, now under a Bosnian, and anon under a Hungarian,
leader in fighting the Turk.
Already,
in the beginning of the tenth century, these independent states, and especially
Bosnia, had been considerabIy leavened with the Paulician doctrine, to which
its enemies, though never weary of denouncing them as Manichaeans, about this
time began to apply a new name, that of Bogomils or Bogomiles, while the
Bulgarian writers called them also Massalians alla Euchites. There are various
explanations of the origin of these names, the most plausible being that they
are substantially the same name translated into the Syriac, Greek, and
Sclavonic languages. The term Massalians
is said to be derived from a Syriac word signifying " those who
pray," and the Greek Euchites has
a similar meaning; while Bogomil is thought to be derived from the Bulgarian Bog z'milui, signifying "God have
mercy." Prayer being the most characteristic act of the Bogomilian
worship, as well
as of the sects
with which it was allied, this
derivation has the merit
of probability
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
as well as of tradition.8
Another tradition mentions a Bulgarian elder or pope (the Sclavonic term for priest) named Bogomil. This is a
possible Bulgarian name, and answers to the German Gottlieb or the Greek Theophilus,
each signifying "beloved of God."
The
believers in these doctrines, it should be observed, never called‑
themselves by any of these names, and had even dropped that of Cathari, which at an earlier period they
had assumed. They called themselves simply "Christians,"9
and it must be confessed that they did more honor to the name than any of their
persecutors.
SECTION VI.
THE BULGARIAN EMPIRE
AND ITS BOGOMIL CZARS.
THE doctrine
had during the tenth century taken deep root in Bulgaria and Servia. The czar
Samuel, the most illustrious ruler of the Bulgarian Empire, was himself a
convert to the faith, while of one of
the early Serbian princes, St. Vladimir, it is recorded that he was the zealous enemy of the
Bogomils,
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
though his son
Gabriel and his wife were members of that sect. From its first introduction
into these countries the professors of the
Bogomilian faith, under whatever names they were known, had been active
propagandists and missionaries, and their success was the more remarkable from
the extreme simplicity of their ritual and their absolute avoidance of all
appeals to the sensuous element in human nature. Though Bulgaria and Servia
were at this time independent states, at least so far as the Byzantine empire was
concerned, the state churches were in accord with the Church of Constantinople,
and acknowledged their allegiance to
the Greek Patriarch. Whatever we may think now of Byzantine architecture, the
gorgeous ornamentation of the churches
within and without, their chimes of bells, their pillars, porticoes, naves,
transepts, and chancels of the most costly marbles and syenites, their altars
resplendent with jewels, the sacred paintings and sculptures glowing with color which adorned the walls, the air heavy with the odor of precious incense, and
the richlyrobed priests and bishops who chanted and
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
intoned the service,—were all it would have seemed, so attractive to the Oriental taste, with its love of beauty and of sensuous delights, that no simpler and ruder service would have commanded their attention for a moment.
SECTION VII.
A BOGOMIL CONGREGATION AND ITS WORSHIP.—MOSTAR, ON THE N NARENTA.
BUT let us
picture to ourselves (and we have ample authority for the picture) a Bogomilian
assembly at the close of the tenth century. We will choose for our location the
ancient town of Mostar, in the Herzegovina, which was one of the principal
seats of the new doctrine. Along its streets on
the Lord's Day a company of plainly‑dressed Bosniacs wend their way
toward one of the narrow side streets of the town. They are met at every turn
by gayly‑dressed men and women, who are on their way either to the Greek church or to the theatre, and who are
laughing, shouting, and apparently in the highest spirits; yet they move forward
deliberately but determinedly
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
across
Trajan's beautiful bridge, which spans with a single arch of stone the swift
and rocky channel of the Narenta, toward a plain, barnlike structure, whose
rude stone walls and thatched roof give no indication that it is a temple for
the worship of the Most High. They all enter, and the spacious room, with its
bare walls and its rude benches, is soon filled. No pillars sustain the
comparatively low ceiling; no pictures, bas‑reliefs, or sculptures adorn
the walls or attract the attention of the worshippers There is no altar radiant
with gold and color, no screen for the choir, no pulpit even for the
officiating minister; but at the rear of the room a plain table covered with a
white linen cloth, and having upon it a manuscript copy of the New Testament,
and a roll on which are inscribed some of the grand and inspiring hymns of the
apostolic church, furnish the only. indications of the place of the leader of the
congregation. By the side of the table sits an old man whose white locks fall
upon his shoulders. His plain dress—that of the Bosniac farmer of that time—does not differ from that of the other men in
the congregation. His fine intellectual
face is hidden by his hand,
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
and his attitude and manner indicate
that he is engaged in silent prayer. Presently he rises from his seat, kneels
reverently—his example being followed by all the congregation—and utters with
evident sincerity and fervor a brief prayer full of feeling and evincing a
spirit of devotion which shows that he at least is worthy of the name of Bogomil—"the man who prays."
At
the conclusion of the prayer the whole congregation join him in reciting the
Lord's Prayer, closing with an audible "Amen." He next commences
chanting, in a voice of wonderful melody, some one of those hymns of the early
church with which Bunsen, in his Hippolytus,
has made us so familiar—hymns doubtless sung by the apostles, and believers
of their time. He then reads a portion of the New Testament history. Laying
down the precious manuscript, he proceeds to unfold to his eager hearers the
character and life of the incarnate Jesus. He tells of his poverty, his
sufferings, his rejection by men, his crucifixion, his reappearance in a more
glorious beauty and with a more manifest power; of his six weeks'
stay upon earth
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
in this semi‑glorified
condition, and of his return to heaven amid a throng of attendant angels and saints; and as he portrays him as the
Redeemer, the Abolisher of death, and the Conqueror over the Spirit of evil,
his eye grows brighter, his tall and commanding form is raised to its full
height, and, gazing upward as if, like Stephen, he saw the heavens opened, he
breaks forth in that sublime chant of the twenty‑fourth Psalm: "Lift
up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the
King of glory shall come in." The congregation, deeply moved, chant in the
same tones the response, "Who is this King of glory?" and the elder,
again taking up the strain, replies, "The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord
mighty in battle. Lift up your leads, O ye gates, even lift them up, ye
everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in;" and as the
congregation again respond, "Who is this King of glory?" he answers,
in sweet but powerful tones, "The Lord of hosts, he is the King of
glory." Returning, after this episode,
to his discourse, the elder describes in such glowing terms the bliss and glory
of the heavenly state, the joys of the
redeemed, the
worthlessness
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of all earthly honors or comforts, and
the insignificance of the trials and persecutions of the present life in
comparison with the glory that shall follow, that his hearers are quite lifted
above all earthly cares or disquietudes. In all this there is no appeal to the
sensuous element; the heaven he describes is not Mohammed's paradise—not even
the glowing and radiant "city of our God" which Chrysostom so
eloquently portrayed—but a heaven so spiritual, so pure, and so holy that none
but the pure in heart can ever hope to attain unto it. With another fervent
repetition of the Lord's Prayer, in which all the congregation join, adding
their earnest "Amens," the people disperse. In the after‑part
of the day, as the sun declines to the West, they again assemble for worship
and prayer, many of the congregation, and among them some of the older women,
participating in the prayers. The reverent repetition of the Lord's Prayer (the
presbyter Cosmas says five times on each Lord's Day) constituted an important
feature of their services.10
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION Vlll.
THE BOGOMILIAN Doctrines AND PRACTICES.—THE CREDENTES AND PERFECTI.—WERE THE CREDENTES BAPTIZED?
WHAT was the
daily life of these people, and what their relations to each other and to the
communities in which they lived? The question can only be answered by the
testimony of their adversaries—testimony which we may be certain will not be
too favorable to them.
They
had taken upon them the name of Christians—followers of Christ.11
Did they honor that name more than the so‑called orthodox members of the
Greek and Latin churches? Let us scan the evidence.
It is agreed by all the writers who speak of them that their
membership was divided into two classes, the Perfecti, or pure ones, and the Credentes,
or believers. The Perfecti were never very numerous. In 1240, when the
Bogomilian doctrines had spread over all Europe and the number of believers, or
Credentes, could not have been less than two millions and a half, and may have exceeded three
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
millions,
Reinero Sacconi, or, as Hallam and other English writers call him, Regnier, the
inquisitor, the best informed of their enemies, who had himself been at one
time a member of the sect, estimates the number of the Perfecti as not exceeding four thousand.12 These were
their leaders, or elders, and their devout women. They went forth to teach by
twos, like the seventy sent out by Christ. They were required to remain in a
state of celibacy and could not hold any property, these requirements being
probably intended to make their journeyings and itinerant labors less trying
and to secure their undivided consecration to their work. The presence that
they regarded marriage and the possession of property as mortal sins is a
fiction of their enemies, as their whole
history proves. This relinquishment of property on the part of the Perfecti they regarded as the fulfilment
of Christ's injunction to the young ruler (Matt. xix. 21): "If thou wilt
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt
have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." They were also to lead
ascetic lives, to eat only vegetables and
fish, and to fast
rigidly at certain
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
seasons of the year. They had peculiar signals for recognizing each other, and their support was contributed by the Credentes, or believers. They received the title of elders, and, in addition to their duties as preachers and pastors of the congregations, and missionaries to other lands, they alone had power to administer the consolamentum, or rite of initiation into the ranks of the Perfecti. This was done by the laying on of hands of the elders, by means of which they believed that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, descended upon those on whom hands were laid, and thenceforth they too were elders and missionaries. The rites by which believers were received into the ranks of the Credentes are not specified by their adversaries; it is certain, however, that baptisms—i. e., immersion, for the Oriental churches had no other conception of baptism than immersion—was the principal, and perhaps the only, one. We give below our reasons for coming to this conclusion.* There
* This question of the baptism of the members of the Bogomil, or Paulician, Church as the initiatory rite to membership among the Credentes has been very fiercely discussed by ecclesiastical writers, and not always in the
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
was a covenant
often entered into by the
believers to receive the consolamentum at the approach
best temper.
our reasons for believing that it was always administered are the following:
1. Their well‑known and
universally‑admitted repudiation of infant baptism, and their often
quoted declarations that the Credentes should
only comprise those who professed personal faith in Christ as their Saviour.
The profession was made in some public way, and was evidently not made by the imposition of hands, as that was confined to the Perfecti, or celibate disciples, and was
a personal consecration to a specific ministry. This profession of faith was
also a prerequisite to participation in the Lord's Supper.
2. The omission of any mention
of this by the presbyter Cosmas, Zygabenus, and others is not an argument
against it, for they, as ecclesiastics of the Greek Church, recognized nothing
as baptism except the trine immersion of infants, with its accompaniments of
unction, naming after one of the saints, and invocation to the saints and the
Virgin Mary; and, as all these were repudiated by these humble Christians, they
would naturally declare that they did not practice baptism. But, per contra, Harmenopoulos, a Greek
priest of the twelfth century, expressly declares that they did practice single immersion, but
without unction, etc., and only upon adults, on the profession of their faith.
He adds that they did not attribute to it any saving or perfecting virtue,
which is in accordance with their other teachings.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of death, and there is abundant
evidence that they celebrated the Lord's Supper—though without giving it any
mystic signification—whenever it was possible, every Lord's Day. Women were
admitted to the ranks of the Perfecti, but
they too were required to lead celibate lives and to practice abstinence from
meats; they seldom preached, though they
often took a part in public worship.
More than six hundred years before the organization
3. Reinero, the inquisitor, who had originally been one of them, says: "They say that a man is shell first baptized when he is received into their community and has been baptized by them, and they hold that baptism is of no advantage to infants, since they cannot actually believe."
4. We find in the histories of
Jirecek and Hilferding numerous incidental allusions to the baptism of persons
of high rank, such as the ban Culin Tvartko III, King Stephen Thomas, the Duke
of St. Sava, etc., who never advanced beyond the grade of Credentes, but who are said to have been "baptized into the
Bogomil faith." That during the period of their greatest persecutions the
ordinance was administered secretly, and perhaps at night, is very probable,
but there is no evidence that it was ever omitted, much less that any other
mode was substituted for it. That would have been impossible in an
Oriental church.l3
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of any sisterhood analogous to the
Sisters of Charity in the Roman Church these holy women, the deaconesses of the
Bogomil churches, devoted their whole time to ministering to the sick, to
visiting and aiding the poor, to teaching the young the rudiments of their
faith—establishing thus in their Lord's Day instruction the first Sunday‑schools
in the Christian church—to administering in extreme cases the consolamentum to the dying, and to
teaching the ignorant, and especially young girls, the rudiments of learning
and the way of salvation. Like the brethren of the Perfecti, they went forth to their work in couples. The Credentes, or believers, were for a
period of nearly four centuries the merchants, the traders, the agriculturists,
and, to a considerable extent, the nobles and officials of Bulgaria and Bosnia.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION IX.
THE ORTHODOXY OF THE GREEK AND ROMAN CHURCHES RATHER THEOLOGICAL THAN PRACTICAL.—FALL OF THE BULGARIAN EMPIRE.
IT was a period when infinitely more stress was laid upon the doctrines which a man believed than upon
the life which he led. The questions
were not, "Is a man chaste? Is he truthful? Is he honest and upright? Does
he love his neighbor as himself? Do his good deeds proceed from right and pure
motives?" but, “Does he believe that the Virgin Mary is divine and should
be worshipped? Does he worship and pray to the saints ? Is he willing to have
icons and pictures of the Virgin and the saints in his house and in his church
? Does he believe that Christ had one will or two, and one nature or two ? If
he holds that Christ was divine, does he think that his divine nature was
similar to, or identical with, that of the
Father? Is there a purgatory? And if
so, can the priest by his masses bring the faithful out of it?''
Since the Bogomils did not, or could not, answer these questions of dogma to the satisfaction
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of the bishops and emperors, they were denounced as "worse and more horrible than demons," and he who killed them thought he did God service. Yet now and then one of their bitterest persecutors was compelled to acknowledge that their lives were pure and chaste, that they were honest and truthful, kind to their neighbors, and observant of all the ethics of the moral law.
"Would
that our orthodox believers were half as exemplary on these points!" says
one of their enemies bluntly. But all this was regarded as of no importance so
long as they were such heretics in regard to the doctrines of the church. And
so the strong arm of persecution was stretched out against them whenever kings,
princes, or emperors could be found to permit it. While under the rule of their
native princes the Bogomils of Bulgaria suffered comparatively little from
persecution. The czars of Bulgaria were
humane and merciful; and, though the Bulgarian Church, founded by Cyrillus and
Methodius, was in most respects a copy
of the Byzantine, yet there is reason
to believe that others of the czars besides Samuel
turned with a
feeling
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of relief from the florid and tasteless display of the Greek ritual to the simple and fervent worship of the "Christian " churches.
But, alas!
after an independent existence of more than one hundred and fifty years, luring
most of which time it had maintained constant warfare with the Byzantine Empire
and carried terror and dismay more than once to the very gates of
Constantinople, the Bulgarian kingdom fell, in the beginning of the eleventh
century, before the prowess of Basilius II., one of the emperors of the
Macedonian dynasty, and was annexed to the Byzantine Empire as a province. From
the time of this annexation the edicts of persecution seem to have been issued
against the harmless Bogomils, but the revolutions and counter‑revolutions
of the next seventy years in the Eastern Empire, during which time fifteen
emperors ascended the throne, left little opportunity for active efforts to put
them down.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION X
THE
EMPEROR ALEXIUS COMNENUS AND THE BOGOMIL ELDER BASIL.—THE "ALEXIAD"
OF THE PRINCESS ANNA COMNENA.
IN
A. D. 1081, Alexius Comnenus I.—not the first of the Comnenus dynasty, but the
first who tool that name as a part of his title—ascended the throne, and during
his reign of thirty‑seven years persecution of all those whom he regarded
as heretics was carried on without any scruples of conscience, or any regard to
honor or decency. Alexius had a daughter, the princess Anna Comnena, who. with
a most inordinate share of vanity, possessed much of her father's cruel and
malignant nature. After her father's death and the defeat of her conspiracy to
secure the throne for herself and her husband she turned her attention to
literature, and wrote the Alexiad, a
history of her father's reign, which has been preserved, like the fly in amber,
for its very worthlessness, and gives us some idea of the events of that time.
