The southeastern portion of Europe known as the Balkans has always stirred the imagination of people, in particular other Europeans. This original ‘first Europe’ lying at the crossroads of civilizations, cultures and migrating warring, conquering peoples benefitted little from the legacy of countless invasions which have swept through the region.
Outside influences have colored Balkan life and culture but this has come at a heavy price paid in blood, oppression and indifference. Where outside influences and the forces which helped to mold societies for the better in many cultures, advancing thought, science and social progress such as the influence of Islamic civilization on the European Renaissance or Persian and Greek thought had on that very same Islamic civilization, Balkan peoples have no memory of any invader contributing to the betterment of their tensely guarded, protected nations and their individual identities except the legacy of oppressive and cruel tyrants who used the land and people as a stepping stone to realizing dreams of imperial grandeur and empire. As a result of these many centuries of invasion, oppression and tyranny the peoples of the Balkans; be they Albanians, Bulgarians, Greek or Serb, Bosnian, Croat, Thracian Sarakitsani or Arumanian Vlach all reflect vividly in their personalities the extreme opposites in human nature that all of us inherently posses in our psyches but seldom manifest willingly outward in our demeanor so long as our society remains stable and we are, according to our own perception of normality, content and sound. Balkan history has been a troubled history, to say the least, and the peoples of the region reflect the effects of that struggle for survival of the self as well as national identity and cultural aspiration. This instinct for survival is found in all human societies and in every human being, but the Balkans can be a study point from which we can see the effects of barbarity on people, and how those effects mold a people into what they might become. At times we can be shocked at the outright cruelty and harsh indifference of the Balkan peoples to one another, yet we admire and respect them for their warm hospitality, honesty and sense of friendship. Most of all we are in awe of their willingness to sacrifice, time and again, for the cause of freedom from oppression. These passionately brave people display, to a fault, a sense of earthly honesty and straightforwardness that many, such as the rich and powerful living comfortably in Western Europe, regularly forget. What happens in the Balkans has historically affected the rest of Europe. The difference between the wealthy “we’re going to solve everything” ideologues of a modern united post-NATO Western Europe and the farmer or sheep sorter living in the rocky hills of Macedonia or Montenegro is that these hardy Balkan folk have painfully learned from history that to pretend that human greed and emotional or nationalist desire goes to sleep forever because a few people think that they have learned a lesson is simply not true. We can aspire and we can dream but as long as there are human beings in this world there will be sadness, tyranny and pain, because it is all part of human nature. This is negative thinking, for sure, but no one in the Balkans believes that the guarantee of European solidarity based on a common currency called the Euro is going to last. In fact they think that this creation of a united European confederacy happened only to strengthen economic factors for competition against others: Russia for sure, also China, Latin America, the USA. This is an analysis you would hear from a woman sorting tobacco in Bulgaria who never saw the inside of a university, who doesn’t know anything about politics or economics. Regarding human nature, no university can teach these people a thing, nor do they normally care to hear the opinions of university professors. They have been lied to for far too long for them to be trusting, let alone positive.
Connection with the past was a factor in medieval Balkan life and culture and remains a factor up to the present day. Prehistoric folk customs and traditions live on in everyday life. It is believed by the scholars of folklore and mythology that the art of epic recitation began in these rugged mountains. The tradition of the bard recounting the tales of heros; many of whom were one day a common person who then rose to become great because of his or her deeds, responding to a dire situation...dates back to the time when people sat in caves and listened to the tribal bard recite such tales for entertainment and to pass son to the younger generation the morals and ethics of the tribe. The epic singing of the Serbian guslari accompanying himself on the one stringed bowed fiddle called a gusle chanting via a plaintive melody the verses passed on for generations is n to just entrainment. This is bringing to life the souls of ancestors and their struggle to survive in the face of insurmountable odds, whether those odds and obstacles be human, spiritual or obstacles that originate in the Earth and the harshness of the limestone Karst that make up much of the topography of the region. Thus Homer, Pindar and Aesop would be at home and would recognize this ancient tradition, which is from that which the lIliad and the Odyssey do indeed hail. Speaking of the connection to life in caves of the time from prehistory, the root word for house in Albanian (shpe) and Greek (spedi) are connected to the root for cave (Alb. shpelle, Gr. spilia). A plethora of customs and traditions from time immemorial are still adhered to by even the youngest and hippest university graduates and modernist politicians and avant grade performance artists. Thus the living and heartfelt link to the prehistoric past defines the Balkans and it’s peoples. Maybe this link is something that has been proven, something the people can be sure of if little else, as according to Balkan history politics or religion can never really be trusted.
