Bosnian Church
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The Bosnian Church was an indigenous church of Bosnia which existed in the Middle Ages. Adherents of the church called themselves simply Krstjani ("Christians"). The church no longer exists, having disappeared completely under the period of Ottoman rule. The church's organization and beliefs are poorly understood, because few if any records were left by church members, and the church is mostly known from the writings of outside sources, primarily Roman Catholic ones.
Bosnia was on the boundary between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The Croats to the West and Hungarians to the North embraced Roman Catholicism, while the Serb lands to the east and Herzegovina to the south embraced Eastern Orthodoxy. Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches considered the Bosnian Church heretical.
Outsiders accused the Bosnian Church of links to the Patarene heresy, and to the Bogomils, a Manichean sect centered in Bulgaria. Few modern historians link the Bosnian Church to either the Patarenes or the Bogomils.
During the later Middle Ages most of Bosnia was nominally Roman Catholic as well, but no accurate figures exist as to the numbers of adherents of the two churches. The Bosnian Church coexisted uneasily with Roman Catholicism for much of the later Middle Ages. Part of the resistance of the Bosnian Church was political; during the 14th century, the Roman Church placed Bosnia under a Hungarian bishop, and the schism may have been motivated by a desire for independence from Hungarian domination. Several Bosnian rulers were Krstjani, but some of them embraced Roman Catholicism for political reasons.
Historically it was thought that the Krstjani, who were persecuted by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, accounted for many of Bosnia's converts to Islam. Some historians now believe that the Bosnian Church had largely disappeared before the Turkish conquest in 1463.
External link
- Religion and culture in medieval Bosnia (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/9892/bhrelig.html)
- Myth about Bogomils (http://www.rastko.org.yu/istorija/bogumili/djcapin-bogumili_e.html)bs:Bosanska Crkva