In this book she has left an account of the persecutions of the Bogomils.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
The
leader of the sect at this time was a venerable physician, Basil by name, whose
pure life and eloquence in the eposition of his doctrines had given him great
influence in Bulgaria. An ascetic in his life, and, like all the elders, a
celibate and without worldly possessions, he had supplied his few and simple
needs by the practice of the medical profession. The princess Anna unblushingly
narrates how her father set a trap to decoy this venerable man into the toils
already laid for him, inviting him to the imperial table and luring him on to
an exposition of the doctrines of the Bogomils by pretending a deep interest in
them and a willingness to embrace their views; holy he brought him into the imperial cabinet and had a long
interview with him—of which she professes to have been a witness—in which he
artfully drew from him a still more full statement of their views on all
controverted points, as well as the secrets of the sect, if there were any, and
then, suddenly throwing aside the arras on the wall, revealed the scribe who had taken down the confession of what he termed his heresy, and beckoned to the
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
aparitors—officers of the court—to come forward and put his guest in irons.
Here this
delicate princess drops into coarseness and scurrility. She can find no fault
in the character, the life, or the conduct of this apostle of the Bogomils, who
seems, even from her own account, to have borne himself with a dignity and
lofty courage which should have made his imperial betrayer and persecutor
utterly despise himself. But, in default of this, she ridicules his personal
appearance and that of his followers—though she is obliged to acknowledge that
they included members of many of the families of the highest rank—and pours out
her venom on his doctrines and declarations, of which, however, she seems to
have no very clear comprehension. "Basil
himself," she tells us, "was a lanky man with a sparse beard, tall
and thin." " His followers," she says, " were a mixture of
Manichees and Massalians." This was a slander, so far as the Manichaeism
was concerned, which their enemies never tired of uttering, though very few of them seem to have known what the doctrines taught by
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Manes really
were. She prates of "their uncombed hair, of their low origin, and their
long faces, which they hide to the nose,
and walk bowed, attired like monks, muttering something between their
lips." She denounces their doctrines, as explained by Basil, as being most
heretical and blasphemous, though she does not seem to have understood them,
but, "what was more shocking still, he called the sacred churches—woe is
me!—the sacred churches, fanes of demons." When he saw himself betrayed by
the emperor he declared "that he would be rescued from death by angels and
demons." This is perhaps a perversion of the passage (Acts xxvii. 23, 24)
where Paul in circumstances of great peril
said, "For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am and
whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar;"
or of that blessed passage in the
Psalms, quoted by our Lord: "He shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands
they shall bear thee up, lest at any
time thou dash thy foot against a stone;" or possibly of that parable of the rich man and Lazarus, in which
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
our Lord tells us that Lazarus was
carried by the angels unto Abraham's bosom.
SECTION XI.
THE MARTYRDOM OF BASIL.—THE BOGOMIL CHURCHES REINFORCED BY THE ARMENIAN PAULICIANS, UNDER THE EMPEROR JOHN ZIMISCES.
EVEN in this
scurrilous report there is brought before us one of the grandest scenes in the
whole history of martyrs for the faith. This old man, with his long white hair
and beard, suddenly finding himself betrayed by a most villainous plot of the
imperial dastard before him, with his hands fettered and the full consciousness
that martyrdom in its most cruel form was his doom, yet utters no reproach
against his persecutor, but with a sublime faith looks up to heaven, and
declares that he shall be borne to his home above by the angels of God, the
ministers who do his will.
Turning
away from this scene of ecstatic faith, we
find ourselves compelled, not
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
without loathing, to look over
the pages of the record of this princess, who tells us daintily, after a vast
expenditure of billingsgate, "I should like to say more of this cursed
heresy, but modesty keeps me from doing so, as beautiful Sappho says somewhere;
for though I am an historian, I am also a woman, and the most honorable of the
purple, and the first offshoot of Alexius." Then, having gratified her
vanity with this boasted modesty, she goes on to describe, in all its horrible
details, the burning at the stake of this glorious martyr and those of his
brethren whom Alexius, the head of the Greek hierarchy, had been able to
capture either by force or guile. We cannot bring ourselves to lay before our
readers the description she gives so minutely and with such evident enjoyment
of the preparations for the holocaust in the
hippodrome—the crackling of the fire and the shrinking of the poor human bodies
wasted by fasting, but still sustained by unfaltering trust in their Saviour as
they come nearer to the flames, the turning away of their eyes, and finally the quivering of their limbs as the fire
scorched and shrivelled their flesh.15
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Can it be, one asks in amazement, that
a woman of high rank, and for her time of remarkable culture—a woman, too,
professing to be a follower of Christ—can thus gloat over the tortures of a
martyr for conscience' sake? Even the fiends of the pit would blush for shame
over such a monster of cruelty.
The Bulgarian Bogomils were unquestionably more rigidly
dualistic in their doctrines than those of Bosnia, Serbia, and the Herzegovina.
There is also some reason to believe that they held to what the old theologians
called "the phantastic theory of the incarnation of Christ"—i. e.,
that his body here on earth was a phantasm, and not a real body. This was due
to several causes. These Bogomils,
Paulicians, or Christians of Bulgaria had been largely reinforced by repeated
migrations and transplantations from Armenia and the Caucasus, where the
doctrine of the two principles had been first professed in a form most nearly
allied to that of the Zendavesta. Even as late as the latter part of the tenth
century the emperor John Zimisces brought
great numbers of these Armenians from their native
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
country
and planted them in Roumelia and Thrace.16 Their abhorrence of the
licentiousness, falsity, treachery, and bloodthirstiness of those who
ministered at the altars and were the heads of the Greek hierarchy, who
worshipped in the gaudy temples of the Greek Church, caused them to cling with
greater tenacity to the doctrines of their fathers. It was also true that only
portions of the Scriptures had, even as late as the twelfth century, been
translated into either the Bulgarian or the Armenian tongue; and so thoroughly
had the persecutions and trials they had endured from the Greek Church led them
to distrust everything Greek, that very few of them could speak or read the
language in which the whole Scriptures were extant. The manuscript copies, even
of the books of the Bible, which were to be had in Bulgarian and Armenian were
very few, and many of their places of worship were only supplied with the
Gospel of John.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION XII.
THE PURITY OF LIFE OF
THE BOGOMILS.—THEIR DOCTRINES AND PRACTICE. — THEIR ASCETICISM.
YET it is remarkable, notwithstanding the two great errors they were charged with entertaining, that their practical Christianity and their belief in the essentials of a true faith were so sound. The name "Christian'' was not to them one of trivial or doubtful import: it comprehended a reverence for God and adoration of him as the Father and Source of all good; a holy and abiding trust and belief in Jesus as the Son of God—a divine Being who had made an atonement for their sins, and through whom alone salvation was possible—and in a Holy Spirit, or Comforter, who would teach, lead, and guide them in the way of all truth. It comprehended also very frequent and devout prayer—not to angels or saints or the Virgin Mary, but to Jesus—for guidance and strength, and a constant watchfulness and resistance against all temptation of the evil one; and finally, it included holy living, obedience to God's commands, the maintenance of that filial spirit which
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
could come to God as a little child
comes to its father and in their intercourse with their fellow‑men the
observance of chastity and purity, the avoidance of desecration of the Lord's
Day, theft, violent anger, murder, falsehood, evil‑speaking, and
covetousness. In short, though their theology
might have been unsound in some points, their Christianity was spotless, and they were "epistles of Christ,
known and read of all men."
We have
already noticed some of the dogmas of the Greek Church and of the Latin Church
which they denied; the presbyter Cosmas—a Greek priest who lived at the end of
the tenth century, and a bitter enemy—shall furnish us with others. Of their
vigorous denunciation of the worship of the Virgin Mary, of worship and prayers
to the saints, and of images, icons, and pictures of the Virgin and the saints,
enough has been said. But they also opposed the use of crucifixes, crosses,
bells, incense, ecclesiastical vestments, and everything which contributed to
pomp and ceremony in the worship of God. They
ridiculed alike the dogmas of transubstantiation and consubstantiation, and
denied that the Lord's Supper
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
had any mystic significance. It was, they said, a memorial service which the Founder of Christianity had to commemorate his sacrifice of himself for the sins of the world, and all true believers should partake of it in both kinds—not as conferring any saving grace, but as a token of their remembrance of him and of their gratitude for his redemptive work. They did not admit any idea of purgatory, but believed that those who died in Christ entered into rest—a blissful state, but not the state of the highest felicity, to which they might only attain after the first resurrection. They were very severe in their denunciation of the wanton, profligate, and ungodly priests and other dignitaries of the church, whose impure and unholy lives were in such marked contrast to those of their self‑denying and ascetic elders. The tendency to asceticism among them was strong, as it always is among a persecuted and conscientious people. Their elders subsisted on vegetables and fish only; they held no property, had no home, no wife or child. In some instances, as in the case of Basil, they sustained themselves by their own labor; in others, and especially
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
in the case of missionaries, they were sustained by their brethren, the
believers, who did not enter upon
the condition or take the vows of the Perfecti.
This ascetic and abstemious life was as far removed as possible from the
seclusion, the fastings, flagellations, exposure to the weather, and hermit or
desert life of the stricter orders of monks and nuns in the Greek and the Roman
churches. The devout women also who had entered upon this higher life of self‑denial
were sustained in their labors among the sick, the poor, and the ignorant by
the contributions of the believers. Nor was this an onerous task. Their number
was small—not more than one or two in the thousand of believers—and their needs
were but trifling. There was no pauperization in this, nor was it regarded in
the light of a charity by either the givers or the recipients.17
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION XIII.
THE MISSIONARY SPIRIT AND LABORS OF THE ELDERS AND PERFECTI.—THE ENTIRE ABSENCE OF ANY HIERARCHY.
THE
spirit of propagandism—or, as it would be both more true and more kindly to
call it, the missionary spirit—was very active in them. It is to Bulgarian
rather than Bosnian missionaries that the earlier forms of dissent from the
Church of Rome are due. The Albigenses—so called from the province where they
first appeared in considerable numbers—and
the Patarenes—probably from the name of a suburb of Milan in which they
were very numerous—were the spiritual descendants of the Bulgarian Bogomils and
the first‑fruits of their missionary zeal. Their other missionary work
was mostly performed in Croatia, Wallachia, Moldavia, and the provinces which
now form the southern portion of Russia in Europe. In many cases the congregations established by them affiliated
at a later day, and with a more enlightened faith, with those established by the Bosnian Bogomils. They had no organized
hierarchy. When
their
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
numbers became large the elder most
highly esteemed in a province or country. appointed or called to the work
twelve apostles, or messengers, who went forth two and two to their work, but
with equal powers, rights, and privileges with the elder himself; and if he
found it necessary, he called forth "other seventy also." These were
all from the ranks of the Perfecti, but
among the believers, there were often those who, prompted by religious zeal,
devoted themselves to Christian work. In the end most of these received the
imposition of hands, which initiated them into the official body.18
This simple
organization was very probably drawn from the civil organization of the
Sclavonic tribes. Among these the patriarch, who was the father and ruler of a
numerous household, became, as his influence widened, by the voluntary
selection of his equals, the zupan, or
elder, of a commune, and one of these zupans, by the choice of his fellow‑zupans,
became the grand zupan, or elder, of his tribe or province, with the chance of
being called to the still higher station of ban (prince), or czar (chief ruler or king).
But in the Bogomil eldership there
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
was nothing analogous to the Latin archbishop or pope, or the Greek archimandrite, patriarch, or metropolitan.
In the thirteenth century, when there were in Western Europe thirteen provinces
of believers all tracing their origin to the Bogomils of Bosnia and Bulgaria
and numbering some millions of believers, all affiliated with their brethren of
those countries, though the Bosnian chief elder might be regarded as the wisest
councillor in their ranks, he possessed no more ecclesiastical authority than
the youngest elder of the most distant and feeblest province.l9
SECTION XIV.
THE
BOGOMIL CHURCHES IN BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGOVINA.—THEIR DOCTRINES MORE THOROUGHLY
SCRIPTURAL THAN THOSE OF THE BULGARIAN CHURCHES.—BOSNIA AS A BANATE AND
KINGDOM.
LET us now turn to Bosnia and the Herzegovina, or, as
it was called about this time, the Principality of Chelm. The introduction of
the Bogomil doctrines was not
effected in most of this region
till the early part of the
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
tenth century, and they did not take deep root there till toward the close of the eleventh century. By that time, however, the whole country was very thoroughly leavened with them, though there had not been any persecution instituted against them. The orthodox church of Bosnia had been from the first more Sclavonic than Greek. It had originated from the labors of Cyrillus and Methodius, and, though accepting in general the dogmas of the Greek Church and its gorgeousness of architectural decoration and ecclesiastical display, its Scriptures, psalter, and ritual were in the Sclavonic, and not in the Greek, tongue.20 It had manifested, up to the twelfth century, none of the persecuting spirit of the Greek or the Roman Church. It had wavered in its allegiance, now recognizing the pope as the head of the church, and anon manifesting by its services and its dogmas a preference for the Eastern Church, though it had no sympathy for the Byzantine rulers or people.
The Bosnians—or Bosniacs, as they call them selves—had,
after the Sclavonic fashion, elected their zupans from the patriarchs of the
communes, or the groups of
villages, and their
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
grand zupan, whom they as early as the
beginning of the tenth century had begun to call ban—i. e., prince or grand duke—from the zupans or chiefs of their
groups of villages. They were practically independent, acknowledging in some
great emergency, as of war or territorial acquisition, now the Ban of Croatia,
anon the Grand Zupan of Servia, and perhaps a little later the King of Hungary,
as over‑lord or suzerain, and following one or other to the battle‑field.
But in time of peace this suzerainty amounted to very little. At no time from
the beginning, of the tenth century were they the acknowledged subjects of the
Byzantine emperor. If his generals succeeded in subduing the over‑lord
under whose banners they had last marched, they transferred their fealty to
another over‑lord who was not subdued, or remained in their mountain‑fastnesses,
which the Byzantine troops, enervated by luxury, found inaccessible.
In 1138, Bela II., King of Hungary, under this nominal
suzerainty attempted, at the instance of the pope, to make a
raid against the Patarenes—one of the
names which the popes bestowed upon the Bogomils—in the country
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
between Cetina and Narenta.21
These names of places or districts indicate that the region visited was in the
Herzegovina and Montenegro rather than in Bosnia proper. This expedition seems
to have e accomplished nothing. The pope was occupied with other wars and crusades
against heresy, and the Hungarian king—whose real name was Coloman, though he
reigned under the title of Bela II. or Geiza II., Bela or Geiza being the royal
patronymic of that period in Hungary—was soon engaged in a war with Manuel I.,
one of the ablest of the Byzantine emperors; and in this war, which continued for
a long time, the Hungarian king was powerfully aided by his natural son, Boric,
who had been chosen ban of Bosnia.
SECTION XV.
BOSNIAN HISTORY CONTINUED.—THE GOOD BAN CULIN.
ON the death of
Boric, in 1168, his son, known in Bosnian history as the good ban Culin, became the ban, or ruler, of Bosnia. His reign extended over thirty‑six years—years
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of peace,
quiet, and prosperity to his country. The recent war with the Byzantine
emperor, as well as the preference of the Hungarian kings for the Latin rite, had inclined both Bela
III., who was now on the Hungarian throne and the acknowledged suzerain of
Bosnia, and his chief vassal, the ban Culin, to acknowledge the superior claims
of the Papacy. For the twelve years which followed Culin's accession to the
throne of Bosnia the pope, Alexander III., was too busy in fighting the anti‑popes
of that period to do much in the way of suppressing heresy; and meanwhile,
Culin, at first considered a dutiful son of the Church of Rome, had lapsed into
the heresy of the Bogomils, and with his wife* and his sister, who was the
widow of the Count of Chelm (the modern Herzegovina), had submitted to baptism
and been numbered among the Credentes, or
believers.22 Pope Alexander III., on hearing of this departure
from the faith, at once exerted such
a pressure upon the ban through his suzerain, the King of
*Culin had married a sister of Stephen Nimanja, Ban of
Serbia, whose Bogomilian opinions were notorious before her marriage.23
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Hungary, that
he recanted from his Bogomil doctrines, appearing, it is said, in person at
Rome with his recantation not later than the early part of A.D. 1181.