In ancient Indo European clan and family structure, everyone knows their place in society and thus, the universe. In the Balkans, one is continually reminded of the meekness and feebleness of being human by the high rocky and forbidding mountains that surround nearly every village or town, these great obstacles and barriers to the gods whom lived on high. The epic tales and fables are far more ancient than the glorious high point of Greek civilization which is a outcropping of this mentality. It is not surprising that Hellenic civilization and thought focused on the individual and their achievement, whether that be in sport, scholarship, debate or military prowess. To the Greeks man was the center of the universe. The gods played with human lives as if they were pieces in a chess game. While there was a pagan ‘religion’ which had rites and prophecies that people followed and heeded, in the myths we see a different picture of the man/deity relationship. Hercules, half human and half mortal, struggles with this duality of being and struggles with the gods and their insolent chess game. Jason, on a journey with his Argonauts to find the golden fleece, loses so many of his friends in that journey that he throws the carving of the goddess Hera into the sea and dreams of the day when mankind will no longer need the gods to bless their ventures and undertakings. Starvation and the production and procurement of food was always a problem in the Balkans as it was in ancient Greece. A small bit of soil might be used to fill a crevice in a hillside, and in this an olive tree or a grapevine might thrive, but an earthquake could ruin all the farmer’s efforts in seconds. Combine this reality with constant warfare with neighboring clans or towns which came about due to the quest for food and we can understand the negativity and dubiousness of ancient Balkan man for any institution. Limestone rocks, it would seem, are as shiftless as sand, or shall we say unyielding in their harshness These rocks separated tribes from one another giving way to the creation of city states. The ancient Greek city states even when they were at their cultural height as well as the tribal dwelling peoples of the hinterlands were almost always in a constant state of war with each other and with themselves. This has been the history of all of Europe as well until the formation of nation states after the era of the Renaissance, in some cases as in Germany and Italy into the 19th century. What united the Greek city states was a foreign invasion from Persia, and the states reluctantly united to fight the invader based on one premise and one premise alone: freedom from tyranny and the right of existence of the individual. To the Greeks, the Persians were slaves to a monarch’s word. While this may have been exaggerated on their part, as it was with great difficulty the Greek city states came to be unified to create a coalition, each Greek male did have a sense of the ‘individual’ in their upbringing that their Asian foes did not. This respect for the individual and their right to exists and be a unique entity may have accounted for their ability to withstand quite successfully an enemy that outnumbered them by the score.
Competitive farming, clan feuding and tribal warfare yielded a reluctance to unite and was a reason for the downfall, time and again of Balkan society as it was for ancient Greek civilization. Invaders would come, raid and pillage, burn, torture and kill and take away captives. In some instances this captive-taking was institutionalized, as the Avars, Huns and other steppe peoples would regularly raid the Balkan villages and steal the young. The Romans would forcibly conscript soldiers for their legions; many of the sturdiest legionnaires came from Illyricum on the Dalmatian coast. During the Ottoman era, the system of the devshirme was in effect. Every seven years soldiers would come to take away the healthiest and strongest Christian boys for conscription into the renown Janissary corp. These youths would be taken from their families, forcibly converted to Islam and taught to forget all prior experiences and attachments. They would undergo a rigid training to become the most ferocious warriors of the age, ready to sacrifice their lives for the glory of their Sultan alone. Both the Roman and Ottoman recruiting systems however, while a form of slavery, did allow an opportunity for Balkan youths to rise in position and power in these empires, an alternative to a simple life on a farm or tending sheep when not on the watch for marauding hordes of bandits or invaders. Life in the Balkan mountains had it’s dangers and insecurity too. In Rome a number of such recruits became generals and even emperors. In Ottoman Turkey many would rise to become beys, pashas and the important position of Grand Vizier. For many, these forced conscriptions were naturally a curse, as no mother could condone the stealing of her sons. But to some they were a way out of a chaotic existence that while bathed in pastoral beauty was in fact replete with bloodshed, sickness and death. Far more destructive than any earthquake or drought though was the reality of countless invasions and raids and the ensuing tyranny and chaos that followed. The legacy of the Balkans is a reminder of the cruelty and inhumanity of mankind. Here men and women have been exceptionally brave and strong willed, determined and positive, yet have been defeated time and again. The Balkans are a testament to the fragility of our existence and, according to the Balkan mind, the fragility and failure of the many laughable attempts by nations to create institutions based on promises of utopia. This is why these people are such rugged individualists, and none in their heart of hearts would dare trust either gods or men with promises of a heavenly or an earthly kingdom. The limestone Karst mountains, barren and lunar, is a reality. Life turned into a living hell is a reality too. Fate is a reality, just as all thing are created in opposites, thus dual, is a reality. All else is fantasy and dreams. This is the Balkans.
The assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in 1914 in Sarajevo was the spark that set the world to war, the “some damn little thing in the Balkans will start the whole conflagration” prediction that Otto Von Bismarck foretold with chilling accuracy. Europe’s powers and their mistrust of each other came to a head in a quaint Balkan town as these powers vied with each other for influence, greedy for control. World War I was not the fault of the Balkan people. But it was in the Balkans where the European colonial powers would simmer their bloody brew, making promises they were never intent on keeping of re-established nationalistic glory and the restoration of past kingdoms. They wooed the the long frustrated tiny Balkan nations awakening into the 20th century with gifts of guns and empty assurances while these nations themselves were envisioning their ‘new day’ based on memories from the medieval era. The “damned little thing in the Balkans” became a bigger, European thing and for the next four years the world would witness the bloodiest conflict humans would engage in up to that time. This has been the way of Balkan history. What happens here may seem unimportant, but manifests as gargantuan when it suddenly become a bigger European problem. Big or small, light or dark, order and chaos, duality as in war and peace, the struggle between good and evil are all at the very epicenter of Balkan thought and personality, and in their expressions of the world view as well as explanations of the mechanisms of the universe.
So it was in the Middle Ages when the region was divided by allegiance to either the church of Rome or Constantinople when a “damned little thing” in the Balkans eventually became a big problem for Europe. As Europe was controlled in the 10th and 11th centuries by the power of kings and emperors sanctioned by the Roman or Byzantine church, it was this ecclesiastical power that held the final say and verdict about any ruler’s conquests or the lands he might control. The church which the ruler adhered to meant that he was supposed to ensure that his subjects followed the dogma of that particular ruler’s church, and pay their taxes and tithes accordingly. The Balkans sat geographically and culturally between the two super churches of the age, between Rome and Constantinople. As borders and lands would often change hands due to wars and the ensuing treaties that followed such wars, so would the particular church that would oversee the teaching of the souls of the masses. The manner in which one crossed themselves (Catholics do so from left to right, Orthodox from right to left) was a defining factor in adhering to dogma and showing devotion and loyalty to a particular church. One day a town might be Catholic, but in a few years the inhabitants might be forced to adhere to the Orthodox faith and acknowledge the Byzantine emperor of Constantinople. Indeed, the political and religious established structure of the day as Balkan peasants saw it was a duality. It is no wonder that such chaotic conditions would influence and inspire the religiously frustrated Balkan peoples to eventually come up with their own version of a faith, a dualism that would challenge the power of the religious authorities of the day. This faith would tear Europe apart and shake the very foundations of Christianity long before Jan Huss or Luther would do the same centuries later. This is the story and subsequent legacy of the Bogomil heresy.
