Who Were the Bogomils?

The Bogomil movement arose in the Balkans as the 10th Century dualistic version of the Paulicans (see my article on Paulicans here). It was in response to clerical corruption in the Greek Orthodox Church that a dualistic pseudo-religion was able to flourish, where belief in the existence of a good God and an evil God developed. They believed that since matter was evil, God who was pure spirit could have no contact with the material world. The first reference to such teaching occurs in Cosmas' Sermon Against Heretics, where he describes a priest named Bogomil (meaning "beloved of God") who taught against the veneration of the crucifix, relics, and all religious images, transubstantiation and the Orthodox clergy in general. It should be noted, however, that Aleksandar Matkovski points to the fact that “Bogomil” means “beloved or dear to God” probably means the name of the sect itself instead of its founder.

As McGoldrick points out, none of these disagreements, aside from rejection of transubstantiation, could actually be considered "heretical"; however, it was the dualistic nature of Bogomil preaching that "assailed the very basis of Christian belief by denying the unity of God as creator and ruler of the material universe" (Baptist Successionism, p. 42).

In reality, this decidedly anti-Christian teaching was nothing more than a regurgitation of earlier dualism, which taught that all evil comes from material things (including even our physical bodies), and that since God was pure spirit, there must be an evil Creator. Bogomils carried this to an extreme by believing man's birth as an incarceration of his soul within sinful flesh and that salvation could be achieved at the time of physical death where the soul could be released from its confinement. By refusing to cooperate with such "evil" by not procreating (which, in their opinion, would only create more prisons/bodies), salvation could be achieved. They avoided eating meat and participating in sexual relations (Dmitri Oblensky, "The Bogomils", Eastern Churches Quarterly, 6 [1945] 147-169). One Bogomil even went so far as to suggest that males be castrated so that no more earthly "prisons" (bodies) would be produced! (Runciman, Medieval Manichee, 96). This is how Cosmas reported this bizarre doctrine:

"Having read in the gospel what our Lord says in the parable of the two sons, they [Bogomils] claim that Christ is the older, and the devil, who has deceived his father, is the younger. They give the name of the latter as Mammon and admit that he is the creator and author of earthly things. They say he has ordered the people to marry, to eat meat, and to drink wine. In general...they think themselves inhabitants of the heavens and call those who marry and live in this world the servants of Mammon" (Sermon Against Heretics)

Now, because the Bogomils believed all physical matter was evil, they denied the miracles that Jesus performed, including the multiplication of the loaves and the physical healing ministry. They rejected the Old Testament and gave priority to the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. They rejected infant baptism, not because of some complex justification and grace theology, but because they denied ALL water baptism (water, being a physical substance, was evil). In fact, Lambert describes that any previously baptizd person who left the Orthodox Church for the Bogomils were required to undergo a purification ceremony to reverse the "evil effects" of water baptism (Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from Bogomil to Hus, London: Edward Arnold, 1977; 20).

Anna Commena, from Medieval Sourcebook Online

Anna Commena, from Medieval Sourcebook Online

Anna Commena, a contemporary of an 11th-Century Bogomil monk named Basil wrote the following account of her experience with the Bogomils (the entire translated text of her Alexiad is available online from the Medieval Sourcebook here):

"After this in the course of the years of his reign, a very great cloud of heretics arose, and the nature of their heresy was new and hitherto unknown to the Church. For two very evil and worthless doctrines which had been known in former times, now coalesced; the impiety, as it might be called, of the Manichaeans, which we also call the Paulician heresy, and the shamelessness of the Massalians. This was the doctrine of the Bogomils---compounded of the Massalians and the Manichaeans. And probably it existed even before my father's time, but in secret; for the sect of the Bogomils is very clever in aping virtue. And you would not find any long-haired wordling belonging to the Bogomils, for their wickedness was hidden under the cloak and cowl. A Bogomil looks gloomy and is covered up to the nose and walks with a stoop and mutters, but within he is an uncontrollable wolf. And this most pernicious race, which was like a snake hiding in a hole, my father jured and brought out to the light by chanting mysterious speels. For now that he had rid himself of much of his anxiety about the East and the West he turned his attention to more spiritual matters. For in all things he was superior to other men; in teaching he surpassed those whose profession was teaching; in battles and strategy he excelled those admired for their exploits.

By this time the fame of the Bogomils had spread everywhere. (For Basil, a monk, was very wily in handling the impiety of the Bogomils; he had twelve disciples whom he called "apostles," and also dragged about with him some female disciples, wretched women of loose habits and thoroughly bad, and he disseminated his wickedness everywhere.) This evil attacked many souls like fire, and the Emperor's soul could not brook it, so he began investigating the heresy. He had some of the Bogomils brought to the palace and all proclaimed a certain Basil as the teacher and chief representative of the Bogomilian heresy. Of these, one Diblatius was kept in prison, and as he would not confess when questioned, he was subjected to torture and then informed against the man called Basil, and the disciples he had chosen. Accordingly the Emperor entrusted several men with the search for him. And Sotanael's arch-satrap, Basil, was brought to light, in monk's habit, with a withered countenance, clean shaven and tall of stature.