Whether
the corruptions which were even then prevalent at Rome disgusted him, or the
persuasions of his wife and sister were too strong to be resisted, we know not;
but it is certain that within a few years the ban Culin was reported to Pope
Innocent III. as having relapsed into his former errors and as having infected
at least ten thousand of his subjects with his heresy.24 This was in
1199. The next year it was reported that Daniel, the Roman Catholic bishop of
Bosnia, had joined the Bogomils or Patarenes, and, soon after, that the Roman
Catholic cathedral and episcopal palace at Crescevo had been destroyed by the
heretics. For many a year thereafter there was no Roman Catholic bishop of
Bosnia.25
The pope was furious. He appealed to the King of Hungary
to punish his heretic vassal. But Culin was too strong to fear the Hungarian
armies, and the Hungarian king was too well aware of his strength to venture
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
any attempt to coerce him. And thus
it came to pass that while Western Europe was devastated by De Montfort in his
crusade against heretics, the banat of Bosnia afforded a secure asylum to
persecuted adherents of the Bogomilian heresy from all parts of Europe.
SECTION XVI.
THE GROWTH OF
THE BOGOMIL CHURCHES UNDER CULIN.—THEIR MISSIONARY ZEAL AND SUCCESS.
For the
hundred years ending with A. D. 1220 the Bogomils of Bosnia had been very active in missionary work. They still
affiliated to some extent with their brethren in Bulgaria, though they had
greatly modified their views concerning the origin of the two principles of
good and evil, and no longer held to the phantastic theory of the incarnation,
but conformed to the present
orthodox views of the human nature of Christ, and accepted the Old Testament in
its entirety. But though their theology was elastic and comprehended somewhat
differing views, their Christianity was pure, simple,
and stern as ever. The
Albigenses,
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
and probably
some of the earlier Catharist churches, had been the converts of Bulgarian missionaries;
but the Waldensian congregations, the believers of the plains of Lombardy and
the South of France, the Catharists of Spain, the early Reformers of Bohemia,
the "Ketzers" of the Lower Rhine, the Publicani (a corruption of Pauliciani)
of Flanders and England, were all the followers and disciples of the Bogomilian
elders or djeds of Bosnia. Reinero Sacconi—or Regnier, as the English
historians call him—an Italian apostate of the beginning of the thirteenth
century, who, having been one of the Bogomilian Credentes, had recanted and, uniting with the Roman Catholic
Church, become an inquisitor, states that
the churches of the Cathari, as he
calls them, numbered then as many as thirteen bishoprics, or rather
elderships—for they did not recognize the name of bishop—that of Bosnia or
Sclavonia being the most important and the parent of the others. These
elderships were scattered through all
the countries of Europe, and extended in an unbroken zone from the Black Sea to the Atlantic and
from the Mediterranean
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
to the Baltic.26, 27 They
had penetrated into England and made their appearance in Oxford and its
vicinity in 1160. Henry II., then on the English throne, called a council, and
on its finding, issued a decree that the Publicani
should be branded on the forehead with a red‑hot key, publicly
whipped and thrust forth from the city, and that nobody should give them food
or shelter. The poor wretches, the historian adds, owing to the rigor of the
season and the sentence, sunk under the punishment, and were all dispatched.
SECTION XVII.
THE AUTHORITIES FROM WHOSE TESTIMONY THIS NARRATIVE IS DRAWN.—ITS THOROUGH CORROBORATION BY A CLOUD OF WITNESSES.
THESE are not hasty
generalizations, confounding sects essentially distinct with each other, and
giving them a common origin of which they were ignorant, as some of the
ecclesiastical historians have pretended, but well‑authenticated facts,
every link in the chain of evidence being attested by reputable witnesses.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
0The German
ecclesiastical writers Gieseler, Neander, Mosheim, and Schmidt had collected
many facts on this subject, as had also Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of Rome, and Hallam in his State of Europe during the Middle Ages,
but Mr. A. J. Evans, in his recent monograph on the history of Bosnia, has with
great labor and research made an exhaustive study of the whole subject, and has
brought the most conclusive proofs of the derivation of all these early
Protestants from a common source, and that source the Bogomils of Bosnia and
Bulgaria. Jirecek, a recent Bohemian writer on Bosnia and Bulgaria and
Hilferding, a Russian historian of Serbia and Bulgaria, under which he includes
Bosnia, both adduce official evidence of the affiliation of the Bogomils with
the Waldenses, the Bohemians, and the Moravians, as well as of their identity
with the "Poor Men of Lyons," the Vaudois, the Henricians and the so‑called heretics of
Toulouse, the Patarenes of Dalmatia and Italy, the Petrobrussians, the Bulgares
or Bougres, and the Catharists of Spain. Matthew Paris, Roger of Hoveden,
and Ralph of Coggeshale, three
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
of the most
renowned of the early British chroniclers,28 testify to their
presence in large numbers at this period in Toulouse, in Provence, in Flanders,
and in England, and that they were called in the latter two countries Publicani or Poplicani,, a corruption of Pauliciani.
All these writers trace them directly or indirectly to their origin in
Bosnia; and Matthew Paris and Ralph of Coggeshale, trusting probably to the
misrepresentations of some of the Romish inquisitors, relate that the
Albigenses, Waldenses, and other heretics of France, Spain, and Italy had a
pope of their own, who resided in Bosnia, that he created a vicar (apostolic?)
in Toulouse whose name was Bartholomew, and that these heretics went annually
to consult their Bosnian pope on difficult questions of faith and doctrine. The
Bosnian djed, or chief elder, may have enjoyed some sort of actual primacy
in consequence of his age, experience, and more profound acquaintance with
doctrine, and had probably sent some of the Bosnian elders as missionaries to Toulouse; but in so doing
he could not have claimed any
ecclesiastical authority, as a hierarchy of any
sort was utterly
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
abhorrent to the spirit and temper of
both the Bogomils and their affiliated sects in the West. A careful and
critical examination of the civil and ecclesiastical histories of this period
in England, France, and Germany affords abundant corroborative evidence of the
origin of all these sects from the Bosnian churches, and of the complete
identity of the doctrines professed by them all. Under the fierce persecutions
instituted against the Waldenses, Catharists, etc., of Western Europe by the
popes in the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, we have the
testimony of the popes themselves that very many of the Waldenses, Patarenes,
Publicans, etc., took refuge with their brethren in Bosnia, which at that time
was protected by the good Ban Culin.29*
*Ralph of Coggeshale goes into considerable detail of the
doctrines of the Publicani in
Flanders and England, and thereby establishes their complete identity with the
Bogomils. They held, he says, to two principles—of good and evil; they rejected
purgatory, prayers for the dead, the invocation of saints, infant baptism, and
the use of pictures, images, and crucifixes in the churches; they accepted, of
the New
Testament, only the Gospels and the canonical Epistles (here
he was certainly misinformed); they insisted, in their prayers and all their
worship, on
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION XVIII.
THE ERA OF PERSECUTION.—THE CRUSADES AGAINST THE BOGOMILS.—THE ARCHBISHOP OF COLOCZ.
WE return from
this digression to an account of what befel the Bogomils of Bosnia after the
death of "the good Ban Culin." After his decease, which occurred in
1205, the King of Hungary, wishing to pacify Pope Innocent III., procured the
election of Zibisclav, a Sclavonian, but a strict Roman Catholic, as Ban of
the use of the vulgar
tongue; their elders and perfect ones, both men and women, observed a vegetable
diet and condemned marriage. In this connection he relates a most shameless and
cruel story told him by gervase of Tilbury, then clerk of the Archbishop of
Rheims, subsequently an historical writer. This profligate clerk relates to him
how, having failed to seduce a beautiful countrygirl,
he perceived her heresy, accused her successfully before the Inquisition of
being one of the Publicani, and feasted
his eyes with her dying agonies at the stake. Even the hardened monk Ralph
cannot refrain from adding that, " girl though she
was, she died without a groan; as illustrious a martyr of Christ (though for a
different cause) as any of those who were ages before slain by the pagans for
their Christian faith." It must have been an heroic
courage and faith indeed which could draw forth such an
encomium from a monkish narrator.
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Bosnia. But the pure lives, the
honesty, integrity, and industry, of the Bogomils, were too much for this Roman
Catholic Ban, and he became a convert to the hated sect. There were peace and
quiet in Bosnia till 1216, when the learned and gentle Pope Honorius III.,
having ascended the papal throne, believing that these heretical Bogomils could
be convinced of their heresies by argument, sent the accomplished subdeacon
Aconcius to Bosnia to labor for their conversion. But the arguments of the
eloquent subdeacon proved no more efficacious than those of his predecessors:
the heresy grew and increased, like the waters of Noah's flood, continuously. Northward and northwestward,
in the provinces of Croatia, Dalmatia, Istria, Carniola, and Sclavonia, which
had hitherto been strongly Roman Catholic, the number of converts multiplied
daily, while at home they were fast becoming the dominant power.
In this emergency the Archbishop of Colocz, in Hungary. stood forth as a
defender of the Romish faith. Armed with authority from the pope and the Hungarian
king, he entered Bosnia in 1222 at the head of a host of Hungarian
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Catholics, and used the sword with such good effect that he had shortly possessed himself of the provinces of Bosnia, Ussora, and Soy. The Ban Zibisclav, who seems to have possessed very little of the Sclavonic pluck, notwithstanding his Sclavonic origin, was compelled to abjure his errors, and, falling humbly at the feet of the pope, Gregory IX., received from him an embrace; in return for which he professed to be willing to dedicate to his service his person, his lands, and all the goods he at that time possessed. This was in 1233.
The
subjects of the Ban were not inclined to be included in this abject surrender.
The violent persecution which had raged for eleven years had not terrified
them, though it had subjugated their Ban, and their answer to their persecutor
was the erection of more places of worship
and the setting apart of a greater number of djeds, or elders, both for home and missionary work. Pope Gregory
IX. was enraged at the boldness of
these heretics. Provence had been overrun and purged of its heresies, the
Waldenses had been driven into the
fastnesses of Piedmont, and should he be thus
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
flouted by these Serbian BogomiIs? It was not to be thought of for a moment. A new crusade was proclaimed, and Coloman, Ban of Sclavonia and brother of the King of Hungary, was to lead it. In 1238 he entered Bosnia. with a large army to exterminate the heretics. The weak and treacherous Zibisclav permitted without protest or resistance the havoc and devastation which this ruffianly crusader made among his best subjects. Coloman "purged"—so they called it—the whole kingdom, and extended his ravages through the principality of Chelm, which formed the south‑western portion of the present Herzegovina. No troubadour has sung, no historian has recorded, the barbarities and atrocities of this war of extermination: we only know that many thousands were enrolled among the glorious army of martyrs, and that from under the altar, the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held, uttered again their cries for vengeance on the cruel persecutor of the saints. Pope Gregory IX., in 1240, congratulated Coloman on " wiping out the heresy, and restoring the light of Catholic purity;" but ere his death,
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
in 1241, he had discovered that his congratulations were premature.
The Tartar
invasion of 1241, which weakened the power of Hungary, and in which the
crusader Coloman and the base coward Zibisclav both fell on the field under the
fierce assault of the Khan Ugadai, relieved the Bogomils from persecution for a
time.30
SECTION XIX.
FURTHER CRUSADES.—THE HOSTILITY OF POPE INNOCENT IV.—MORE LENIENT, BUT NOT MORE EFFECTIVE, MEASURES.
IN
1246, Pope Innocent IV. found that there was need of a third crusade in Bosnia,
and again it was entrusted to an archbishop of Colocz. "A man skilled in
all the science of war," King Bela IV., aided him in his impious work. He
butchered many heretics and cast thousands
into dungeons, and succeeded in persuading the pope that his deserts were so
great that the Roman Catholic see of Bosnia was transferred from the
archiepiscopal diocese of Spalato to that of Colocz. But his triumphs were of short duration. A bishop had
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
been established in Bosnia after the
first crusade in 1240, and had maintained his episcopal authority, not without
difficulty, till 1256, but then it lapsed a second time. The Bogomils were
still in the ascendency, and the Hungarian suzerainty was no longer potent in
the affairs of Bosnia.
The popes
Alexander IV., Urban IV., and Clement IV., perhaps more enlightened, and
certainly more politic, than their predecessors, abandoned their method of
converting the Bogomils by fire and sword, and resorted to persuasion. The
Dominican and Franciscan friars were established in Bosnia between 1257 and
1260, and argument and entreaty took the place of violence. Still there was no
Roman Catholic bishop of Bosnia, nor did persuasion prove more effective than
force.
There
is nowhere any record among the persecutors of these cruelly‑harassed
Bogomils that they rose against their persecutors,
or that when, as was often the case, they temporarily attained to power, they
ever sought to persecute in turn, or to do any injury to those who had so often
and so deeply injured them. If they
are to be regarded as Christians who
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
follow the example of the Lord Christ,
who, when he was reviled, reviled not again, and suffered in patience the
contradiction of sinners, are not these humble and patient souls to be reckoned
as eminently entitled to that honored but much‑abused name ?
SECTION XX.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INQUISITION IN BOSNIA.—THE LETTER OF POPE JOHN XXII.—PREVIOUS TESTIMONY OF ENEMIES TO THE PURITY OF THE LIVES OF THE BOGOMILS.
ABOUT 1275,
Bosnia passed under the overlordship of the King of Serbia, Stephen Dragutin,
and his successor, Milutin Urosh II. The latter was favorable to the Romish
Church, and in 1291 allowed two Franciscan brothers to establish the
Inquisition in Bosnia. But at first the jaws of this terrible wild beast were
muzzled. For a period of about sixty years the Bogomil churches had rest, and,
like those in apostolic times, "walking in the fear of the Lord, and in
the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied."
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
After this
season of peace and quiet the hand of
the persecutor was raised against them more violently than ever. The Hungarians
had once more regained their ascendency in Bosnia, and the Romish authority was
re‑established there. In June, 1325, the pope, John XXII., wrote two
letters, one to Charles, King of Hungary, the other to Stephen Kotromanovic,
Ban of Bosnia. The letter is still extant, and bears date at Avignon. The
following is a literal translation of it:
"To OUR
BELOVED SON AND NOBLEMAN, STEPHEN, PRINCE OF BOSNIA: Knowing that thou art a
faithful son of the church, we therefore charge thee to exterminate the
heretics in thy dominions, and to render aid and assistance unto Fabian, our
inquisitor, forasmuch as a large multitude of
heretics, from many and divers parts collected, hath flowed together unto the
principality of Bosnia, trusting there to sow their obscene errors and to dwell
there in safety. These men, imbued with the cunning of the Old Fiend and armed
with the venom of their falseness, corrupt the minds of Catholics by outward
show of simplicity and lying assumption of the name of
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
Christians; their speech crawleth like
a crab and they creep in with humility, but in secret they kill and are wolves
in sheep's clothing, covering their bestial fury as a means whereby they may
deceive the simple sheep of Christ."31
How terrible
the danger that these ravenous lambs would tear and destroy the meek, gentle,
and timid wolves of the Inquisition !
This was not
the first time that the Bogomils had been accused of hypocritical meekness and
gentleness. Three centuries before, the presbyter Cosmas had said, "When
men see their lowly behavior, then think they that they are of true belief;
they approach them, therefore; and consult them about their souls' health. But
they, like wolves that will swallow up a lamb, bow their head, sigh, and answer
full of humility, and set themselves up as if they knew how it is ordered in
heaven." And to the same purport
Euthymius, the scribe of Alexius Comnenus, who furnished the evidence on which
the Bulgarian elder was sent to the stake, says of them: "They bid those who listen to their doctrines to keep the
commandments of the gospel, and to be meek and merciful and full of
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
brotherly love. Thus they entice men on
by teaching all good things and useful doctrine, but they poison by degrees and
draw to perdition." We could hardly ask for stronger evidence than these
hosthe popes and priests supply of the purity of the lives and doctrines of
those whom they persecuted.
SECTION XXI.