The Arab Muslim invasion of Persia in the 7th century had a devastating effect on Zoroastrianism, the state religion of that ancient and once powerful empire. Zoroaster taught that there was an ongoing battle between good, represented by Ahura Mazda and evil, which was the manifestation of Ahriman. Persia was known as a tolerant empire at one time, especially under the rule of Cyrus the Great who created and implemented the first charter of human rights in history. However, by the 3rd century AD the Persian empire was less tolerant. A new faith which grew in part out of Zoroastrianism but attained to it’s own identity known as Manichaeism began to gain popularity. Mani taught about the eternal and ongoing struggle between good and evil, and how one can free oneself from the prison of the body. Through performing good deeds and doing good works one can attain to the realm of light via purification. After traveling though Asia along the Silk Road, Mani declared that all religions were true paths, the goal of all of them being to attain the goodness of the God of light. However, his teaching was seen as a threat to the Zoroastrian Magi as well as an obstacle to Roman Christian unification. Mani was imprisoned and his body hung on the walls of the imperial city, condemned by the King of Persia and his Magi. Mani’s followers, preaching their universal faith from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, were persecuted in the Persian realm as well as in the Roman empire. This persecution and the intolerance directed towards non Zoroastrians of the later Persian empire may have been one reason for the conversion of some of the Persian masses to Islam, just as Manichaeism was strong in northern Africa which went over to Islam rather quickly. After the Arab invasions, many proud Zoroastrians who refused conversion to Islam fled the Iranian homeland and immigrated to India, where they are still to be found, known as Parsees. The use of fire in their services, representing the eternal light, has afforded them the nickname of ‘fire worshippers’, though it is not fire that they worship at all, as Ahura Mazda is synonymous with the Abrahamic concept of God. Some of those who held neo Zoroastrian and Manichaean dualist beliefs, as well as some groups like the Paulicians of Armenia, fled west to the Balkan mountains. The name ‘Balkan’ itself is of Persian derivation, meaning ‘high house’ alluding to the closely set groups of houses of the villages that seemingly cling to the mountainsides. There, in the land of the high houses, the dualism of light and dark, the struggle of good versus evil they held as truth found fertile ground among people living in the rocky mountains and hills, a population already familiar with an intolerance and chaos that stemmed from human religious institutions supported by an empirical military might they bitterly resented, which they saw as masks and veils for greed and power. Dualism, the manner in which the Christianized Balkan people who jealously held to pagan beliefs viewed the world, took hold as the peasants and shepherds found a codified form of their mindset and experience-shaped personalities appealing. The churches of Rome and Constantinople were about to be shaken by a spiritual earthquake that would have implications for centuries to come.
A 10th century priest living in what is now Macedonia, part of the then Bulgarian empire, whom we have come to know simply as Tata Bogomila (Father Dearest of God, in South Slavonic) began to preach a new form of Christianity, indeed a new faith. God, he taught, is goodness, and all that is good stems from this loving God. He is a God of light and beauty, the source of all that is beneficent and holy, pure and joyous. Life, however, is not. This creation, with it’s sadness and tyranny, oppression and disease, corruption and chaos, can not have been created by such a loving and beautiful being. Therefore it was Satanel, the devil himself, who created the world, the universe, and all that we see and can touch. This is why the world is such a sad and evil place. What God of love and joy would create such an unholy and corrupt place and fill it with so much evil? Only through good works and good deeds, through a life of piety and chastity can we overcome the chains of Satanel’s creation, our body and all flesh, for the soul was breathed into the body by a clever God who in turn would trick and corrupt Satanel’s material creation. At death we can attain to the God of light and love and be one with this deity, living for eternity in joy and complete bliss. But in this life, we must be prepared to suffer as creation is the work of Satanel, the devil himself. To defeat Satanel, we must commit ourselves to the cosmic struggle between good and evil and seek an escape. Our earthly existence in the form of our bodies which temporarily house our souls, is the battlefield where these opposing forces enact this struggle, the border between light and dark, good and evil.
