bogumils

Updated: May 9, 2025

Catholic and Orthodox alike regarded the heresy with horror. But even its enemies allowed the Bogumils to have been an ascetic and temperate people. They abhorred the use of ikons and images, and unless the subterranean chapel at Jaitza be one, have left no church.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle

The Franciscans were appointed as their spiritual head, and several Franciscan monasteries date from these early days. The Bogumils in large numbers adopted Islam, with which, in its abhorrence of ikons and images, and in its Monotheism, they were in greater sympathy than with either of the Christian Churches, both of which had persecuted them.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle

Religion in the Middle Ages was a far greater force than race. Nationality was hardly developed. Bosnia, into which the Orthodox faith seems to have penetrated but little, if at all, was thus cut off from the Serb Empire, for the bulk of the Bosniaks were either Bogumil or Roman Catholic. We find a great many monuments of the Bogumils scattered through Bosnia and the Herzegovina.

M. E. (Mary Edith) Durham - Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle