Bogomilism was a Christian group that believed in two spiritual worlds. It was started in the First Bulgarian Empire by a priest named Bogomil during the time of Tsar Peter I in the 10th century. It most likely began in the region of Kutmichevitsa, which is now part of the region of Macedonia.
The Bogomils believed in a world inside the body and a world outside the body. They did not use the Christian cross or build churches because they considered the human body to be sacred, like a temple. This belief led them to practice activities such as fasting or dancing to purify their bodies.
The Bogomils did not follow the church’s leadership structure. Their main goals were to oppose the power of the state and religious leaders. This helped the movement grow quickly in the Balkans, and over time, it spread across the Byzantine Empire and later reached areas such as Kievan Rus', Dalmatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Italy, and France (where it became known as the Cathars).
Etymology
The word "Bogomil" means "dear to God" and is made up of two Slavic words: "bog" (meaning "god") and "mil" (meaning "dear"). It may also be a translation of the Greek name Theophilos, which means "loved by the gods" and comes from the Greek words "theos" (god) and "philos" (loved). It is hard to know if the name was given to the movement by its founder, a priest named Bogomil, or if he later took the name after the movement was already known. The Bogomils are the same as the Messalians, as shown in Greek and Slavonic writings from the 12th to 14th centuries.
In Church Slavonic documents, the members of the movement are called "Babuni," which originally meant "superstition" or "a superstitious person." Place names that still use this term include the river Babuna, the mountain Babuna, the Bogomila Waterfall, and the village Bogomila, all located in the region of Azot, now in central North Macedonia. This suggests the movement was very active in the area.
History
Marcionism was one of the earliest Christian groups that believed in two gods. It began in Armenia, which is now part of eastern Turkey. The church Marcion started seemed to disappear by the 5th century. However, some ideas from Marcionism may have survived because of similarities with Paulicianism, another group in the same area. Paulicianism started around the middle of the 7th century. A man named Constantine of Mananalis taught that there were two gods: one who created human souls and another who made the physical world, including human bodies. His followers, called Paulicians, did not live extremely different lives from others around them, even though they believed the world was evil. They were also known for being strong warriors.
Some sources suggest the Paulicians were not truly dualistic, meaning they did not believe in two separate gods in the same way as other groups. A text called The Key of Truth explains that the Paulicians saw Satan as an enemy of humans and God, not as a separate god.
In 970, the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes moved 200,000 Armenian Paulicians to Europe and settled them near Philippopolis, now called Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Under Byzantine and later Ottoman rule, the Paulicians lived safely in their homes near Philippopolis and other areas. Over time, they adopted the Bulgarian language and were called pavlikiani by Bulgarians. In 1650, the Roman Catholic Church brought many Paulicians into its community. Villages near Nicopolis and Philippopolis, as well as a group in Cioplea, near Bucharest, joined the Catholic Church.
Bogomilism began during the reign of Peter I of Bulgaria (927–969) as a response to pressure from the Byzantine church. It remained popular until the fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in the late 14th century. Bogomilism likely started in Macedonia and was influenced by Paulicians who had moved from Armenia. Slavic farmers in Bulgaria were among the first to learn about Bogomilism. Pope Nicholas I warned the Bulgarian ruler Boris I about false teachings, but he did not name Bogomilism as heresy. The Bogomils spread to Serbia, where they were called Babuns. Serbian leaders later declared Bogomilism a heresy and forced them to leave. Many Bogomils moved to Bosnia and Dalmatia, where they became known as Patarenes.
During the time of Samuel, Bogomilism spread to Serbia and Bosnia, with the most activity in western Bosnia near the River Bosna. In Herzegovina and cities like Split and Trogir, Bogomils were common. Hungary used the Bogomils’ presence as a reason to attack Bosnia and expand its power. In 1203, the Bosnian ruler Ban Kulin avoided a Hungarian crusade by publicly accepting Catholic authority. A second crusade in 1225 failed. In 1254, the Bosnian Church refused to accept a Hungarian bishop and split from the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1203, Pope Innocent III and the King of Hungary forced Kulin to accept Catholic authority, but this agreement was not followed. A mission to convert Bosnia to Catholicism in 1216 failed. In 1234, the Catholic bishop of Bosnia was removed by Pope Gregory IX for allowing heretical practices. Gregory also asked Hungary to attack the Bogomils. Prince Coloman of Slavonia led a crusade into Bosnia but was driven out by local nobles.
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV placed the Bosnian bishop under Hungarian control, causing the Bosnian Church to break away from Rome. This led to the creation of an independent Bosnian Church, which some later confused with the Bogomils or Cathars. However, original documents show no clear connection to Bogomilism or dualism.
In 1291, Pope Nicholas issued a decree allowing the Dominican-led Inquisition to investigate Bosnia. The Inquisition reported a dualist group in the late 15th century, calling them “Bosnian heretics,” but this group was likely different from the original Bogomils.
Bogomilism was wiped out in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Byzantium by the 13th century. Small groups remained in Herzegovina and Bosnia until the Ottoman Empire took control in 1463. Some scholars claim that political conflicts led to persecution of Bogomils, but these ideas are considered outdated.
Bogomil influence spread to Italy, but the Ottoman conquest of Bosnia in the late 15th century ended their persecution. Few traces of Bogomilism remain in Bosnia today. A Slavic text called the Ritual, written by Radoslav, is similar to a Cathar ritual.
Today, over 10,000 Banat Bulgarians live in villages like Dudeştii Vechi, Vinga, Breştea, and Timișoara, as well as Arad. They no longer practice Bogomilism, having converted to Roman Catholicism. A few Paulician villages remain in Serbia’s Banat region, near Pančevo.
Doctrine
The Bogomils taught their followers not to obey their masters. They looked down on the rich, hated the Tsars, laughed at their leaders, criticized the boyars, and believed God was angry with people who worked for the Tsar. They also told serfs not to work for their masters. — Cosmas the Priest, Treatise Against the Bogomils
From limited and sometimes unclear information, three possible ideas about the Bogomils have been suggested: they may have been gnostics, adoptionists, or dualists.
At first, their belief in dualism was not extreme (called "monarchian"). They taught that God created the spiritual part of the world, and Satan created the physical part. However, they believed Satan was not as powerful as God because he was God’s son. Over time, they began to believe more strongly in absolute dualism, similar to beliefs in Manichaeism and Paulicianism. They thought God and Satan were eternal enemies, like the later Cathars.
Their adoptionist teaching came from Paul of Samosata (though later some believed this was the Apostle Paul). They rejected the teachings of the Orthodox Church but did not accept the idea that Jesus was not truly human, as some other groups did. They also opposed both government and church authority, similar to later Christian anarchist ideas.
In the Bogomil and Cathar text The Secret Supper, Jesus calls God his father, and it says Mary received Jesus through the Holy Spirit.
Some sources claim the Bogomils believed John the Baptist came from Satan, as written in The Book of Boril. However, supporters of the Baptist succession theory argue these claims are false because most sources were biased against them.
Possible texts that show Bogomil beliefs include the four Gospels, fourteen letters from Paul, three letters from John, and other writings like the Epistle to the Laodiceans. They also used apocryphal books, such as The Apocalypse of Abraham, 2 Enoch, and The Vision of Isaiah.
In their early beliefs, the Bogomils taught that God had two sons: Satanail, the older, and Michael, the younger. Satanail rebelled against God and became an evil spirit. He created the heavens and Earth but could not make humans alone. He had to ask God for the Holy Spirit to complete creation. Adam was allowed to work the land only if he and his descendants became Satanail’s servants.
To free Adam and his descendants, Michael was sent as a human, later identified as Jesus Christ. After being baptized in the Jordan River, Jesus received power from the Holy Spirit to break a covenant made by Satanail. Jesus, now acting as Michael, defeated Satanail and removed the name "God" from him, turning him into Satan. Satan then caused Jesus’ crucifixion and created the Orthodox Church, including its rituals, priests, and monks. The Bogomils believed the world was Satan’s creation, so they avoided worldly pleasures but did not practice extreme asceticism.
They respected the "Lord’s Prayer" as a powerful tool against Satan and used spells to fight evil spirits. Each group had twelve "apostles," and women could become "elect." The Bogomils wore simple clothes like monks and traveled widely to spread their ideas. They healed the sick, cast out demons, and shared their writings, including parts of the Old Testament, influencing religious beliefs in many regions.
The Bogomils believed the "Logos" (the Word of God) was not a person in the Trinity but the spoken teachings of Christ. Though they called themselves "Trinitarian," they were accused of rejecting the Trinity by the Church. In The Secret Supper, they used the phrase: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen."
The Catholic Church saw Bogomilism as heresy because they believed the physical world was created by Satan, an angel sent to Earth. Karp Strigolnik, a 14th-century preacher, taught that followers should learn from each other rather than rely on priests. They prayed at home, not in churches, and chose spiritual leaders from their own group. They did not fast on Mondays or Fridays, rejected monastic life, and believed Christ was the Son of God only through grace, like other prophets. They did not think the bread and wine in the Eucharist became Jesus’ body and blood. They believed God, not Jesus, would judge people in the end. They saw religious images and the cross as idols and considered worshiping saints and relics as idolatry.
These ideas influenced later Russian religious groups and are linked to the Bogomils’ teachings. They also believed in the Manichaean idea that the world was made of two opposing forces. Their writings, including apocryphal Bible stories, were used to spread their beliefs. Some of these texts were attributed to figures like Jeremiah or Bogumil, who were said to have written forbidden books that the Orthodox Church refused to read.
Legacy
The Bogomils were a group that connected religious groups in the East and West that were considered wrong by the church. They were very active in spreading these teachings in the Kievan Rus and other European kingdoms. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Bogomils were known in the West as "Cathars" or "Bulgari," which means Bulgarians. In 1207, the term "Bulgarorum heresis" was used to describe them. In 1223, the Albigenses were called "Bougres," and it was said that the "Pope of the Albigenses" lived in Bulgaria. Other groups, such as the Cathars, Patarenes, Waldenses, Anabaptists, Russian Strigolniki, and Spiritual Christians, were sometimes linked to the Bogomils, even though some were not related or did not share the same beliefs.
In the 14th century, during a religious debate called the Hesychast controversy, some scholars in the Byzantine Empire claimed that the ideas of hesychasm were similar to Bogomilism.
Scholars have debated whether the groups that believed in two opposing forces (dualism) across medieval Europe were part of one movement or separate ones that started independently. This confusion is partly because medieval sources, like the 13th-century Papal Inquisition in France, often assumed all dualist groups were connected, even if they were not. Inquisitors sometimes said that the Cathars were descendants of older groups like the Manicheans, even though this logic was not always accurate. For example, they might accuse non-Christians of worshiping gods like Apollo or Mercury, using old terms that did not fit the new situations.
In the novel Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, the story of a secret conspiracy is based partly on the disappearance of the Bogomils after the fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire to the Ottoman Empire.
A Macedonian movie called The Secret Book is a detective thriller that follows a fictional story about a search for a "Secret Book" written by the Bogomils in Macedonia and taken to Western Europe during the Middle Ages.
A French word, "bouguer," and the English word "buggery" came from the Latin word Bulgarus, meaning Bulgarian. "Buggery" first appeared in English in 1330 to describe a type of heresy, though the word "bugger" in a sexual sense was not used until 1555. Dictionaries explain that the word "bugger" originally referred to people who followed a heretical branch of the Eastern Church.
Bogomil Cove in Antarctica is named after Priest Bogomil.
In the book Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, a professor named George Barnwell Ellis works on a book about the Bogomils for 25 years, but it is left unfinished when he dies.
The Bogomils are an important part of the story in the novel Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon, where a character named Cyprian Lakewood leaves a life of secret spying.
In the computer game series Crusader Kings, players can create a heretical movement called Bogomilism within Christianity.