As priests of both the Orthodox and Catholic faiths began to abjure their church dogma and practices and implement the teachings of Father Bogomila, a new set of religious traditions began to take shape. While the common folk retained their neo pagan customs and beliefs and held to a few established Christian practices as they saw fit, they depended on the traveling Bogomil priests, called in Latin perfectae, to say prayers and perform the rites of the faith. These perfectae were vegetarians and would fast and live spiritual lives while the common people sought them for blessings and guidance. These priests wore a simple robe which would eventually inspire the dress of St. Francis of Assisi, a simple robe girdled with rope symbolizing one’s devotion to God. And like Francis who would come after them, they comforted the sick, tended to orphans and helped stray animals. When visiting, they would be asked to bless the village and all in it, and to lead prayer. Religious services were simple, with a Bible opened on a table, though only certain books of the Bible were accepted. Wine and bread were used for communion. Some books of the Bible were considered evil, as were the churches in Rome and Constantinople, described as the two horns of Satanel. They ministered to people who sought proximity to a loving God they wanted to believe in, even though this God was far away and it was impossible to see or be with him in this life. Humans tend to always seek out goodness and kindness, and it was in the teachings of Father Bogomil that they were content with attaining to this God. It is interesting to note that women became perfectae as well, in a time when their gender was considered little higher is status than domesticated beasts of burden, a few centuries before Joan of Arc. Was Joan influenced somehow by these daring and rebellious women? We will explain the French connection to the Bogomils in a moment.
While Bogomilism was confined to the villages and hamlets of Macedonia and Bulgaria, the rulers of the various kingdoms and the prelates of the churches thought little of what they saw and understood as ancient folk traditions. But as time went on and Bogomilism began to spread and gain popularity among the Balkan peoples, a direct confrontation with the church and the ruling authority would be imminent. There would be serious questions about dogma that would arise concerning Bogomil beliefs which would eventually become a clash between the Bogomils and the two major churches. Since all creation is of Satanel the devil, then everything, including those very churches were corrupt and evil. The Pope and the Archbishop, the priests and nuns, kings and princes who served them, their soldiers and their ministers were all corupted. All flesh is corrupted, and in this Bogomilism taught that the body of Christ was not divine or holy. This was surely a challenge and an affront to Christianity. The faith spread north into Bosnia, where the local population accepted the Bogomil perfectae and offered them to become the ministers and protectors of that kingdom’s religious conscience. The Church of Bosnia came into being, and with this the establishment of a third church within all Christendom. From there, missionaries traveled west into Italy and France where whole towns openly professed their allegiance to this new dualistic religion. The followers of the faith were called by other names now, such as Albigensiens and Cathars. Many within the church could hide the fact that they were dualists, and secretly follow the faith if they feared being suspected of heresy, a crime punishable by torture and death, while some would outright display defiance and declare their allegiance to the new faith and renounce traditional Christianity. Not only in the Balkans was rebellion against established Christianity breaking out, but now in western Europe as well.
Rome and Constantinople reacted to this new threat with the power they possessed. The Byzantine empire called on the Balkan kingdoms of Bulgaria, Serbia and Bosnia to suppress this heresy, even though many nobles and princes were sympathetic to the new religion and saw the popular movement as a chance to break from Byzantine power and control. With many of the Balkan princes refusing to do the bidding of their theocratic masters, Byzantine forces marched into Macedonia and Bulgaria and arrested any priest who practiced the Bogomil rites. Eventually, there were armed conflicts and wholesale massacres of peasants and perfectae. The burning of villages that were believed to have converted to the Bogomil heresy became commonplace.The Latin church in the west, ready to resist and always in competition with Constantinople this time realized and understood the threat and now preached a crusade against these heretics after ambassadors from the Pope in Rome were thrown into a well in Bosnia as a sign of defiance. An army of knights massacred hundreds in the Dalmatian coastal town of Zara, and raided coastal towns all along the Adriatic down to the coast of Albania and western Greece, committing unspeakable atrocities. Both Byzantine and Latin armies now criss-crossed the Balkans looking for heretics in their attempt to wipe out the faith that threatened their very control and power hold razing, burning and plundering. The stiff resistance of the locals, now armed with a faith teaching that death and martyrdom provided a release from a corrupted and evil world which they for centuries knew too well became stronger and more determined in defying those evil agents of Satanel who would oppress them. The Balkans became as it was so many times before and since, a place of war and desolation.
