At that time, the great schism broke out more violently than ever between the Greek church, under the Patriarch Photius, and the Latin church, under Pope Nicholas I. The Bulgarians took part with the Greek church; and from that time, probably, it was that they were treated in the west as heretics, with the addition of that fine epithet, which has clung to them to the present day.
In 871, the Emperor Basil sent them a preacher, named Peter of Sicily, to save them from the heresy of Manichæism; and it is added, that they no sooner heard him than they turned Manichæans. It is not very surprising that the Bulgarians, who drank out of the skulls of their enemies, were not extraordinary theologians any more than Peter of Sicily.
It is singular that these barbarians, who could neither write nor read, should have been regarded as very knowing heretics, with whom it was dangerous to dispute. They certainly had other things to think of than controversy, since they carried on a sanguinary war against the emperors of Constantinople for four successive centuries, and even besieged the capital of the empire.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Alexis, wishing to make himself recognized by the Bulgarians, their king, Joannic, replied, that he would never be his vassal. Pope Innocent III. was careful to seize this opportunity of attaching the kingdom of Bulgaria to himself: he sent a legate to Joannic, to anoint him king; and pretended that he had conferred the kingdom upon him, and that he could never more hold it but from the holy see.
This was the most violent period of the crusades. The indignant Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Turks, declared war against the pope and his crusaders, took the pretended Emperor Baldwin prisoner, had his head cut off, and made a bowl of his skull, after the manner of Krom. This was quite enough to make the Bulgarians abhorred by all Europe. It was no longer necessary to call them Manichæans, a name which was at that time given to every class of heretics: for Manichæan, Patarin, and Vaudois were the same thing. These terms were lavished upon whosoever would not submit to the Roman church.
BULL.
A quadruped, armed with horns, having cloven feet, strong legs, a slow pace, a thick body, a hard skin, a tail not quite so long as that of the horse, with some long hairs at the end. Its blood has been looked upon as a poison, but it is no more so than that of other animals; and the ancients, who wrote that Themistocles and others poisoned themselves with bull's blood, were false both to nature and to history. Lucian, who reproaches Jupiter with having placed the bull's horns above his eyes, reproaches him unjustly; for the eye of a bull being large, round, and open, he sees very well where he strikes; and if his eyes had been placed higher than his horns, he could not have seen the grass which he crops.
Phalaris's bull, or the Brazen Bull, was a bull of cast metal, found in Sicily, and supposed to have been used by Phalaris to enclose and burn such as he chose to punish—a very unlikely species of cruelty. The bulls of Medea guarded the Golden Fleece. The bull of Marathon was tamed by Hercules.
Then there were the bull which carried off Europa, the bull of Mithras, and the bull of Osiris; there are the Bull, a sign of the zodiac, and the Bull's Eye, a star of the first magnitude, and lastly, there are bull-fights, common in Spain.