BOGOMILS (FRIENDS OF GOD). - A Christian heretical sect that appeared in Bulgaria between the first and second half of the 10th century. The Bogomili take their name from their leader, the priest Bogomil (in Bulgarian bogumil, "dear to God"). Although the origins of Bogomilism are still obscure, it is established that this "haeresis Bulgarorum" originated from various earlier heresies, especially from the Manichaeans, the Paulicians (in Thrace and Macedonia, 8th century), the Byzantine iconoclasts, and more immediately from the Messalians, according to the testimony of Euthymius (PG 132, 1290). The sect soon spread throughout Bulgaria and under various other names (Cathars, Bulgarians, Albigensians) in the Balkans and in other European regions, as far as Russia.
At the basis of the doctrinal system lies a dualistic-gnostic principle of a purely Manichaean stamp, which admits God as the creator of all that is spiritually good and eternal both in man and in the world, and the Devil as the author of evil, of the contingent, of the material and corporeal. Having rejected the Old Testament, a great part of the Sacraments, especially Matrimony, and sacred images, and having denied Purgatory, the Bogomili made worship consist in the adoration of God "in spirit and truth," and in an austere ascetic life.
The movement, not immediately suppressed, had moments of great development and moments of pause: of development, under Peter (927-69), in Bulgaria and later in Bosnia and throughout the Balkans; of pause, already in 1019 with the dominion of Constantinople and, afterward, with the fierce persecutions stirred up against them by bishops and councils (1211, 1325, 1360, etc.), emperors and Bulgarian kings in the 12th-14th centuries. Preachers and missionaries, Dominicans and Minorites, were sent by the Popes in the 13th and 14th centuries, especially to Bosnia, where important successes were also obtained, such as the conversion, in 1402, of 50,000 dissidents through the work of the Conventual Franciscans (L. Wadding, Annales Ord. Min., an. 1402, Quaracchi 1931, n. 11). But the strongest adversary of the B. in the doctrinal field was the great theologian Cosmas, a Bulgarian priest (and bishop) of the 10th century, who unmasked the founder and refuted his doctrines one by one, calling the people back to the true faith. A merciless struggle was also waged against the B. by the patriarch Theophilus and the monk Theodore in the 14th century. But the error, given the fanaticism of its adherents, spread also to other parts of Europe, and there were B. — confused especially with the Cathars or Albigensians, with whom they ended up identifying — in Dalmatia, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England and elsewhere. The Slavic Bogomilian heresy, with its affiliations, influenced all the heretical movements of the West before the advent of Luther.
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Lorenzo Di Fonzo