The great threat that plagued the Pope and his church hierarchy in Rome was the fact of the faith’s success in southern France. Kingdoms and principalities in the Balkans often changed hands many times in a generation, and the cost of defending those principalities against roving bands of horsemen and invaders from the steppes was high. The locals were usually left to their own devices and faced the invasion on their own, while a reluctant Roman church looked the other way rather than send their best knights and their soldiers to fight in a mountainous terrain where the local princes might ally themselves at any time with the invaders after all. However, here in the south of France there was good farmland owned by nobles loyal to the church, with no threat of horsemen from the east or the questionable loyalty of hostile Balkan peasants to worry about. Yet here, the dualism from the Balkans gained momentum among an already disgruntled population living under a form of serfdom. Whole fortified cities refused to pay taxes or give allegiance to the Catholic church. Their priests refused to conduct traditional Catholic mass and openly declared themselves as heretics of the church. The Pope called for another crusade as the inhabitants of these fortified towns readied themselves for imminent sieges they knew would come. Even those who were not converts chose to join the revolt alongside the heretics. The south of France was now in open revolt as the common folk armed themselves, formed peasant armies led by sympathetic knights, lords and landowners who adopted the new faith, and took over church land that would be echoed centuries later in the Wars of the Reformation and in countless revolutions and social upheaval. The bloodshed was horrible as peasants, both heretic and Christian, joined forces and massacred crusaders while crusaders massacred peasants. When the Papal crusader army besieged the town of Montsegur in the south of France the Christians inside were granted a last chance to leave and thus escape extermination. They chose to stay and fight with their Albigensian dualist comrades. When the crusaders finally breached the walls, they slaughtered hundreds of men women and children and burned the perfectae alive publicly. Perhaps the greatest massacre occurred at Beziers in the year 1209. The walled fortress resisted tenaciously, causing many casualties among the crusaders, who were led by the Cistercian abbot Arnaud. When the city was taken, Arnaud ordered all to be put to the sword. One of his captains asked how he would tell Christian from heretic? “Kill them all” said the abbot. “God knows his own”. He wrote to the Pope and reported that 20,000 heretics in Beziers and the surrounding countryside were put to death that day. Such was the resolve of the church and their loyal nobles to stamp out this movement which turned common men and women against the central power structure of medieval Europe. These events certainly started out as “some damned little thing in the Balkans” and went on to turn Europe upside down and inside out.
When all seemed lost, the rather pessimistic view of the world held by these heretics, be they Albigensian, Cathar or Bogomil, expressed itself in a peculiar manner. A person might be dying, and thus received the consolentum, in essence a form of the last rites. This was an important sacrament, as one prepared to finally go to the God of light and thus free oneself from the corrupted, dark world. However, once the consolentum was administered, it could not be granted again. One had to die. Now, if a believer was to recover from an illness and not die after the consolentum was granted, he or she by remaining alive in this world would be corrupted. As death is inevitable at some point in one’s life, the believer could not be granted last rites again. Thus they would die and remain in darkness for all eternity. To ensure that the passage to the the other world would happen, the believer was suffocated with a pillow. Needless to say, the voices of the church had an argument against the heretical priests and many came to see that suffocation was simply an absurd and rather lunatic solution to what was the creation of another form of a dogma gone too far. After centuries of such persecution, oppression and wholesale slaughter the heresy in France eventually began to die. But the resistance to authority remained a strong memory and may have contributed to the reactionary and rebellious nature of later French social movements, including the ambiguity of the French kings towards the church. The rise of the Jesuits, a group of educated men created by the same church to combat the spread of Protestantism, in time became a group of men who would would independently interpret the teachings of Christ in their own manner, and be the cause and leaders of revolutions in the New World against that Catholic power Spain, the sword arm of the church, building progressive communities among the natives of the Americas. Down to the French Revolution, France would remain rather rebellious, remaining a Catholic country but always vying with the Vatican for power. This may stem in part from the days when common peasants resisted political ecclesiastic authority while proudly announcing their conversion to a new dualist faith in the hope of a new paradigm. The Protestant movement would later gain converts in France during the Reformation, with a group called the Huguenots. However, they too would be wiped out and forced to immigrate to what was then known as the new World
Hoping to reconnect the lost sheep and bring them back to the flock, the reconciliatory church now sent the likes of Saint Dominic who tried to preach to the Cathars but managed to convert only a few of them. Francis of Assisi was inspired by the simplicity and genuine earthiness of the perfectae, and also tried to reach out to them. But his efforts too were thwarted by a stubborn resistance born of centuries of persecution. As such persuasion failed to bring the number of lost sheep back to the fold, the church began the Inquisition to weed out the heretics and radicals among them. Thus began another nightmare of intolerance and oppression that created more mistrust among western Europeans that would add fuel to the fire of the Reformation.
