But at the beginning of the fourteenth century the Hungarians had once more recovered their ascendency in Bosnia, and the Pope eagerly seized the weapon of orthodoxy at his service. John XXII. directed two letters, one to Charles, King of Hungary, and the other to Stephen, Ban of Bosnia. The letters are almost identical in scope, and are interesting as showing that Bosnia was still the stronghold and asylum of European heresy, and as illustrating the peculiar character of these sectaries. The letter to the Bosnian Ban is dated Avignon, June 1325.[65] ‘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, for as much as a large multitude of heretics, from many and divers parts collected, hath flowed together into 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 Christians; their speech crawleth like a crab, and they creep in with humility, but in secret they kill, and are wolves in sheeps’ clothing, covering their bestial fury as a means whereby they may deceive the simple sheep of Christ.’

The true believers still need to be warned against the apparent meekness and innocence of these men of the gospel! His Holiness seems almost to be repeating the description of the Bogomiles given by the Bulgarian Presbyter over three centuries before. ‘When men,’ says Cosmas, ‘see their lowly behaviour, 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.’[66] Hypocritical meekness has been a ready accusation in the mouths of opponents of puritanism in all ages; but we may be allowed to see, in the slanders of foul-mouthed popes and prelates, a tribute to the evangelic purity of the lives of those whom they persecuted and traduced.

Once more ‘the Lilies of the Field,’ as in their figurative parlance they loved to style themselves, are trampled under foot. In 1330 the King of Hungary and the Ban combined to assist the Inquisitor Fabian; many heretics were hounded from the realm, and the usual scenes of horror were repeated. In 1337, however, heresy is again as rampant as ever in Bosnia, and the Pope accordingly stirred up the neighbouring princes to another Bosnian crusade, which was only averted by the address of the Ban Stephen.

Sometimes the monks condescended to work miracles to forward the work of conversion. One, while addressing a congregation of heretics, ‘stepped,’ we are assured, ‘into a large fire, and with great hilarity stood in the middle of the flames while he recited the fiftieth Psalm.’ We hardly need the further assurance that many were turned from the error of their ways by miracles like this, especially when it is remembered that the heretics had the alternative of repenting, or repeating the experiment.

Nor were there wanting, we are told, miraculous tokens in the sky to manifest the displeasure of heaven itself at these scoffers at Catholic verity. The mountains whither the Bogomiles had been driven by the pious zeal of Ban Stephen were struck by celestial fire. ‘Upon the eve of St. Catharine, 1367, a mighty heavenly flame appeared in the East, with an intense light terribly apparent to the whole globe. At that time they say that the loftiest mountains of Bosnia, with all rocks, cattle, wild beasts, and fowls of the air, were miraculously consumed, so that they were reduced to a plain; and there dwell the Patarene Manichæans, and say that God burnt up those mountains for their convenience, because He loved their faith.’[67] In fact, neither the Bogomiles nor the new Ban Stephen Tvartko, who favoured them, seem to have been the least appalled by this phenomenon. Only two years after this miraculous conflagration, Urban V. writes to the King of Hungary to complain of the Ban of Bosnia, ‘who, following in the detestable footsteps of his fathers, fosters and defends the heretics who flow together into these parts from divers corners of the world as into a sink of iniquity.’[68] The Bans of Bosnia, even when Catholics themselves, seem to have been forced by the strength of national feeling into an attitude at least of toleration towards the Bogomiles, and their position in this respect has been aptly compared by Hilferding to that of the Bulgarian Czars.

During the troublous times of the Bosnian kingdom the Bogomiles increased in strength, and, what is extremely significant, the heretics of Bosnia begin to play a part in the revival of the Protestant movement throughout Europe. We do not know what part the Sclavonic heretics of Bosnia may have taken in preparing the minds of their Czechian brothers for the religious revolt of which Huss and Jerome of Prague were the leaders and exponents. But we do know that from the first intimate relations existed between the Bogomiles of Bosnia and the Hussites; in 1433 four Bogomilian or Patarene bishops made their way from Bosnia to the Council of Basil,[69] and shortly after, in 1437, the Romish bishop Joseph complains that Bosnia was swarming with Hussites and other heretics. We have, moreover, very strong indirect evidence that the movement in Bosnia was at this time directed by men of learning and ability. In 1462 Pius II., being much alarmed at the progress 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 neighbouring provinces,’ and especially the brother Peter de Mili, 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.[70] We may conclude with confidence that learning was required in Bosnia to cope with learning.

But the preparation of this polemic artillery was cut short by an event, the effects of which are even now distracting Christendom. In the year following that in which his Holiness laments over the continued progress of heresy in Bosnia, the whole country passed in the short space of eight days irrevocably under the dominion of the Infidel. The continued crusades, the persecutions of the Inquisition—fire, sword, exile, and dungeon—had done their work. The Protestant population of Bosnia had at last deliberately taken its choice, and preferred the dominion of what it believed to be the more tolerant Turks to the ferocious tyranny of Catholic kings, magnates, and monks. There never was a clearer instance of the Nemesis which follows on the heels of religious persecution. Europe has mainly to thank the Church of Rome that an alien civilisation and religion has been thrust into her midst, and that Bosnia at the present day remains Mahometan.

At the very moment when the Turks were threatening the existence of the Bosnian kingdom, the King, then Stephen Tomašević, and priests, aided by the magnates and aristocratic party in the State, were pushing the persecution of the Bogomiles to an extreme which perhaps it had never reached before. In the year 1459 King Stephen turned his feudal arms against the inoffensive Bogomiles at home, and hounded out as many, it is said,[71] as forty thousand, who took refuge in the Herzegovina, with their co-religionist, the Duke of St. Sava. Others he sent in chains to Rome, where it appears they were ‘benignantly converted’—whatever that means. But the expulsion of forty thousand did little to diminish the strength of the Bogomiles in Bosnia. In 1462, as we know from the Roman archives, heresy was as powerful as ever in Bosnia. Already, twelve years before,[72] the Bogomiles had invited the Turks into Bosnia as their deliverers; in 1463 the invitation was repeated, a successful negotiation was opened with the Sultan, and, on Mahomet II.’s invasion, the Catholic king found himself deserted by his people. The keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of Bobovac, were handed over to the Turk by the ‘Manichæan’ governor;[73] the other fortresses and towns hastened to imitate its example, and within a week ‘seventy cities defended by nature and art’ passed into the hands of Mahomet. Bosnia, which may be described as one vast stronghold, refused to strike a blow in defence of her priestly tyrants.

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,—Albigensians, 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 Northern 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 Mediæval 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’Oc, smothered in the dungeons of the Inquisition, 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 Bogomiles, 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 Bogomiles of Bosnia has come down to us. We have no Huss or Tyndale to arrest our pity. ‘Invidious silence’ has obscured their fame,

Illachrymabiles