[29] Cosmas. Their aversion to images, churches, and a hierarchy, is borne out by the testimony of Euthymius and Anna Comnena.
[30] So too Anna Comnena and Euthymius.
[31] Rački (in Jireček, op. cit.)
[32] Thus Pope Gregory XI. writes in 1376: ‘Cum Bosnenses uxores accipiant cum condicione, si eris bona, et intentione dimittendi, quando sibi videbitur’ (MS. of the South Sclavonic Academy, cited in Jireček, op. cit. p. 183).
[33] Cosmas is again slanderous when he says that the Bogomiles begged from door to door.
[34] Jireček, op. cit. p. 180.
[35] Jireček, op. cit. p. 181.
[36] So Cosmas, ‘At the fifth time, however, they have the door open.’ According to Euthymius, who also bears witness to the Paternoster being their only form, they prayed five times during the day and seven at night. Euthymius (see also Epiphanius) says that they prayed also to demons to avert evil, and that Basilius, their heresiarch, declared that in their gospels was the text, ‘Worship demons, not that they may do good to you, but that they may not do you harm.’ On this charge of devil-worship, however even Cosmas is silent.
[37] This is illustrated by the missionary work of St. Sava in that century. At the end of the ninth century the Narentines, living in the immediate neighbourhood of Spalato and Ragusa, the two focuses of Roman Christianity, were still unconverted, and their country, according to Constantine Porphyrogenitus, was still known as Pagania. See [p. 367]. How much more must this have been the case with the inland districts of Bosnia!
[38] I find that this explanation of the rapid advance of the Manichæan heresy among the Sclaves has suggested itself, quite independently, to Herr Jireček in his recent history. He says (Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 175): ‘Es war für Bogomil keine schwere Aufgabe, das unlängst erst dem Heidenthüme entrückte Volk für eine Glaubenslehre zu gewinnen, welche, gleich dem alten slawischen Mythus von den Bosi und Bêsi, lehrt, dass es zweierlei höhere Wesen gebe, nämlich einen guten und einen bosen Gott.’ Herr Jireček, however, seems to forget that Armenian missionaries were at work in Bulgaria considerably before even the reputed date of Bogomil. If we remember that at the time when Manichæism first sought a footing among the Bulgarians a great part of the nation was still pagan, these considerations become still more cogent.