FURTHER
PERSECUTION.—A LULL IN ITS FURY UNDER
THE SERBIAN CZAR, STEPHEN DUSHAN.—THE REIGN OF THE TVART‑KO DYNASTY
THE appeal to the King of Hungary and the Ban of Bosnia did not
fail of effect. The persecuting edicts went forth in 1330; the inquisitor plied
his satanic arts, and once more " the lilies of the field," as their
elders were wont to call them, were trampled under foot. Many of their leaders
and elders, as well as the believers, were burned or driven from the realm, and
all the horrors of the old crusades were repeated. But all the zeal of the
inquisitor Fabian, seconded by his royal coadjutors, did not suffice to
materially diminish their numbers.
In 1337, Pope Benedict XII., who had
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
succeeded John the Persecutor, made the discovery that Bosnia was as full of heresy as ever, and endeavored to start a fourth crusade against the Bogomils of Bosnia, calling to his aid the Bans of the adjacent states and the King of Hungary; but the Hungarian power was again waning, and the powerful Serbian czar, Stephen Dushan, was already reducing the adjacent banats to subjection. Availing himself of these facts, the Ban, Stephen Kotromanovic, who seems to have been a shrewd ruler, was able to divert them from their purpose.
In 1340 the
Czar Dushan had assumed the over‑lordship over Bosnia, what is now the
Herzegovina, Croatia, Rascia, Sclavonia, Ruthenia, Dalmatia, and a part of
Hungary. Dushan had no sympathy with the Church of Rome, but he was content to
let things remain as they were. The monks made great efforts to convert the
Bogomils, even professing to work miracles for that purpose, and the inquisitor
tried and burned all he dared.
The Serbian over‑lordship came to an end in 1355, with the death of Dushan, and the Ban, Stephen Kotromanovic, busied himself
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
for the next three years with the
effort to gain as his vassals some of the states which after the death of
Dushan had broken off from the suzerainty of Serbia. He secured an
over-lordship over the principality of Chelm (a part of the Herzegovina) and
the banats of Rascia and Zeuta (the present Montenegro).
In
1358, Stephen Tvart‑ko, a
nephew of Louis the Great of Hungary, succeeded to the throne of the banat, and
by his rare tact and ability added to his sway as vassals the Princes of Chelm
and Zeuta, the Ban of Dalmatia, the Zupans of Canal and Tribunja. In 1376 he
wrested from his uncle Louis the permission to assume the title and state of
King of Bosnia. He aspired to still higher honors. He hoped to unite under his
sole dominion all the Sclavonic states of the Balkan, and to rule as Czar over
a wide and powerful empire. His lineage and that of his queen were connected
with the reigning families of all the neighboring states, and, as the
legitimate heir of several of these families, he had a claim on this extended
sovereignty. In his reign of thirty‑three
years
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
he included
under his sceptre a larger territory than any other Bosnian ban or king. His
administration was distinguished by wisdom and toleration. He was no
theologian, and in his own personal belief leaned alternately to the Greek and
the Roman Catholic churches, but his toleration of the Bogomils was steady,
persistent, and generous. During his reign they were free from persecution,
though the Franciscan friars complained to Pope Urban V. in 1369 that he was
the protector of the Patarenes, and the pope attempted in vain to stir up his
enemies against him, writing to the King of Hungary, his uncle, that King Tvart‑ko,
"following in the detestable footsteps of his fathers, fosters and defends
the heretics who flow together into those parts from divers corners of the
world as into a sink of iniquity.”32
The hopes which he had entertained of
extended empire were crushed by the great and fatal battle of Kossovo, in 1389,
and he died in 1391, greatly lamented, though his last days had been clouded by
misfortunes.
The toleration of the Bogomils was continued during the short reign of Tvart‑ko II.
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
(1391‑1396), and increased during
the long reign (1396‑1443) of his successor, Tvart‑ko III.,
surnamed "the Just," who, together with the principal magnates of his
realm, was an adherent to the Bogomil faith. During the long period of eighty‑five
years the demands and threats of the popes were of little avail. Though the
reign of Tvart‑ko III. was for a time disturbed by civil disorders, and
there were at one time two, and at another three, princes professing to be
kings of Bosnia, he was at no time so weak as to fear the incursions of the
allies of Rome.33
SECTION XXII.
THE
REFORMATION IN BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY A BOGOMIL MOVEMENT.—RENEWAL OF PERSECUTION
UNDER KINGS STEPHEN THOMAS AND STEPHEN TOMASEVIC.—THE POBRATIMTSVO.
DURING this period the Bogomils, availing themselves of all their opportunities
for missionary work, were sending aid and encouragement to their brethren in
Bohemia and Hungary, and the Reformation under John Huss and Jerome of Prague was avowedly a Bogomil
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
movement. At this time also their
leaders were men of such learning and culture that Pope Pius II. in 1462 found
it necessary to send the most learned men he could find to Bosnia to refute
their heresies.34
But
with the death of Tvart‑ko III. there came a change. His successor,
Stephen Thomas, was the illegitimate son of one of Tvart‑ko's rivals, and
was raised to the throne by the Bogomils, to
whose communion he belonged. But he was a man of weak and vacillating
temper, and when the crafty papal legate, Thomasini, threatened him with the
rejection of his claims to the throne unless he abjured his faith and became a
Roman Catholic, and promised to reconcile his rivals and to give him a
consecrated crown if he yielded to his demands, the weak king, after a feeble resistance,
consented, abjured, and was baptized into the Roman Catholic fold in 1444. one
of his vassals, Stephen Cosaccia, Duke of St. Sava, was a strict Roman
Catholic, and refused allegiance to him
unless he thus abjured his faith. But no sooner had Stephen Thomas. the Bosnian king, commenced or permitted the persecution of the Bogomils than the Duke of
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
St. Sava (the modern Herzegovina) cut loose from the papal party and joined the Bogomils himself.
In
1446, Stephen Thomas found the sentiments of his people so strongly arrayed
against him that, like the English King John, he was compelled to assemble the
magnates of his realm, and the Bogomil leaders among them, at Coinica, and
grant them large privileges, and, among others, toleration for the Bogomils, but his cowardly and craven nature
led him to falsify his oath and deliver them over to the power of the
Inquisition. In 1450 the Bogomils, wearied and disgusted with his treachery and
the cruelty of the Inquisition, turned for protection
to the Turks, and compelled the king to buy an ignoble peace by the payment of
a large tribute. In 1457 he appealed to the whole Christian world for help
against the infidel, but he was said to have already made with the Turkish
sultan that solemn alliance of sworn brotherhood known to the Sclavonic race as
the Pobratimtsvo.* These
constant changes and tergiversations
*The Probratimtsvo was
a secret rite, performed with much
ceremony and the
mingling of the blood of the two
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
had alienated all his friends from him, and his assassination on the field of Bielaj in 1459 by his step‑brother and his own illegitimate son, Stephen Tomasevic, caused little sorrow.
The
parricide at once usurped the throne, and proved a baser man than his father.
He claimed to be a Roman Catholic pure and simple, and solicited the aid of the
pope, Pius II (AEneas Sylvius), on
the express ground of his desire to commence immediately the extirpation of the
Bogomil heresy. In the first year of his reign he turned the arms of his troops
against his unoffending Bogomil subjects, and in a few months had slaughtered
or driven out of his kingdom forty thousand of them. In 1463 he again appealed
to the pope, apparently in great distress at the near approach of the Turks. He
had occasion for this appeal. He had continued his persecution of the Bogomils,
and they, the majority of the population of his realm, and especially of the
cities, were justly incensed against him.
parties to it, by which they
became sworn brothers and the recipients of each other’s fullest confidence.
The violation of the vow of brotherhood was considered the most horrible of
crimes.
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
The prospect of another influx of Romish heresy‑hunters was not a pleasing one to them, and, finding that they had nothing to hope for from their king, they turned to the Turkish sultan and opened negotiations with him. An agreement was made that they would transfer their allegiance to him, and he in return guaranteed them their personal liberty, free toleration for their religion, freedom from taxation, protection of property, and other privileges.
SECTION XXIII.
OVERTURES TO THE SULTAN.—THE SURRENDER OF BOSNIA TO MOHAMMED
II. UNDER STIPULATIONS.—His BASE TREACHERY.—THE DESTRUCTION AND ENSLAVEMENT OF
THE BOGOMILS OF BOSNIA, AND THE DUCHY OF HERZEGOVINA.
THE sultan crossed the Dwina in June, 1463, and on the 15th of
that month the fortress of Bobovac, the
strongest in Bosnia, and the ancient seat of Bonian bans and kings, surrendered
to him, its governor being a Bogomil.
The treacherous and cowardly king
fled to Jaycze, another strong
fortress, but on the approach of the Turkish pasha escaped to Clissa,
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
where, after forty days' siege, he surrendered
on condition of his life being spared, giving up his treasures, amounting to a
million of ducats. In eight days seventy strong cities, nearly all of them
commanded by Bogomils, opened their gates to the sultan's officers.
But
Mohammed II. was a base and infamously treacherous prince. He used the wretched
Stephen Tomasevic to the utmost, gaining possession through him of all those
towns which had not already surrendered, and then caused him to be executed, with
the most barbarous tortures, on the field of Bielaj, where he had assassinated
his father. We have no tears to shed over this retributive justice upon the
parricide, but the fate reserved for the Bosnians, and particularly for the
Bogomils, was such as to cause the sultan's name to be handed down to after‑ages
as the synonym of infamous perfidy. The most eminent of the Bosnian nobles who
had not escaped to Dalmatia were transported to Asia; thirty; thousand of the
picked youth of Bosnia, sons of the best families, were placed as cadets among
the Janissaries, to be converted to the Mohammedan
faith and recruit the Moslem
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
armies; two hundred thousand of the
inhabitants, including the young and beautiful, were sold as slaves; the cities
and lordly residences were plundered, and the whole land given over to
desolation.
This blow did
not fall at this time on the Herzegovina, as its inhabitants stood by their
duke, Stephen Cosaccia, who, though profligate in life, had protected the
Bogomils, who formed by far the larger part of his people. They fought bravely for their country and drove
away the Turks, but were compelled to pay tribute. Twenty years later, under
the rule of Cosaccia's sons, the
Turkish armies again invaded the duchy, and enacted much the same scenes as they
had done in 1463 in Bosnia.
The results of
this conquest were disastrous for Bosnia, and almost annihilated the Bogomils.
The noble youth who were placed in the hands of the Janissaries came back in
due season Mohammedans in faith, and inherited their old estates; and there is
to this day in Bosnia a large population (more than four hundred thousand)
Sclavonians by birth, but Mohammedans in religion. This fact greatly
complicated the religious question in the recent war.
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
SECTION XXIV.
THE BOGOMILS
NOT UTTERLY EXTINGUISHED.—THEIR INFLUENCE ON SOCIETY, LITERATURE, AND PROGRESS
IN THE MIDDLE AGES.—CONCLUSION.
As to the
Bogomils, there is little reason to suppose that any considerable portion of
the adult population embraced Mohammedanism. Of the two hundred thousand
slaves, a part—perhaps the larger part—may have done so, but those who were
left wifeless and childless could do little to maintain their faith. The Roman
Catholics are to this day weak there, and mainly made up of Italian and
Austrian immigrants into the country; the main portion of the Christian
population is Sclavonic and attached to the Greek Church, and have come in from
the adjacent states.
But Bogomilism did not entirely die out. In the sixteenth, seventeenth, and
eighteenth centuries we find traces of the Bogomils, sometimes as objects of
persecution, and both Gardiner and Blunt, ecclesiastical Cyclopaedists, say
that for many years past they have had churches in the vicinity of Philippopolis. In the insurrection of 1875 among the
refugees
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
from Turkish cruelty and outrage who
fled to the adjacent Austrian provinces, they were found in considerable
numbers. Mr. W. J. Stillman, our consul at Ragusa, ascertained that there were
about two thousand of them in that city alone, and mostly from Popovo and its
vicinity, and learned that they were still numerous in the valley of the
Narenta and near Crescevo.
Mr.
D. Mackenzie Wallace, in his recent very able work on Russia (Am. ed., New
York, 1877, pp. 293‑305), gives a very full account of the Molokani and Stundisti, two Protestant sects holding nearly the same views, whom
he found in Southern and Central Russia, and whose tenets he studied with great
care and impartiality, visiting and conferring with their elders in regard to
their views.
This
narrative of Wallace shows beyond question that these South Russian sects are
the legitimate spiritual descendants of the Bogomils. Mr. Wallace, who is, at
least in sympathy, a Presbyterian of the Kirk of Scotland, says that he was
attracted to the Molokani (Hepworth
Dixon says the name means "milk‑drinkers")
because he had
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
discovered
that their doctrines had at least a superficial resemblance to Scotch
Presbyterianism. After some interviews with their leading men he found that,
though some of their doctrines had a strong resemblance to Presbyterianism
(especially, it would what may be considered their Calvinism, though they never
had heard of Calvin), yet there were these differences: Presbyterianism has an
ecclesiastical organization and a written creed, and its doctrines have long
since become clearly defined by means of public discussion, polemical
literature, and general assemblies. "The Molokani,” he says, "hold that Holy Writ is the only rule of
faith and conduct, but that it must be taken in the spiritual, and not in the
literal, sense. For their ecclesiastical
organization the Molokani take as
their model the early apostolic church as depicted in the New Testament, and
uncompromisingly reject all later authorities. In accordance with this model,
they have no hierarchy and no paid clergy, but choose from among themselves a presbyter (or elder) and two
assistants—men well known among the brethren for their exemplary
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
life and their knowledge of the
Scriptures—whose duty it is to watch over the religious and moral welfare of
the flock. On Sundays they hold meetings in private houses—they are not allowed
to build churches—and spend two or three hours in psalm‑singing, prayer,
reading the Scriptures, and friendly conversation on religious subjects."
Mr. Wallace
declares, after the most intimate intercourse with them, that their knowledge
of the Scriptures (atlthough they were all peasants) left nothing to be
desired. Some of them seemed to know the whole of the New Testament by heart,
and they were exceedingly familiar with the Old Testament. They are Sclaves,
and their Bibles, like those of the Bogomils, are in the Sclavonic tongue.
"Never have I met," he says, "men more honest and courteous in
debate, more earnest in the search after truth, and more careless of
dialectical triumphs than these simple uneducated peasants."
There exists among the Molokani a system of
severe moral supervision. If a member has been guilty of drunkenness or any act
EARLY PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
unbecoming a
Christian, he is first admonished by the presbyter (or elder) in private or
before the congregation; and if this does not produce the desired effect, he is
excluded for a longer or shorter period from the meetings and from all
intercourse with the members. In extreme cases expulsion is resorted to. On the
other hand, if any one of the members happens to be, from no fault of his own,
in pecuniary difficulties, the others
will assist him. This system of
mutual control and mutual assistance has no doubt something to do with the fact
that the Molokani are always
distinguished from the surrounding population
by their sobriety, uprightness, and material prosperity. The testimony from all
quarters was that they were a quiet, decent, sober people. Their doctrines were
in general those of evangelical Protestant churches, but, as they had no creed
but the Bible, Mr. Wallace believed
that there was room for considerable diversity of theological views, though he
acknowledged that he was unable to recognize any evidence of that diversity.
"One gentle. man," he says, "ventured to assure me that their doctrine was a modified form of Manichaeism"
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
(the old charge), "but I did not put much confidence in his opinion, for I found on questioning him that he knew of Manicheism nothing but the name." The prevalent opinion, which they did not controvert, was "that they were the last remnant of a curious heretical sect which existed in the early Christian church." They are persecuted by the Greek Church and the government, though not so bitterly now as formerly. They are said to be loyal and patriotic toward the emperor, but all the efforts of the Greek Patriarchs or the government to convert them to the views of the orthodox Greek Church have proved utterly unavailing. Mr. Wallace estimates their numbers at several hundred thousand.
The
Stundisti, whom we know to be
Baptists, are a sect of more recent origin, but agree generally in their
doctrines and practices with the Molokani.