In central Europe, as in France, the seeds of revolt were already planted. During the middle ages, while the dualist heresy struggled with the established churches, there was a bit of intermarriage between princely families from Albania and Bosnia and the noble families of Bohemia. It should be remembered that it was in Bohemia that the very first shakings of what would become the Protestant Reformation took place. Reformer Jan Huss was executed and the people of Bohemia rose in armed revolt. Today, a Bohemian is a term used to describe a rebel, a heretical personality, one who does not conform. In short, this is describing a very Balkan-type personality in this case in a central European context. Were there heretics among those Balkan brides and grooms who intermarried with Bohemian nobility, influencing their children and grandchildren with stories of resistance to religious authority? Perhaps. Nonetheless, ideas that are universally appealing tend to spread, and sometimes they spread like a wildfire across our world seemingly penetrating borders and political boundaries, knowing no limits in reaching the hearts of humanity.
What of Bogomilism in the place of it’s origin, the Balkans? Though the faith still had adherents and was practiced, it began to lose ground due to lack of funds and constant persecution from outside forces. The local princes in the kingdoms of Serbia and Bulgaria fought, local princes and dukes in Albania, Bosnia and Rumania bickered with each other, or took bribes from the Byzantines insuring chaos to ensue. Politics in the Balkans, as in many places in the world, aways did and still does to this day manifest a chaotic and corrupt sense of governing. With such internal dissension, the one-time unity brought about by Bogomilism which bonded the various kingdoms and peoples together at least in a spiritual sense eventually disappeared. In time, the memory of organized dualism faded and the people of Serbia and Bulgaria who may have questioned church dogma embraced fully the doctrines of Constantinople and Orthodoxy without question. Croatia remained Catholic, and to this day the cultural line of division and demarcation between an Orthodox Serbia and Catholic Croatia can be seen and felt during modern times of political turmoil as in the days of old.
In Bosnia, however, once the seat and center of the Bogomil faith, the population surrendered not to Christianity but to Islam. As the Ottoman Turks conquered and spread into southeastern Europe, the one time followers of Father Bogomil saw in the simple and austere faith of the Quran parallels to their own. There were mass conversions, and hundreds of churches were converted into mosques as the local populace quickly and simply converted to the new faith en masse. The memory of religious persecution and oppression was great and the Bosnian soul already removed itself from the fold of Nicaean Christianity long ago, even before the coming of the Turks.
Before the Ottomans, Albania’s Christians, like the Slavs of Croatia and Serbia were divided into a Catholic north and an Orthodox south, brought about by the already mentioned adherence of princes to this church or that bishopric and involvement in Byzantine or Roman political intrigue and administration. For the Albanians, this was a political division rather than a religious one, as the Albanians held to ancient pagan beliefs and traditional folk practices without a centralized religious authority as was the case in other Balkan kingdoms. It is said that an early form of Sufism entered in the 13th century with the arrival of one Sari Saltuk, who spoke to the populace in their own unique language. When the Turks arrived with their armies and forces ready to subdue the Balkans, some Albanians already knew about their religion, though Albanians did not submit willingly or quickly to Ottoman Islam. In fact Bektashism, named after a dervish from Khorasan named Haji Bektashi who taught the unity of all religious faiths, seeking God in the pantheism of nature, became centered in Albania and always stood for the unity of the people against foreign domination. The Bektashi Babas would, like the Bogomil Fathers before them, visit people in their homes or set up centers in their towns, inviting people of all faiths to visit and pray with them. Conversion to Islam was, however, beneficial regarding taxes, which Muslims didn’t have to pay. For those Albanians who wished to hold to their Christianity, as a rule the man of the house would convert but his family could remain Christian. Thus they were exempt from paying the jizya tax and were not considered as dhimmis under Ottoman law. In many instances the man of the house would have a Christian name he used among his family and a Muslim name when going about the town and visiting with Ottoman officials. As a result of few centuries of this interfaith symbiosis, a crypto Christianity developed, with people using two sets of names and two identities. These were called Laramane. This crypto Christianity inspired the Laramane to develop their own particular practices, such as using Muslim prayer rugs and reciting the Muslim ‘basmillah’ (in the name of God) formula before reciting Christian prayers. In 1912 when Albania became independent after 450 years of Ottoman rule, many Laramane came out and openly professed their Christianity. There was no backlash or condemnation by the Muslim populace. Such tolerance comes about, perhaps, due to the commonly held belief that only God is perfect and remains a mystery; outside of this world and all that we can touch, see or feel. We are here and this is a fact. All else is conjecture, but all conjecture should be respected. This is also a reason why in Albania it is customary for Muslims to visit churches and celebrate certain saint’s days, as Christians visit the graves of dervishes and Muslim holy men. The legacy of Bogomil dualism and tradition can clearly be felt here, as strict adherence to dogma is just another manifestation of the created world, created as it was believed by none other than that prince of darkness. Dogma has brought much pain and sorrow to humanity, and in the guise of religion has poured salt on already deep wounds. “Ku eshte fej, shpat” is an Albanian expression...where there is religion, there is the sword. Yes, the bloody legacy of the distant past lives on.