The Emperor, wishing to elicit his inmost thought by compulsion under the disguise of persuasion, at once invited the man on some righteous pretext. And he even rose from his chair to greet him, and made him sit by him and share his table, and threw out his whole fishing-line and fixed various baits on the hooks for this voracious whale to devour. And he made this monk, who was so many-sided in wickedness, swallow all the poison he offered him by pretending that he wished to become his discliple, and not he only, but probably his brother, the Sebastocrator Isaac, also; he pretended too to value all the words he spoke as if they came from a divine voice and to defer to him in all things, provided only that the villain Basil would effect his soul's salvation. "Most reverend father," he would say (for the Emperor rubbed sweets on the rim of the cup so that this demoniac should vomit forth his black thoughts), "I admire you for your virtue, and beseech you to teach me the new doctrines your Reverence has introduced, as those of our Churches are practically worthless and do not bring anybody to virtue." But the monk at first put on airs and he, that was really an ass, dragged about the lion's skin with him everywhere and shied at the Emperor's words, and yet was puffed up with his praises, for the Emperor even had him at his table. And in all this the Emperor's brother, the Sebastocrator, aided and abetted him in the play; and finally Basil spued out the dogmas of his heresy. And how was this done? A curtain divided the women's apartments from the room where the two Emperors sat with the wretch who blurted out and openly declared all he had in his soul; whilst a secretary sitting on the inner side of the curtain committed his words to writing. And the nonsense-monger seemed to be the teacher while the Emperor pretended to be the pupil, and the secretary wrote down his doctrines. And that man, stricken of God, spun together all that horrible stuff and did not shun any abominable dogma, but even despised our theology and misrepresented all our ecclesiastical administration. And as for the churches, woe is me---he called our sacred churches the temples of devils, and our consecration of the body and blood of our one and greatest High Priest and Victim he considered and condemned as worthless.

And what followed? the Emperor threw off his disguise and drew the curtain aside; and the whole Senate was gathered together and the military contingent mustered, and the elders of the Church were present too. The episcopal throne of the Queen of Cities was at that time occupied by that most blessed of patriarchs, Lord Nicholas, the Grammarian. Then the execrable doctrines were read out, and proof was impossible to attack. And the defendant did not deny anything, but immediately bared his head and proceeded to counter-demonstrations and professed himself willing to undergo fire, scourging and a thousand deaths. For these erring Bogomils believe that they can bear any suffering without feeling pain, as the angels forsooth will pluck them out of the fire. And although all reproached him for his impiety, even those whom he had involved in his own ruin, he remained the same Basil, an inflexible and very brave Bogomil. And although he was threatened with burning and other tortures he clung fast to his demon and embraced his Satanael. After he was consigned to prison the Emperor frequently sent for him and frequently exhorted him to forswear his impiety, but all the Emperor's exhortations left him unchanged.

Before the Emperor had begun to take severe measures against him, after his confession of impiety he would occasionally retire to a little house which had recently been prepared for him situated fairly close to the royal palace. It was evening and the stars above were shining in the clear air, and the moon was lighting up that evening, following the Synod. When the monk entered his cell about midnight, stones were automatically thrown, like hail, against his cell, and yet no hand threw them, nor was there any man to be seen stoning this devil's abbot. It was probably a burst of anger of Satanael's attendant demons who were enraged and annoyed because he had betrayed their secrets to the Emperor....” [From: Elizabeth A. S. Dawes, trans., The Alexiad of the Princess Anna Comnena, (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., Ltd., 1918), pp. 412-415, reprinted in Alfred J. Bannan & Achilles Edelenyi, eds., Documentary History of Eastern Europe, (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1970), pp. 7-11]

While such idiosyncratic beliefs are interesting, the Bogomils extended their theology to Christ Himself. According to them, Christ's death and resurrection could not have occurred literally. They believed that Christ was the archangel Michael who entered the world through the ear of the Virgin Mary and assumed a phantom, nonmaterial body (The Alexiad, 500). Therefore, their theology, derived from their own interpretation of Scripture, led them to imbibe absolutely UN-Christian tenets, such that McGoldrick remarks:

"The discrepancy between the above teaching and orthodox belief about Christianity and soteriology is so obvious that it needs no further elucidation. Bogomilism and historic Christianity are so radically different that the former can hardly even be called a heresy in the strict sense of the word; for it represented, not a deviation from Orthodoxy on certain particular points of doctrine or ethics, but a wholesale denial of the Church as such. This mutual exclusivity notwithstanding, the Bogomils claimed that they alone where genuine Christians." (p. 44)

So, anyone wishing to claim succession from such a group, whether they be 2x2, Baptist, Plymouth Brethren, etc., is placed in the exceedingly untenable position of explaining why they want to claim similarity from a movement that denied the very Incarnation and Resurrection of our Lord.