There comes to us also, since the conclusion of the war
between Russia and Turkey, cheering evidence that four hundred years of Moslem
sway and the profession of the Moslem faith have not utterly driven out from the
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
hearts of
these descendants of Bogomil nobles the recollection of the faith of their
fathers. Several recent writers on Turkey and Bosnia have intimated that these
Sclavonic Mohammedans were not so strongly opposed to Christianity as has been
supposed; and Mr. A. J. Evans, who has been travelling in Bosnia again in 1877
and 1878, thus writes in his Illyrian
Letters: "An active leader
among the Begs (Sclavonic Mohammedan nobles) answered as follows the question
whether he would imitate some of his associates, who were already receiving
baptism from Bishop Strossmeyer (the Austrian Roman Catholic bishop) and his
priests: 'Not yet, but when the time comes and the hour of fate strikes, I will do so in another style. I will call together
my kinsmen, and we will return to the faith of our ancestors as one man. We
would choose to be Protestants, as are you English; but if need be, we will
join the Serbian Church. Latin we will never be. If we go into a Roman church,
what do we understand? My family has never
forgotten that they were once of your
faith and were made Moslems by
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
force. In my castle there is a secret
vault in which there are kept the ancient Christian books and vessels that they
had before the Turks took Bosnia. My father once looked into it, then closed it
up, and said, 'Let them be; they may serve their turn yet.' How many of these
secret vaults in Bosnia may yet be opened and their Christian books brought
out?"
But though
thus apparently stamped out in the land of its birth and its greatest triumphs,
under the heel of the fanatic Turk, the doctrine of these martyrs of the faith
survived and in more western lands pervaded and influenced the religious life,
the social condition, and the literature of the subsequent centuries.
It
seems to be conclusively demonstrated that in his early life the greatest of
Italian poets, Dante Alighieri, was a mender
of the sect of Patarenes, one of the names by which the Bogomils of Italy were
designated; and though later in life he probably gave in his adhesion to the
Romish faith, the evidence of his early doctrinal beliefs is manifest in
the "Heaven" and "Hell" of the Divina Commedia. That the
same views had taken full
EARLY PROTESTANTS
OF THE EAST
possession of
the mind of John Milton two hundred years later, whose Paradise Lost might, so far as its theology and demonology are
concerned, have been written by a Bogomil djed,
or elder, is equally certain. Nor is this surprising. Milton had passed
some years in Italy and in close association with the Waldenses the
representatives of the Bogomils in Italy and Piedmont, and as Cromwell's
secretary of state he nobly interfered in their behalf. The later Puritan
writers, and notably Baxter, Howe, Alleine, and others, give unconscious
evidence in their writings of the sources from which their doctrines and
teachings were drawn. Even if there were no other evidence of the affiliation
of the Puritans, both of earlier and later times, with the Bogomils, the
doctrine of a personal devil, as now held by all the Puritan churches, would be
sufficient to demonstrate it.
The
great movements of the Reformation under Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, and
Zwinglius, though absorbing considerable numbers of the Bogomil or Catharist churches in Southern and Central Europe, were in some respects for them a
retrogression. Their Protestantism
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
was purer than that of the Reformers; they had never bowed the knee to Baal,
and their mouths had never kissed him; they had never held any allegiance to
the Romish pope or the Greek patriarch; they had never accepted any of the
erroneous doctrines of these corrupt churches; and neither the paedo‑baptism
nor the transubstantiation of the Church of Rome, nor the consubstantiation of
the Greek and Lutheran churches, had any advocates among them. They were
"Christians" pure and simple, yielding nothing to conciliate any of
those who had a lingering affection for Romanism.
It
is not wonderful, then, that the Waldenses in Italy and Piedmont should have
maintained their independent position, nor that in England—where the original Reformation was deficient in thoroughness, and
where there were in the country many of the descendants of the Publicani of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries*—there should have been a
revolt from the partial Reformation
in the shape of that Puritanism which
established a
*In
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these confessor" to the truth were
often 'known as " Hot Gospellers."9
EARLY
PROTESTANTS OF THE EAST
purer Protestantism there, and has been
the corner‑stone of free institutions in our own country.35
The spiritual
lineage which we have thus briefly and imperfectly traced through the ages from the tenth century to our
own time is one of which every true Protestant may well be proud. Though no
gorgeous temples, no stately cathedrals, have made their worship conspicuous
and attractive; though no historian has described, with vivid and touching
pathos, those scenes of martyrdom where scores of thousands yielded up their
lives rather than deny their faith; though no troubadour has given immortality
to their paeans of victory, as the flames enwrapped them in a glorious winding‑sheet,—yet
their record is on high, and He whose approval is worth infinitely more than
all the applause of men, has inscribed on the banner of His love, which
surrounds and protects the humblest of those who suffered for His sake, the
legend, " BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART; for they shall see God.”
APPENDIX I.
IT
has long been a matter of surprise to those who have studied the history of
Bosnia and Bulgaria that the Bogomils, who for so many centuries were numerous
and powerful not only in those states, but in Western Europe also, should have
left such slight traces of a literature behind them. That it was not for want
of culture or learning was certain, for on at least two occasions the popes,
and those the most accomplished occupants of the papal throne, issued their
bull requiring that the most learned men of the universities of Italy and
France should be sent to Bulgaria and Bosnia to reason with the elders of the
Bogomils and confute their heresies. These Roman Catholic scholars did not
succeed in convincing either the elders or their followers. A passage from Mr.
Evans' Illyrian Letters, which we
have quoted elsewhere, gives the probable explanation of the scarcity of the
Bogomilian literature—that it was concealed at the time of the Turkish
invasion, and will probably be brought to light soon.
Meantime, a careful
search has discovered a single document (aside from the Bogomil Gospels, a
Codex of 14O4, but preserving the primitive forms of speech) which illustrates
their doctrines or practices. This is a manuscript of wholly uncertain date, partly in the Romance and partly in the Provencal language, discovered in France in 1851,
and now in the Palaisdes
APPENDIX.
Arts
at Lyons. This was published by Cunitz in Jena in 1852.* It is rather a liturgy
and book of forms than a confession or declaration of faith, and, if genuine,
pertains to the very latest period of their history, and to the French and
Italian rather than the Bosnian branch of the church. The work is not complete.
It commences with a short liturgy, of which the Lord's Prayer and the Doxology
are in the Romance language, and the first seventeen verses of St. John's
Gospel in Latin. The remainder of the work is in the Provencal tongue, and
consists, first, of an act of confession; secondly, of an act of reception
among the number of Credentes or
believers; thirdly, of an act of reception among the Perfecti, or perfect; fourthly, of some special directions for the
faithful; and fifthly, of an act of consolation in case of sickness. It is
prescribed that the act of confession is
to be made to God only, and it is concluded with the following form of prayer:
" 0 thou holy and good Lord, all these things which happen to us in our
senses and in our thoughts, to thee we do manifest them, holy Lord; and all the
multitude of sins we lay upon the mercy of God, and upon holy prayer, and upon
the holy gospel: for many are our sins. 0 Lord, judge and condemn the vices of
the flesh. Have no mercy on the flesh born of corruption, but have mercy on the
spirit placed in prison, and administer to us days and hours, and
genuflections, and fasts, and orisons, and preachings, as is the custom of good
* The extracts from this document given below are from the
able though somewhat prejudiced article on the Cathari in McClintock and
Strong's Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological,
and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol.
ii. pp. 155‑157.
APPENDIX.
Christians,
that we may not be judged nor condemned in the day of judgment with
felons."
The
act of reception into the number of Credentes,
or believers, seems to have been. analogous to "the hand of fellowship
" in many of the modern churches, and, contrary to the conjectures of some
of the Germail critics, seems to have presupposed baptism. It was called the
delivery of the orison, because a copy of the Lord's Prayer was given to the
new believer. The following is the form as given in this manuscript:
If a believer is in abstinence, and the Christians are
agreed to deliver him the orison, let them wash their hands, and the believers
present likewise. . And then one of the bons
hommes, the one that comes after the elder, is to make three bows to the
elder, and then to prepare a table, then three more bows, and then he is to put
a napkin upon the table; and then three more bows, and then he is to put the
book upon the napkin; and then let him say the Benedicite, parcite nobis. And then let the believer make his
salute and take the book from the hand of the elder. And the elder must
admonish him and preach to him. from fitting testimonies (or texts). And if the
believer's name is Peter, he is to say, 'Sir Peter, you must understand that
when you are before the church of God you are before the Father and the Son and
the Holy Ghost.' For the Church is called 'assembly,' and where are the true
Christians, there is the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost."
The
formula of the Consolamentum—which by this
and perhaps other branches of the Catharists was called "the baptism of
the Spirit" was as follows: "Jesus
Christ says in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts
APPENDIX.
i. 5) that ‘John surely baptized
with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost.’ This holy baptism of
imposition of hands wrought Jesus Christ, according as St. Luke reports; and he
said that his friends should work it, as reports St. Mark:’ ‘They shall lay
hands on the sick and they shall receive good.’ And Ananias wrought this
baptism on St. Paul when he was
converted. And afterward Paul and Barnabas wrought it in many places. And
St. Peter and St. John wrought it on
the Samarit tans. This holy baptism, by
which the Holy Spirit is given, the church of God has had it from the apostles
until now, and it has come down from bons hommes
to bons hommes, and will do so to the end of the world.”
We do not attach much importance to this manuscript. It is
probably a manual of forms written out for the convenience of some of the
elders or bons hommes of the Toulouse
Albigenses or Catharists, or perhaps the Vaudois, as late as the fifteenth
century, or possibly even in the sixteenth; but the evidence is conclusive that
these forms were a departure from the practices of the Bogomils. They and all
the earlier Catharists utterly repudiated the practice of speaking of the
evangelists or apostles, or indeed any one else, as saints‑as, for
instance, St. Paul, St. John, etc.; and this was one of the accusations brought
against them by their enemies. Another point upon which they were strenuous was
that all the Scripture readings and all the prayers, hymns, and responses
should be in the common or vulgar tongue. In this, on the contrary, the Gospel
is in Latin and the Psalm is referred to by its Latin title, while the Lord's Prayer and the
Doxology are in the
APPENDIX.
Romance tongue, which to them was a foreign Ianguage. The ideas of apostolic succession and of the repeated reverences to the elder are also wholly foreign to the views or practices of the Bosnian or Bulgarian Bogomils. These departures from the ancient faith and practice make it probable that the congregation or congregations for whom this manuscript manual was prepared were composed of converts from Romanism, who had retained some of their old forms and doctrines and incorporated them into their new faith.
APPENDIX Il.
WERE THE PAULICIAN AND BOGOMIL CHURCHES
BAPTIST CHURCHES?
WITHIN
the last two years a Baptist newspaper of large circulation and conducted with
great ability has asserted editorially that " there was no evidence at
present attainable which justified a belief in the existence of Baptist
churches during the period between the fourth and eleventh or twelfth
centuries." The writer did not deny, although he did not assert, that
there might have been during that period individuals who held to Baptist
doctrines.
But
great men are not always wise, and their dicta are not always infallible. It
happened, at the very time that this statement was made, that there was
evidence attainable that during the period specified Baptist churches as pure
as any now in existence were maintained, and their membership during a part of
that time was as large as, and perhaps larger than,
APPENDIX.
that of the Baptist churches throughout the world at the present day.
In our
demonstration on this point it may be well to define what are and have been in
all ages the distinguishing characteristics of Baptist churches.
It will be
said, perhaps, by persons who have not given the matter much thought, "
Oh, everybody knows what is the sole characteristic of Baptists: they believe
in immersion as the only baptism." This is true; but so do the Greek
Church, the Mormons, the Campbellites or Disciples, the Christians, the Free‑Will
Baptists, etc., etc. " Well, they reject infant baptism." True; but
so do most of those named above.
A critical examination of the history and doctrines of the
Baptist churches of Europe and America reveals the following negative and
positive particulars as characteristic of them all.
1. They take the word of God, as revealed in the Bible, as
their only sufficient rule of faith and practice.
2. They regard
faith in Jesus Christ as God manifest in the flesh, and as having suffered and
died the shameful death of the cross, and risen again for their justification,
and ascended to heaven as their Mediator, as the only sufficient assurance of
salvation, and that this faith is always connected with repentance and
regeneration.
3. They refuse
to be bound by any creed or confession of faith or doctrine which is not
clothed in the words of the Scriptures.
4. Their only initiatory
rite for membership is the immersion of the
believer in water on the
profession
APPENDIX.
of
his faith. This they do not deem a saving ordinance, but a simple act of
obedience to the command of Christ.
5.
They entirely repudiate infant baptism, both as unscriptural and injurious to
its subjects, inasmuch as baptism is only the profession of the act of faith on
the part of the believer himself, and no one is able to promise for an infant
that it shall believe at a future time. And they regard this baptism of infants
as tending to hypocrisy and the introduction of unconverted persons into the
church, and of no significance except where it entitles the infant, as it does
in some countries, to state privileges.
6. They regard
the Lord's Supper as a memorial, not a mystical, service, to be offered only to
baptized believers. They repudiate utterly the mystical ideas of the ordinance
entertained by some of the Reformed churches, the consubstantiation theory as
held by the Lutheran, and still more decidedly by the Greek Church, and the
transubstantiation doctrine of the Romish Church and its allies.
7. They abhor
the worship of the Virgin Mary in all its forms, and that of the saints,
prayers to the saints, prayers or masses for the dead, the worship of pictures,
icons, images, crucifixes, and everything of the sort, monachisin and
seclusion, and all attempts to acquire merit by superfluous good works.
8. They
believe in the necessity of a pure and holy life—not for the attainment of
heaven or of any earthly or heavenly good, but from gratitude to Him who hath
redeemed them.
9. They have always held to freedom of conscience and worship. They have never, when they have had
APPENDIX.
the power, persecuted
any for holding views which differed from theirs, but have always granted to
others what they claimed for themselves—the freedom to worship God according to
the dictates of their conscience.
10. They have
always been a plain people—plain in dress, plain in their houses of worship,
and plain in their speech. Their churches have not been decorated with cross or
crucifix, statue or image, lectern, altar, reredos, or lighted candles. No
"storied windows dight" have displayed full‑length portraits of
the Saviour, the apostles, or saints. No chimes of bells ring out for them the
announcement of church holy‑days. Even in the midst of the most gorgeous
displays of church architecture and decoration they have been content with
perfect plainness.
11. They have
never acknowledged any hierarchy, archbishops, bishops, deans, archdeacons, and
priests, nor have any of the monastic orders ever gained even a momentary
foothold in their churches. Their pastors, teachers, or elders are chosen from,
and licensed and ordained by, the churches, and these possess no exclusive or
ecclesiastical authority; and though held greatly in esteem and love for their
works' sake, they have no ruling power or right of absolution beyond other
members of the church, except what is derived
from their intellectual attainments, their study of God's word, and
their earnest devotional spirit.
We think no
one familiar with our denomination would question, for a moment, the right of a
church which held these views, and practised in accordance with them, to be
considered a Baptist church and entitled to receive the hand of fellowship at
once.
APPENDIX.
Will
any intelligent man who has carefully
read this historical sketch point out a single item in which the Paulicians and
Bogomils failed to come up to the standard of Baptist churches of the present
day?
A great deal has been said of the gross doctrinal errors of
the Paulicians, and they have been confounded (wilfully in some instances) with
the Manichaeans, Novatians, and other sects whose doctrines they vehemently
repudiated. The early ecclesiastical historians, who have given us such
exaggerated pictures of their heresies, were themselves mostly priests or monks
of the Greek Church, bitter partisans, and champions of a church which enforced
uniformity of dogma at the point of the sword. From them alone, unfortunately,
is nearly all our information in regard to the doctrines of these early
Protestants derived. They had every temptation to misrepresent, and we know
that in many instances they did so. For a period of ten centuries they
persisted, against their earnest protests, in calling the Paulicians and
Bogomils, Manichaeans, and imputing to them the dualistic doctrine, which was
perhaps held, though probably only in a modified form, by some of the earlier
Paulicians. They attributed to them also the phantastic theory of Christ's
mission to earth, of which there is no trace later than the sixth or seventh
century. In Our narrative we have admitted these charges as probable, in the
absence of any evidence to the contrary, but they certainly disappeared
speedily before the stronger and clearer light of God's word. Meantime, these views, if theoretically held for a
time, were no bar to a saving faith in Christ, and did not prevent
them from leading lives of such
APPENDIX.
holiness and purity
that even their adversaries were compelled
to acknowledge their excellence. Nor did they prohibit their making the
most active exertions for the conversion of the world. They were, with all their errors, sons of
God, without reproach, epistles of Christ known and read of all men.