Many accepted practices that have become part of Christianity have heir origins in the Bogomils. For example, the eating of fish on Wednesdays and Fridays was a practice among the common people in the Balkans in the middle ages. As the prefectae were vegetarians, the common folk would fast from meat on these days. The custom became part of Catholic religious practice. The formation of the religious orders of brothers who wear simple robes and sandals, beginning with the Franciscans, get their inspiration from the Bogomil prefectae. The custom of ashes placed upon the forehead on Ash Wednesday might symbolize the Bogomil concept of the corrupted Earth, a reminder of what we are created from and to that which we will ultimately return, while our soul on the day of our death is freed from the prison of creation, and all that is left are but ashes, the clay Satanel used to mold our forms. On that day we joyously fly to be with the God of light, and we know that Satanel can never again harm us or command our fate. The confusion of duality is no more as unity with God and his bliss comes to us at last. We leave the corruption behind knowing that we have succeeded in our earthly struggle. God has defeated Satanel and we share in that victory. We finally dwell in the long awaited light, our time of suffering over as we complete our journey to be one with the light of goodness, basking in that light forever.
If one were to visit Bosnia today, they would find the remnants of the stecci, the carved tombstones of the long gone Bogomils. These are rather large structures, carved with neo primitive folk carvings of mythological and spiritual symbols. One popular style of stecci is a carving of the deceased dressed in a folk costume. Curiously, the right hand of the effigy is raised and slightly larger than normal. The hand is raised as a gesture, as some speculate this was meant to ward off the evil eye. But another explanation is that the deceased is happy and content where he is now having completed his time on Earth. He is waving to us, as if from another dimension to convey his humble and hospitable greetings from centuries ago with an emphatic hello, with all the robust, welcoming warmth Balkan people are known for. The effigy reminds us that we are now going through the trials and tribulations that all beings must endure but all will be well after our souls pass through the portals of light out of this material world and into that permanent abode where all is pure joy. He seems a bit teasing, snark, laughing at us as we endure the rigors of day to day living, taunting us to ponder out existence as we envy him in his peaceful abode in heaven. Whatever or however we wish to interpret the figure on the stecci the gesture is one of hope, the only entity this individual in his troubled time may have known. But hope gives us a reason to live, a cause celeb to strive and endure, move on and climb. Hope is a human emotion that cannot be extinguished or deleted- not by massed armies, the cruelty of tyrants and scoundrels or the indifference of religious clerics who with their dogmas wage war on everything not in line with their literalist thinking. Unlike the corrupted materials of the Earth, hope like love can be one's passport if you will, taken with us to the realm of light. This hope is then passed on and lives forever in the hearts of other beings who come after us. And so goes the cycle in the struggle between light and dark, good and evil. Everything will be just fine when we finally become illuminated. Duality would for us cease to be our reality, the reason for the suffering we experience, and unity would be the realization of the truth. That illumination, that ultimate unity, the light we all seek and aspire to become, is indeed our ultimate destiny.