At a period
when the sword was the usual weapon for conversion, and the doctrines of the
church were thrust down the throats of the unconverted "will he, nill
he," the Paulicians of Armenia were sending out their missionaries two and
two, unarmed except with the word of God, among the savage and pagan
Bulgarians, to lead them to Christ and to teach them the way of salvation; and
they were wonderfully successful. Many centuries before either the Greek or the
Roman Church had thought of the possibility of the devotion of holy women to
the nursing of the sick, the care and instruction of the poor and ignorant and
of little children, and all those works of mercy which have made the names of
the "Sisters of Charity" and of "Mercy" so widely honored,
devout women of the Paulician and Bogomil churches were giving themselves to
these good works; and not only our modern missions, but our modern Sunday‑schools
and hospitals for the sick, find their models and origin among these humble
people.
Grant, even, that in their earlier history, with but scanty light and
with only small portions of the word of God accessible to them, they had fallen
into theoretic errors in regard to the two principles of good and evil, and with their vivid Oriental imaginations had
speculated upon the possibility of the phantastic theory of our
Lord's mission to earth, were
APPENDIX.
these views any more
crude than those of many genuine converts from heathenism at the present day?
And when we set in the balance against these their simple faith in Christ,
their repudiation of Mariolatry, invocations to saints, the worship of images
and pictures, and, above all, their holy living and earnest working for the
propagation of the truth, why should we turn away from them as heretics and
unworthy of the Christian name?
The Greek and the Roman churches, their violent and
relentless persecutors, who boasted of their orthodoxy, were, even at their
best, far more heretical, both in doctrine and in practice, than the
Paulicians. Their churches were decked and filled with images, sculptures,
icons, and paintings of the Virgin Mary and the saints, and even with paintings
of traditional scenes in the lives of saints and emperors which would now bring
a blush even upon a cheek of brass; the idolatries, practised in both churches
in the worship of the Virg in and the saints and emperors, and the adoring of
crucifixes and relies, were open and gross; while the conduct of emperors and
empresses, the spiritual heads of the church, was so infamous in its
criminality that it put to shame even the worst of the pagan emperors of Rome. There were corruption, simony, theft, profligacy,
and the most horrible licentiousness everywhere. All these things passed
without rebuke, or at most with very
gentle reproof, from the ecclesiastical historians of the times, who reserved the thunders of their denunciations
for the pure and saintly Paulicians.
At a later period the Romish Church emulated,
and even surpassed, the Greek Church in the
APPENDIX.
infamy of its
priesthood, the cruelty of its persecutions of the hapless Bogomils, and the
horrible corruption and impurity of its popes, bishops, priests, monks, and
nuns.
When
the hidden treasures of sacred books, manuscripts, and communion‑vessels
preserved in the secret chambers of castle‑vaults in Bosnia and the
Herzegovina for four hundred years and more by the Moslem descendants of Bogomil
nobles shall be brought to light, as they soon will be, we shall learn more in
detail of the doctrinal views of these Bogomil churches, but it is not to be
anticipated that we shall find anything to their discredit; for holy living and
careful, thorough study of God's word ensure sound doctrine. "If any man
will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine."
Courage and firmness in defending
their faith, coupled with a patient endurance of persecution for righteousness'
sake, was a characteristic of the Paulicians, and later of the Bogomils. Evans,
a most impartial writer, estimates that between the eighth and fifteenth
centuries nearly a million of these Protestants perished by martyrdom in
Bulgaria, Bosnia, and the Herzegovina. But when, as in the ninth century, the
Greek Empress Theodora attempted and vowed their entire extermination, they
showed themselves no cowards or cravens in their defence of their hearths,
their homes, and their faith, but drove back their cruel persecutors with such
vigor that they made them quake in their gilded palaces in Constantinople.
Then followed an act which we, alone of
all the Christian denominations, are warranted in claiming as distinctively
a development of, one of our fundamental
APPENDIX.
mental principles—the establishment of the free state and city of Tephrice, whose every citizen was at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience without let or hindrance. Where did these Christian mountaineers get this idea? All around them there was bitter persecution for conscience sake—they themselves had seen one hundred thousand or more of their brethren slain for their faith at the command of the infamous Theodora—yet, while flushed with their victory over their persecutors, they pause and found a state where persecution for conscientious belief shall be unknown, where every creed and every unbeliever shall find shelter from persecution. This free state lasted for nearly a hundred and fifty years; and though it was too early for permanence, since the nations were not capable of grasping so grand an idea, yet it existed Iong enough to show that those whom Christ makes free are free indeed.
And during its existence the freedom of opinion maintained there was not apathy or indifference. Far from it. The free city of Tephrice was the centre and seat of a missionary enterprise which has had no parallel since the time of the apostles. The missionary elders went forth two and two, sustained by their brethren at home, throughout Bulgaria, Bosnia, and Serbia, preaching the word, and the pagan Bulgarians and Bosniacs were converted in such numbers that their enemies of the Greek Church began to add to the other opprobrious names which they gave to the Paulicians that of Bulgars, which after a time was corrupted into " Bougres," by which term, among others, they were known for centuries.
APPENDIX.
At length so many of these missionaries migrated into Bulgaria that Tephrice became nearly depopulated, and fell into the hands of the Saracens. At a later period, when the Bogomils were, as was the case several times, the masters of Bosnia for forty, sixty, or, in one instance, a hundred years, they never retaliated upon their persecutors the wrongs which they had endured, but always advocated the largest liberty of opinion.
That
the Bogomils of Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Serbia in the eleventh and following
centuries had purged themselves from those erroneous doctrines which were
taught by the earlier Paulicians, and were as clear in their doctrinal views as
the Baptist churches here to‑day, is abundantly evident from the
reluctant testimony of their adversaries. They do not quite abandon their old
nickname of Manichaeans in speaking of them, but oftener they call them
Patarenes, Bougres, Ketzers, Publicani, and sometimes Arians, which is widest
of the mark of all, for their belief in the divinity of Christ and his equality
with the Father was as sound as that of the Athanasian Creed.
If their affiliation with all the purest Reformers before
the Reformation were not so thoroughly demonstrated as it is, we might have
anticipated it from their known missionary spirit; but there is no fact in
history better substantiated than that the Bogomil churches in Bosnia were the
mother‑churches from which originated, through the labors of their
faithful missionaries, the congregations of
Waldenses, Vaudois, Poor Men of Lyons, Catharists, Ketzers, Publicani,
Bohemians, and Hussites; and it is equally certain that
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
APPENDIX.
and probably both earlier
and later, there was an annual intercourse kept up between these churches and
the mother‑churches in Bosnia. Eventually there were probably some
diversities of doctrine, which crept in among the Western churches; the
manuscript found at Lyons in 1851, and which contains a form of worship
certainly not earlier than the latter part of the fifteenth century—which we
give in part elsewhere indicates considerable departures from the earlier
faith. What these were it is difficult to say. They certainly did not include
infant baptism, which was repudiated by most of the Christian churches of the
Continent that had never been in fellowship with Rome. They may have admitted,
in some cases, affusion or sprinkling in the place of immersion in baptism, but
this is uncertain, and in the more southern churches improbable.
But there is one fact which should be kept in mind: the
Bogomils, and, earlier, the Paulicians, as well as the churches which
affiliated with them in Western Europe, refused to be called reformers, or even
Protestants, if by that term there should be any implication that they were
originally seceders from either the Roman or
the Greek churches. They said uniformly and boldly, "We have never had any connection with those
corrupt churches; and though we protest against their false doctrines, we have
no belief that they can ever be reformed into churches of Christ." It was
this bold and consistent opposition
to these great churches which so
inflamed their wrath and made them such
bitter persecutors of the Bogomil
churches. As a consequence of this, as
we have noticed in the history, none
of those churches which
APPENDIX.
had affiliated with
the Bogomils of Bosnia were much enlarged by the Reformation, and most of them
maintained a separate existence after that event.
This is just the position that the
Baptist churches, and they only, have always occupied. They did not come out
from Rome, for they never belonged to it. They sympathize, indeed, with what is
good in the work of the Reformation, and with the churches which cannot go
farther back than Luther or Calvin or Zwinglius for their origin; yet all of
those churches retain, in their ordinances, their infant membership, and their
hierarchy, some traces of their former adherence to the Church of Rome. The
white robe of their profession has still some stains upon it. The Baptist
churches, on the other hand, trace their spiritual lineage back in an unbroken
line through myriads of white‑robed martyrs who never were defiled by
contact with Rome to the days of the apostles, and reckon as among their
earliest elders and preachers the names of Paul and Peter and John, of Stephen
and Philip and Barnabas, of Silas and Timothy and Titus; and the only priest
they know is the Great High Priest who is passed into the heavens, the Shepherd
and Bishop of souls.
In
this noble position we stand, as a denomination, alone, though the early
Puritans of England might have shared it with us had they not given up their
birthright by adopting the twin errors of affusion and infant baptism from
Rome.
NOTES.
1(C. II.). The denial
of their practice of water‑baptism,
etc.—Harmenopoulos, a Byzantine monk of the tenth century, more candid
than most of his fellows, says, as quoted by Mr. Evans, "that the Bogomils
practised the rite (and if they did they must have received it from the
Paulicians)," but did not attribute to it any perfecting (teleioun) virtue. This last expression
is significant in this connection as showing that this rite was administered to
all the believers (Credentes), in
distinction from the spiritual baptism
or consolamentum (which we have
elsewhere described), which was only administered to those who were admitted to
the ranks of the Perfecti or perfect
ones, upon whom this spiritual baptism was supposed to exert a perfecting virtue. It is, we
believe, generally admitted that the
early Armenian Church, of which the Paulicians were an offshoot, did not
practise trine immersion, like the Greek Church, though they immersed their
converts once and applied the unction
three times. At a later period and at the present day they immerse the
subject, generally an infant, once in
the font, and then pour water from the hand upon its head three times, adding
also the anointing and other ceremonies. I have not been able to find a copy of
Harmenopoulos' history in any of our
libraries.
See further, on this point, the testimony of Alanus de
Insulis, about A. D. 1200, quoted in Note 3, C. viii.
2(C. II.). Jirecek, Geschichte
der Bulgaren, pp. 180, 181 Presbyter Cosmas (a Greek priest of the tenth
century), in his Slovo na Eretiki, cited
by Hilferding; Serben und Bulgaren (German
translation, vol. i. p. 120).
3(C. II.). Hilferding, in
his work named above, quotes from the presbyter Cosmas a description of two
sects of Paulicians, of which the first held to doctrines more distinctly
dualistic than the second. The latter, whose doctrines we have summarized in this section, was, he acknowledges,
much
the most numerous. Hilferding identifies
the
NOTES.
first with a Bulgarian sect known as "The Church of
Dregovisce," which eventually became extinct, and the second with
"The Church of Bulgaria," which were the spiritual ancestors of the
Albigenses. He says further that the Italian inquisitor and renegade Reinero
Sacconi, of the thirteenth century, mentions both in his list of the thirteen
Churches or nations of the Cathari. Hilferding, Serben und Bulgaren (German translation, vol. i. pp. 122‑128
and ff.).
4(C. III.). For this act of Constantine V. see Gibbon's Rome (Bohn's ed., Vol. vi. p. 245).
5(C. IV.). See Gibbon's Rome
(Bohn's ed., vol. vi. p. 242). Gibbon quotes in this and the following note
from Petrus Siculus (pp. 579‑764) and Cedrenus (pp. 541‑545).
6(C.
IV.). Gibbon's Rome (Bohn's ed., vol.
vi. p. 243); Arthur J. Evans, Historical
View of Bosnia (p. 30); Petrus Siculus, Historia
Manichaeorum. Petrus Siculus was for nine months in A. D. 870 a legate from
the Byzantine emperor at Tephrice, negotiating for exchange of prisoners, and
wrote his History there, which was addressed to the new arch bishop of the
Bulgarians. See the account of Petrus Siculus and this history in the Maxima Bibliotheca Patrum (vol. xvi.).
Petrus Siculus, Historia Manichaeorum
(pp. 754‑764, edition of the Jesuit Raderus, Ingoldstadt, 1604, in 4to).
7(C. IV.). Tephrice (Gr. Tefrich), now Divrigni, is in Asia
Minor, about one hundred and forty miles southwest of Trebizond and one hundred
and. seventy south by west of Erzeroum. It is situated on a plain 3116 feet
above the sea. Its present inhabitants are wild and ferocious Koords.
8(C. V.). This derivation of the word Bogomil, or Bogomile was
first given by Epiphanius, a Byzantine writer, quoted in Sam. Andreae's Disquisitio de Bogomilis.
9(C. V.). Recent
Sclavonic writers, quoted by A. J. Evans in Historical Review of Bosnia (p. 31, note).
10VII.). The authorities for
this picture of the Bogomil worship and manners are mostly drawn from
Hilferding's German translation of his Serben
und Bulgaren (vol. i. pp. 118 and ff.). He cites, in regard to these subjects,
The Sunodic of the Czar Boris, written
in the year 1210; the Armenian Chronicle
of Acogh'ig; the Slovo na Eretiki
of the presbyter Cosmas, about 990; the
Panoplia of Euthymius Zygabenus the scribe or secretary of the emperor Alexius
NOTES.
Comnenus,
about 1097 (Gieseler's edition, Gottingen, 1852), and Harmenopoulos, the Greek
monk already referred to, of the tenth century.
11Racki, cited by Jirecek, Geschichte
der Bulgaren (pp. , 177 and ff.); other SouthSclavonic and Byzantine
writers, also cited by Jirecek; the Panoplia
of Euthymius Zyaabenus, translated by Gieseler (Gottingen, 1852), Neander, Church History (Marsh's ed. vol. iv. pp
552 and ff.); Gieseler, De Bogomilis
Commentatio, etc., etc, Sir Henry Spelman (Conciliae vol. ii. p. 59) and
Nubrigiensis (book ii. c. 13), both cited by Jeremy Collier in his Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain
(Lathbury's ed., London, 1852, vol. ii. pp. 247, 248), both say of the
Publicans, whose origin they trace through the Waldenses and Albigenses to
Croatia and Dalmatia, that they refused to be called by any other name than
Christians, and that their views were the same with those attributed to the
Bogomils.
12(C. VIII.). These two classes, the Perfecti and Credentes,
are in mentioned by all writers on the
Bogomils and the sects with which they were affiliated; and it was one of' the
many evidences of their substantial identify with the Albigenses Patarenes,
Vaudois, Catharists, Ketzers, Publicans, Waldenses etc., etc., that the same
classes, under equivalent names, existed in all these sects of' alleged
heretics. Both Jirecek and Hilferding give minute accounts of' this division
of' the Bogomils and of the initiatory rites of' the Perfecti, quoting largely from the Sclavonic and Byzantine writers
already referred to, and their statements are corroborated by Regnier or
Reinero, Petrus Monachus, a Cistercian monk who wrote a history of the. crusade
against the Albigenses, by Alanus de Insulis, whose treatise against the
heretics, written about A. D. 1200, was published by Masson at Lyons, in 1612,
and by Beausobre, Histore du Manichaeisme
(vol. ii. pp. 762‑877). In Provence the Perfecti were called Bons
Hommes, and in Bosnia and Bulgaria, in the Sclavonic. Krstjani dobri Bosniani, or sometimes in both countries tries Sursiteli, or the elect.
Regnier, or Reinero, about A. D. 1250, is the best possible
authority in regard to the number of the Perfecti,
for he had been one of the Credentes,
or believers, among the Patarenes, as the Bogomils of ltaly were, called, and
there is also a tradition that he was a Dalmatian by birth.
13(C.viii., foot-note).To
the authorities here named for the
proposition that the Credentes, or believers,
were baptized must be added Alanus de
Insulis, a French writer
NOTES.
of
about A. D. 1200, whose treatise against heretics was published by Masson of
Lyons in 1612 Ile is cited by Hallam, Middle Ages (vol. iii. pp. 359, 360,
note. Am. edition, 1864). Alanus, speaking of the Albigenses, who are fully
identified with the Bogomils, says, "They rejected infant baptism, but
were divided as to the reason, some saying that infants could not sin and did
not need baptism; others that they could not be saved without faith, and
consequently that it was useless. They held sin after baptism to be irremissible. It does not appear that they rejected
either of the sacraments. They laid great stress upon the imposition of
hands which seems to have been their distinctive rite." Jeremy Collier, in
his Ecclesiastical History of Great
Britain (vol. ii. pp. 338, 339, ed. of 1852), speaking of the Albigenses of
Toulouse, A. D. 1178, gives first the account of their doctrines found in a
letter of the Earl of Toulouse to the Cistercian chapter, as recorded by
Gervase of Canterbury. This letter is full of passion and violence. He declares
that "the sacraments of baptism and the holy eucharist were renounced and
detested by them; . . . in short, all the sacraments of the church are vilified
and disused." "Roger de Hoveden," a somewhat more dispassionate
writer, gives, Collier says, a somewhat different account. His statement is
" that they refused to own infant baptism, declared against swearing upon
any account, expressed themselves with a great deal of satire and invective
against the hierarchy, and refused to be concluded by any other authority
excepting that of the New Testament."
Nothing is
said by Hoveden of their rejection of the sacraments of baptism and the
eucharist, which would certainly have been mentioned by so careful a writer as
Hoveden if it had existed. Indeed, his strongest objection to them was their
wilful persistence in refusing to take all oath.
The noticeable point in all this testimony is that infants
should not be baptized because they had not faith; that a personal profession
of faith was a necessary prerequisite for baptism; that the spiritual baptism
symbolized by the consolamentum was
in their view the baptism of the Holy Ghost, which was only conferred on those
who were already believers, but who wished to become perfect.
The fact that all the Oriental churches practised immersion
only, and that this is still their only mode of baptism, is so well established by the testimony of all ecclesiastical
writers that it seems hardly to need any additional verification; yet perhaps the following references may not be out
of
NOTES.
place:
Neander, Apostelgeschichte (History of Apostolic Church), (i. p.
276); Knapp, Vorlesungen uber die
Christliche Glaubenslehre (ii. p. 453); Hofling, I.c. (i. pp. 46 and ff.); Schaff, History of Apostolic Church (pp. 568‑570); Conybeare and
Howson, Life of St. Paul (i. p. 471); G. A. Jacob, D. D., Ecclesiastical Polity of New
Testament (Am. ed. pp. 258‑279); F. A. Farrar, Life of Christ (vol. i. pp. 114 and ff.); A. Geikie, Life and Words of Christ (vol. i. p.
577, note); Dean Stanley, Eastern, Church
(Eng. ed., p. 34); Philip Smith, Student's
Ecclesiastical History (p. 172).
14(C. IX.). This
testimony is scattered through all the centuries from the sixth to the
fifteenth, and applies alike to the, Patarenes, Catharists, Paulicians,
Bogomils, Albigenses, and Waldenses. Even Petrus Siculus acknowledges their
holy and pure life, and admits that, in 660, Simeon, a Greek priest sent to put
their leader to death, was converted by their heroic and unselfish devotion to
their faith, and became, like the apostle Paul, a missionary and martyr to
their doctrines. The same writer acknowledges that they were not believers in
the doctrines of Manes, and hence were wrongly called Manichaeans: and after
recapitulating six heresies which they held—of which only a modified dualism,
and a belief that Christ brought his body from heaven would now be reckoned
heresies—he confesses that they were endowed with sincere and zealous piety and
were studious of the Scriptures. Gibbon (certainly an impartial witness) says
of the Paulicians, after a very
thorough and protracted study of
the early writers on the subject, "A confession of' simple worship and
blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was their
standard of perfection that the increasing congregations were divided into two
classes of disciples—of those who practised and of those who aspired."
(Gibbon's Rome, Bohn's ed., vol. vi.
p. 249.) The presbyter Cosmas and the secretary of the emperor Alexius
Comnenus, in the works already quoted, and in the words cited elsewhere in this
work, are compelled, though with evident disgust, to testify to the purity, not
only of their lives, but of their conversation.
La Nobla Leyczon, a Provencal poem of Waldensian origin, and of a date not
later than A. D. 1200, contains the following stanza, which illustrates the
purity of the lives of the Waldenses as well as the malignant hostility of
their enemies.
NOTES
Que sel Re troba
alcun bon que vollia amar Dio e temer Jeshu Xrist,
Que non vollia mandire, ni jura, ni
mentir,
Ni avoutrar, ni aucire, ni penre de
l’autruy,
Ni venjar se de li sio ennemie
Illi dison quel es Vaudes e degne do
murir."
A free translation of these lines would be:
"Whoso finds any good man who wishes to love God and
bear witness for Jesus Christ, who will not curse nor swear nor lie, who will
not be an adulterer nor steal nor do wrong to another, nor avenge himself upon
his enemy, people will tell him that that man is one of' the Vaudois, and ought
to be put to death."—Hallam's Middle
Ages (vol. iii. p. 363, note);
Am. ed, do.; Literature of Europe
(vol. i. p. 50, note, Am. ed.).
15(C. XI.). The Alexiadus
of the Princess Anna Comnena is a diffuse, voluminous, and gossipy work after
the fashion of the writers of those days. It abounds in the most fulsome praises of her father, herself, and all
connected with the imperial household. As her father's reign continued for
thirty‑seven years, she expands her wearisome details over many books,
that relating to the entrapping and martyrdom of Basil being the fifteenth. The
Alexiad was translated into French
and largely annotated by the learned
Ducange, and his edition is the only one now generally accessible. This
account of Basil is from liber xv. 486‑494 of' Ducange's edition of' the Alexiad. Gibbon, Decline and Fall (vol. vi. p. 247, and note, Bohn's ed.), affirms that Basil was the only victim burned at
the stake at this time, and there is some reason to think that the statement is
correct; but Alexius within a short time thereafter persecuted the Bogomils to
the death, and the Princess Anna boasts that he entirely exterminated them.
16 (C. XI.).
This colony of Armenian Paulicians is said by Zonaras, (vol. ii. liber 17, p.
209), cited by Gibbon, to have been more numerous and powerful than any that
had gone before from the Chalybian hills to the valleys (of' Mount Haemus. The
date of their migration is said to have been A. D. 970. Anna Commena also
mentions this colony in the Alexiad (liber
xiv. p. 450 et ff.).
These
Armenian Paulicians were probably dualists, and possibly held to the phantastic theory of the advent of
Christ—viz., that he was clothed with an impassive celestial body and that his
death and resurrection were only apparent, and not real. We say "possibly," because, though there were undoubtedly sects more or less intimately
connected
NOTES
with
the Gnostics and Manichaeans in Armenia and Asia Minor who held these views,
yet the evidence that the Paulicians did entertain them is solely furnished by
their bitter enemies, who we know for the next five or six centuries did not
hesitate to propagate the most unblushing falsehoods concerning them.
The statement
that they were Manichaeans was industriously propagated for more than six
centuries, and was fastened upon them in the fifteenth century by King Stephen
Thomas of Bosnia, notwithstanding their earnest and indignant protests through
all their history, and even the fair and impartial Hallam, whose investigations
in regard to these sects were more thorough and exhaustive than those of' any
other writer except Mr. Evans, is so far deceived by this constant reiteration
that he admits its probability in regard to all of' them except the Waldenses,
and perhaps a part of the Catharists. With the proofs, now at our command however,
of the identity of the Catharists and the Waldenses with the Bogomils, this
admission proves fatal to the Manichaean doctrines of the whole. It is
probable, nevertheless, that these Armenian Paulicians formed "The Church of Dregovisce," which
Hilferding says, in chapter i. part i. of his Serben und Bulgaren, was much
more dualistic and field to many errors which were not held by the Christian
church of Bulgaria. The Albigenses of' the earlier dates were the spiritual
children of this church of Dregovisce.
Both Jirecek and Evans notice also one
source of the dualistic doctrines of these early Bulgarian believers. The
Armenian Paulicians were planted in Epirus and Thrace, while the Bulgarians—Bulgares—a mixed race, half Tartar and
half Aryan, were yet pagans, and the Paulicians found them already imbued with
dualistic ideas: they divided their worship between the Black God, the spirit
of evil, and the White God, or spirit of good. Jirecek's words are: "Es
war fur Bogomil keine schwere aufgabe, das unlangst erst dem Heidenthume
entruckte volk fur eine Glaubenslehre zu gewinnen, welche, gleich dem alten
slawischen Mythus von den Bosi und Besi, lehrtdass es zweierlei hohere Wesen
gebe, namlich einen guten und einen losen Gott." (Geschichte der Bulgaren, p.175. See also Evans' Historical Review of Bosnia, pp. 41, 42.) Every one who is
familiar with the operations of' foreign missions among the heathen must have
noticed how ready the native converts are to accommodate anything in their new
views to their old beliefs and
prejudices. A most notable instance of this
is the well‑known
NOTES
known
fact that, in all Buddhist countries, Roman Catholic missionaries have met with
great success, from the similarity of their doctrines of merit, of the
priesthood, of monastic orders, and of instruction, to those already held by
the Buddhists.
But that a closer study of the
Scriptures, when they were translated into the Sclavonic, Italian, Provencal,
German, and English tongues, had led
them to abandon the dualistic doctrines or hold them in a mitigated and not
unscriptural form is evident even from the testimony of' their adversaries.
Thus Petrus (or Robertus) Monachus, a Cistercian monk, who wrote an account of*
the crusades against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century (Cited ill
Hallam's Middle Ages, Am. ed., vol.
iii. pp. 359, 360), says that "many of them" (observe, not all)
"assert two principles or creative beings—a good one for things invisble,
an evil one, for things visible; the things the former author of the New
Testament, the latter of the Old; and they wholly repudiate, except as
possessing a certain authority all those passages of the Old Testament which
are quoted in the New, and even these they only deem worthy to be received on
account of' their reverence for the New Testament." This assertion that
they rejected the entire Old Testament. because they believed it the work of
the evil spirit is reiterated by all the Greek and the Roman Catholic writers
from Petrus Siculus in the ninth century, Monachus and Alanus in the
thirteenth, down to Matthew Paris, Roger do Hoveden, Ralph of Coggeshale, and.
Gervase of Canterbury; yet we have the most conclusive evidence that it was not
true. Euthymius Zygabenus, the secretary of' the emperor Alexius Comnenus when
Basil was examined by the emperor, and a most bitter enemy of the Bogomils,
states in his Panoplia (as cited by
Evans, Historical Review, ete., 1).
36) that the Bogomils accepted seven holy books, which he enumerates as
follows: 1. The Psalms; 2. The Sixteen Prophets, 3, 4, 5, and 6; The Gospels ;
7. The Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Apocalypse. Some writers
have charged them with rejecting the Epistles of Peter and the Apocalypse, but
there is no evidence of this. The Bogomil New Testament was word for word that
of the early Sclavic apostle Methodius. Of this Jirecek furnishes on 1). 177
the most conclusive proofs. If, then, this statement of their enemies like so
many others, is proved to be false, what assurance is there that their alleged
dualistic doctrines were anything more than an old falsehood revamped for the
occasion ?
17(C. XII.). This summary of
the worship and mode of
NOTES
life
of the. Bogomils is substantiated in every point, though with evident
reluctance, by the presbyter Cosmas in his Slovo
na Eretiki, Euthymius Zygabenus in his Panoplia,
Anna Comnena in lib xv. of the Alexiad,
and Sclavonic authorities collected by Jirecek and Hilferding.
18 (C. XIII.). Jirecek,
Geschichte der Bulgaren, p.
180.
19(C. XIII.). The Bosnian chief djed, or elder, seems to have been at this time (about A. D. 1220)
the presiding officer of' the affiliated sects or denominations, somewhat like
the former presidents of' our triennial conventions. He was primus inter pares, but possessed no
judicial or ecclesiastical authority (See Jirecek, Gesehichte der Bulgaren, p.
180).
20(C. XIV.). This is Hilferding's statement.
21(C. XIV.). Schimek, Politike
Geschichte Konigreiche Bosnian und Roma p. 36), cited by Evans, Hist. Rev. of Bosnia p. 43).
22(C. XV.). Schimek,
Pol. Gesefichte des Konigreiche Bosnien, etc. p. 46).
23(C. XV., foot‑note)/ Schimek, as above; Mackenzie and
Irwin’s Serbia.
24(C. XV.). Farlati, "Episcopi Bosnenses" (in his Illyricum Sacrum, vol. iv. p. 45), cited
by Evans, Hist. Rev. of Bosnia p.
44).
25(C. XV.). Evans, Hist.
Rev. of Bosnia (1). 44).
26(C. XV1.).
Regnier or Reinero, about A. D. 1250, is a well‑known authority.
Maitland, Facts and Documents on the
History of the Albiqenses and Waldenses (London, 1832) criticizes his
statements. He is quoted by Mosheim, Beausobre, Gibbon, and Jirecek, but I have
not been able to find in our libraries a copy of his work, and so cannot verify
in person the above statement, though all the authorities I have cited agree in
regard to it.
27(C. XVI.). The substantial identity of these sects, which under so many different names were spread over all Western Europe, and their origin from the Protestants of Bulgaria and Bosnia, was strongly suspected by others than Regnier even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Perhaps the earliest of the writers who gives positive testimony on this point is William Little of Newbury (A. D. 1136‑1220), more generally known as Neubrigiensis or Nubrigiensis from his residence. He was the author of a history of
NOTES
England
from the Norman conquest to A. D. 1197, in five books, and he was an eye‑witness
of much that be describes. His history is found in full in Hearne's collection
of early English histories.
In book ii. chap. 13 of his history be speaks of the coming
of foreign heretics called Publicans into England in 1160. He says: "The
heresy first appeared in Gascoigne, though from what person is uncertain. From
thence the erroneous doctrine spread through a great many provinces of France,
Spain, Italy, and Germany; they gained ground by the remissness of the church
discipline. They were," he says "a company of ignorant rustics, and,
though their understandings were very gross and unimproved, yet their obstinacy
and self‑opinion was such that the convincing them by argument and
retrieving them from their mistake was well‑nigh an impossibility."
Their leader was one Gerhard, who, he admits, had some little learning, but the
rest, about thirty in number, were altogether unlettered. Their language was
High Dutch. Their doctrines, as Gerhard stated them, were identical with those
of the Waldenses and Ketzers. They were orthodox enough, Neubrigiensis says,
concerning the Trinity and the incarnation (no dualism there), but then, as to
many other material points, they were dangerously mistaken; for they rejected
infant baptism and the holy eucharist—i.
e., the doctrine of the real presence—declared against marriage (qu., as
one of the sacraments?) and catholic communion. They were more familiar with
the Scriptures than the bishops of the Council which examined and persecuted
them; and, finding themselves worsted in argument the bishops lost their
temper, admonished them to repent and return to the communion of the church,
and on their declining to do so turned them over to the secular arm, with the
result stated in the text. A later historian, Sir Henry Spelman (1561‑1641),
in relating this incident, declares his belief that they were Waldenses,
although this was the very year that Peter Waldo is said to have formed his
congregation at Lyons. Sir Henry Hallam—whose careful researches in regard to
the whole subject we have already noticed, and who, while admitting the Bulgarian or Bosnian origin of all the other sects,
the Albigenses, Catharists, Ketzers,
Publicans, etc., pleads earnestly for a different paternity for the Waldenses,
mainly on the ground that be does not think they were Manichaeans, as be believes the others to have been—has yet,
with his accustomed fairness, brought forward some very important
proofs that they existed
as a sect long
NOTES
before
Waldo's time, and that some of their original leaders came from Hungary or
countries adjacent to Hungary.
The Waldensian poem La Nobla Leyczon, already referred to
in Note 1 (Ch. IX.), is unquestionably genuine. and the highest authorities agree could not have been written later than the close or the twelfth century, some thirty or thirty‑five years after Peter Waldo
commenced his labors at Lyons. This
time is altogether too short for the development of the condition of persecution
which then existed if the Waldenses had originated from Waldo's labors. But
a still stronger argument for their
existence before the time of Waldo and for their Eastern origin is furnished by
Sir Henry Hallam (Middle Ages, vol.
iii. p. 361, note; American edition).
“I have found, however, a passage in a late work which remarkably illustrates the antiquity of Alpine
Protestantism, if we may depend on the date it assigns to the quotation."
Mr. Planta's History of Switzerland
(p. 93, 4to ed.) contains the following
note: "A curious passage singularly descriptive of the character of the
Swiss has lately been discovered in a manuscript chronicle of the abbey of Corvey, which appears to have been
written about the beginning of the twelfth century. ‘Religionem nostram et omnium Latinae
ecclesiae Christianorum fidem, fidem, laici ex Suavia, Sucia. et Bavaria
humiliare voluerunt: homines seducti ab antiqua progenie simplicium hominum,
qui Alpes et viciniam habitant, et semper amant antiqua. In Suaviam, Bavariam, et Italiam borealem saepe
intrant illorum (ex Sucia) mercatores, qui biblia edisunt memoriter, et ritus ecclesiae aversantur, quos credunt
esse novos. Nolunt imagines venerari,
reliquias sanctorum aversantur, olera
comedunt, raro masticantes carnem, alii nunquam. Appelamus eos idcirco
Manichaeos. Horum quidam ab Hungaria ad eos convenerunt,' etc."
It
is a pity that Mr. Planta should have broken off the quotation, as its continuation might have given us further information concerning these Bosnian
Perfecti, for such they evidently were,
not worshipping images or pictures,
turning away from the relics of the saints and from the so called sacraments of the Romish Church,
thoroughly familiar with the
Scriptures, subsisting on vegetables, rarely
or never eating meat, and while
passing as merchants or hawkers of goods, really exercising their vocation as
missionaries, and preachers of the
word. They too were called Manichaeans, that old term of reproach which for so
many centuries had been forced upon them by their enemies. Their disciples, Hallam admits, were the
Waldenses of the
NOTES
Alpine valleys. If the teachers were regarded as
Manichaeans, their disciples could hardly be called by any other name; and,
though Robert Monachus, Alanus de
Insulis, and, William du Puy, monkish historians of the early part, of the
thirteenth century, as quoted by Sir Henry Hallam, speak of' the Waldenses as
heretics, but less perverse than those they bad previously described, their
testimony in regard to their actual doctrines is hardly to be considered of any
great value.
The fact in the
case seems to have been that Peter Waldo, if not himself one of the Bosnian Perfecti and "mercatores" (he
is said to have been a merchant or trader), was a convert to the Bogomil
doctrines, and, entering the ranks of the Perfecti—or,
as they were called in France at a later date, "Bons Hommes"—became a magister or senior (terms
answering to the strojnik, apostle, or djed, elder, of the Bosnians) to the
church already existing in Lyons, and by his missionary zeal aided powerfully
in propagating the Protestant doctrines in France and Germany. Hallam says that a translation of the Bible was
made by Waldo's direction, and this was probably the first made into the
Provencal tongue, those previously used having probably been either the Vulgate
and Latin of Jerome or the Sclavonic version of Methodius.
Hallam also says
that the missionary labors of the Waldenses were directed toward Bohemia. This
seems to be only so far true as that there was a very free intercommunication
among all the branches of these Protestant churches by means of the
"mercatores," who in all their histories have so important a place.
Regnier mentions the Church of Bobemia as one of the thirteen provinces of the
Catharist affiliated churches.
Jirecek (Geschichte der Bulgaren, p. 214) refers
to a diploma of Innocent IV. in A. D. 1244 which demonstrates that there was a
frequent intercourse between the Waldenses and their co‑religionists in
Bosnia. He also cites Palacky and Brandl to show the intimacy of the Bosnian
and Moravian churches.
Jirecek speaks of
the constant tendency of' the Bogmils toward a purer orthodoxy, and states that
one of the Italian Bogomil elders—Giovanni di Lugio—taught of the real humanity
of Christ and accepted the entire Old Testament
28(Ch. XVII.). Matthew
Paris, Historia Majora ad Annum 1223
(Rolls Series, vol. iii. p. 78 et ff.); Radulph de Coggeshale (Chronicon Anglicanum, Rolls
Series, p. 121
NOTES
et
ff.; p. 195 et ff.); Roger of Hoveden's Chronicle,
Prof. Stubbs' ed. (Rolls series, vol. ii., p. 153 et ff.). To these may be added William Little of
Newbury (Neubrigiensis), History of England from the Norman Conquest to the Year 1197 (liber ii. chaps.
13, 15), Gervase of Canterbury, Chronicon
(about 1210), and at a later date Sir Henry Spelman, a very careful writer,
born in 1561. Of these historians, all, or nearly all, were monks and, while
they were very much alike in their prejudices against all heretics, some of
them took more pains than others to verify their statements. Of these William
Little of Newbury (Neubrigiensis)
seems to have been the most careful, except, perhaps, Sir Henry Spelman and
Matthew Paris the least so.
29(Ch. XVII., foot‑note). I have not thought it
necessary to quote at length, beyond what I have done in the text, the
statements of these writers in regard to the affiliation of the other sects,
except the Waldenses, with the Bogomils of Bosnia; the point is conceded by all
the ecclesiastical and historical writers. Collier
(Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, vol. ii. Lathbury's ed., 1852,
pp. 250, 338, 339) speaks of the Albigenses in Toulouse in 1161 and 1178, and
gives an account of' their doctrines from the early historians which shows them
to be identical with those of the Publicani
(11 pages 341 and 414 he gives an account of their spreading their doctrines
throughout Flanders and England and of their persecution; and on page 431 he
gives a full account of their spreading throughout (from Matthew Paris) Western
Europe and their Bulgarian pope or chief elder.
The first great crusade against the
Albigenses, Catharists, and other affiliated churches of Western Europe was
that prompted by Pope Innocent III. against the heretics of Toulouse, the
domain of Count Raymond VI. of Toulouse, and directed by the Roman Catholic
legates Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, and Milo, the infamous Count Simon de
Montfort being in command of the papal troops. It lasted from A. D. 1209 to
1229, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Christian men, women, and children
were massacred in cold blood by these inhuman butchers. De Montfort himself was
killed in 1218, but his son was as base as the sire. These persecuted
Christians fled in great numbers to Bosnia, where the "good Ban
Culin" protected them against the fury of the pope, and in the society of
their co‑religionists they enjoyed peace and quiet.
30(Ch. XVIII.). The authorities for these particulars of the crusades against the Bogomils of Bosnia are Rainaldi, an
NOTE
Italian cardinal of the sixteenth
century, whose Ecclesiastical Annals
(in ten vols. fol.) are a Continuation of those of Cardinal Baronius, and cover
the period between 1197 and 1566, and Farlati, a writer of the eighteenth
century, author of Episcopi Bosnenses
in his Illyricum Sacrum. Both, were
very bigoted and bitter Roman Catholics, and their hatred of the
"heretics," as they called them, is manifest in almost every line.
Hilferding contributes some items to this history, and his
spirit is much more generous and just.
31(Ch. xx.). This letter of Pope John XXII. may be found in Waddingus, Annales Minorum (Vol. vii. ed. seeae),
under the year 1325. Waddingus—was a native of Ireland, but passed most of his
life in Rome, where he attained eminence as a scholar 11 and author. He was
successively procurator and vice‑commissary of the order of' St. Francis, usually called the
Minorite brethren, and wrote their
history (in eight vols. folio) under the title of Annales Minorum (Lyons and Rome, 1647-1654), as well as several
other works concerning the order. The Franciscans hall had a house of their
order in Bosnia since about 1260, and their management there naturally came
under Wadding's review.
32(Ch XXI.). This letter of Urban V. may he found in
Rainaldi's Ecclesiastical Annals,
under the year 1369, and the correspondence of' the. Franciscans with Urban V.
and Gregory XI., as well as the substance of the letters of both pontiffs, in
Wadding’s Annales Minorum, under the
years 1369-1372.
33(Ch. XXI.). For the historical facts in relation to the
reigns of Stephen Kotromanovic, the three Tvart-kos, Stephen Thomas, and the
parricide Stephen Thomasevic, the authorities on whom most reliance is to be
placed are Jirecek, Schimek (Politike
Geschichte des Konigriechs Bonien und Roma), Spicilegium (De Bosnice Regno), The Book of Arms of the
Bosnian Nobility (1340), examined and partly copied by Mr. Evans, and other
works not accessible in this country or England, cited by Jirecek and Evans.
34(Ch. XXII).
Wadding, in his Annales Minorum, under
the year 1462, says: “In this year . . . the pope, Pius II., being much alarmed
at the progres of heresy in Bosnia, and hearing that there was a great want
there of men skilled in philosophy, the sacred canons, and theology, sent
thither learned men from the neighboring provinces, and especially
NOTE
the brother Peter de Milo, a native of Bosnia, and
four fellows. These five had studied in the best Cismontane and Transmontane
universities, under the most learned doctors. The pope, moreover, gave orders
that some of the largest convents should be converted into schools for literary
studies.”
This was not the first nor the last
testimony unwillingly extorted from the papal authorities to the fact that
among the Bogomil leaders and their co-religionists there were men of great
learning and intellectual ability, although it was their constant habit to
stigmatize these Protestant sects as ignorant rustics, too stupid and besotted
to be able to understand the Scriptures or the arguments of the monks or bishops.
The pope Honorius III., two hundred years before, had felt compelled to send
the learned and eloquent subdeacon Aconcius to convince and convert these
Bogomils, and even he had failed of
success.
Hallam Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 364) cites
another instance of great interest. Pope Innocent III. (1198-1216) was much
disturbed by the fact that the Scriptures had been translated into Provencal
French and were largely circulated among the common people of the diocese of
Metz and elsewhere. In a letter addressed to the clergy of that diocese, found
in the Works of that pontiff (p.
468), he tells them that no small multitude of laymen and women, having
procured a translation of the Gospels, Epistles of St. Paul, the Psalter (the
Psalms), Job and other books of Scripture to be made for them into French, meet
in secret conventicles to hear them read and preach to each other, avoiding the
company of those who do not join in their devotion; and, having been
reprimanded for this by some of their parish priests, have withstood them,
alleging reasons from the Scriptures why they should not be so forbidden. After
condemning them for these conventicles, the pope urges the bishop and chapter
of Metz to discover the author of this translation, which, he says, could not have
been made without a knowledge of letters, and to ascertain what were his
intentions, and what degree of orthodoxy and respect for the Holy See those who
used it possessed. This letter failed of its desired effect; for in another
letter (p. 537 of his Works) he
complains that some members of this little association continued refractory and
refused to obey either the bishop or the pope. That Metz was at this time full
of Vaudois, or Waldenses, we know from other authorities, and it is very
probable that this was the translation of the Scriptures directed by Peter
Waldo, a few years before.
NOTE
35(Ch. XXIV.). Mr. Evans well says (pp. 56-58 of his able Historical Review of Bosnia): “Perhaps
enough has been said to show the really important part played by Bosnia in
European history. We have seen her aid in interpreting to the West the sublime
puritanism which the more eastern Sclaves of Bulgaria had first received from
the Armenian missionaries; we have seen her take the lead in the first
religious revolt against Rome; we have seen a Bosnian religious teacher
directing the movement in Provence; we have seen the Protestants of Bosnia
successfully resisting all the efforts of Rome, supported by the arms of
Hungary, to put them down; we have seen them offering an asylum to their
persecuted brothers of the West—Albigenses, Patarenes, and Waldenses; we have
seen them connected with the Reformation in Bohemia and affording shelter to
the followers of Huss. From the twelfth century to the final conquest of the
Turks in the sixteenth, when the fight of religious freedom had been won in
North-western Europe, Bosnia presents the unique phenomenon of a Protestant state existing within the
limits of the Holy Roman Empire, and in a province claimed by the Roman Church.
“Bosnia was the religious Switzerland
of mediaeval Europe, and the signal service which she has rendered to the
freedom of the human intellect by her successful stand against authority can
hardly be exaggerated. Resistance, broken down in the gardens of Provence,
buried beneath the charred rafters of the Roman cities of the Langue d’Oe,
smothered in the dungeons of the Inquisitions, was prolonged from generation to
generation amongst the primeval forests and mountain-fastnesses of Bosnia.
“There were not wanting,
amongst those who sought to exterminate the Bogomils, churchmen as dead to
human pity as the Abbot of Citeaux, and lay arms as bloodthirsty as De
Montfort; but the stubborn genius of the Serbian people fought on with rare
persistence and held out to the end. The history of these champions of a purer
religion has been written by their enemies and ignored by those who owe most to
their heroism. No martyrology of the Bogomils of Bosnia has come down to us. We
have no Huss or Tyndale to arrest our pity. ‘Invidious silence’ has obscured
their fame.
‘llachrymabilis
Urgentur,
ignotique longa
Nocte,
carent quia vate sacro.’
“Protestant historians, fearful of claiming relationship
NOTE
with heretics whose views on the origin
of evil were more logical than their own, have almost or entirely ignored the
existence of the Sclavonic Puritans.” This sharp rebuke is especially deserved
by Dean Milman in his Latin Christianity,
and by Archbishop Trench in his recent Lectures
on Ecclesiastical History. Others are not wholly guiltless. “Yet of all
worn-out devices of ad captandum
argument, this assuredly is the most threadbare—to ignore the transitions of
intervening links, and pointing to the extremes of a long concatenation of
cause and effects, to seize upon their differences as a proof of disconnection.
In the course of ages the development of creeds and churches is not less
striking than that of more secular institutions. Bogomilism obeyed an universal
law; it paid the universal tribute of successful propgandism: it compromised,
or, where it did not compromise, it was ruthlessly stamped out. The Manichaen
elements, most distasteful to modern Protestants, were in fact the first to
disappear.” (“Yes, if indeed they ever really existed among the Bogomils.”—AUTHOR
of The Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia.)
“In its contact with the semi-pagan Christianity of the West the puritanism of
the Gnostic East became, perforce, materialized; just as, ages before,
Christianity itself, an earlier wave of the same Eastern puritanism, had
materialized in its contact with the undiluted heathendom of the Western
empire. To a certain extent, Bogomilism gained. It lost something of its
anti-human vigor, and, by conforming to the exigences of Western society,
became to a certain extent more practical. Thus by the sixteenth century the
path had been cleared for a compromise with orthodoxy itself. The Reformation
marks the confluence of the two main currents of religious thought that
traverse the Middle Ages in their several sources, Romish and Armenian. No
doubt, from the orthodox side—which refused to reject all that was beautiful in
the older world, which consecrated Graeco-Roman civilization and linked art
with religion—the West has gained much; but in days of gross materialism and degrading
sacerdotalism it has gained perhaps even more from the purging and elevation
influence of these early Puritans. The most devout Protestant need not be
afraid to acknowledge the religious obligations which he owes to his spiritual
forefathers, Manichaean though they were; while those who perceive in
Protestantism itself nothing more than a stepping-stone to still greater
freedom of the human mind, and who recognize the universal bearing of the doctrine of Evolution,
will be slow to deny that England herself and
NOTE
the most enlightened countries of the modern world may owe a
debt, which it is hard to estimate, to the Bogomils of Bulgaria and Bosnia.”
It is to be remembered that these are the thoughtful and
well-considered words of a traveller and scholar who has no affiliation with
Puritan or Baptist, who while professedly a member of the Anglican Church, has
strong leanings toward evolution, but who, from his English love of fair play,
and the conviction derived from extended and careful research, and the pure and
stainless lives of these Protestants of the East, has been compelled to take up
arms in their defence.
We have shown elsewhere and from other sources that the
movement of the Bogomils and their co-religionists of Western Europe was
independent of, and had very little connection with, the Reformation. Never
having belonged to Rome, they had no occasion to reform her doctrines or
churches, and in fact had as little to do with the Reformation as the
Protestant and independent churches of to-day have with the Old Catholic
movement. They may have wished the Reformation well, as we do this Old Catholic
movement; but as we have not, and cannot have, any affiliation with it, while
it holds so many Romish errors, so they precluded from any direct affiliation
with the Reformed churches, for the same reason.
INDEX
