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SECTION XVIII.
THE ERA OF PERSECUTION.—THE CRUSADESAGAINST THE
BOGOMILS.—THE ARCHBISHOP OF COLOCZ.
WE return from this digression to anaccount of what befel the Bogomils of Bosnia after the death of "the good BanCulin." After his decease, which occurred in 1205, the King of Hungary, wishing topacify Pope Innocent III., procured the election of Zibisclav, a Sclavonian, but a strictRoman Catholic, as Ban of Bosnia. But the pure lives, the honesty, integrity, andindustry, of the Bogomils, were too much for this Roman Catholic Ban, and he became aconvert to the hated sect. There were peace and quiet in Bosnia till 1216, when thelearned and gentle Pope Honorius III., having ascended the papal throne, believing thatthese heretical Bogomils could be convinced of their heresies by argument, sent theaccomplished subdeacon Aconcius to Bosnia to labor for their conversion. But the argumentsof the eloquent subdeacon proved no more efficacious than those of his predecessors: theheresy grew and increased, like the waters of Noah's flood, continuously. Northward andnorthwestward, in the provinces of Croatia, Dalmatia, Istria, Carniola, and Sclavonia,which had hitherto been strongly Roman Catholic, the number of converts multiplied daily,while at home they were fast becoming the dominant power.
In this emergency the Archbishop ofColocz, in Hungary. stood forth as a defender of the Romish faith. Armed with authorityfrom the pope and the Hungarian king, he entered Bosnia in 1222 at the head of a host ofHungarian Catholics, and used the sword with such good effect that he had shortlypossessed himself of the provinces of Bosnia, Ussora, and Soy. The Ban Zibisclav, whoseems to have possessed very little of the Sclavonic pluck, notwithstanding his Sclavonicorigin, was compelled to abjure his errors, and, falling humbly at the feet of the pope,Gregory IX., received from him an embrace; in return for which he professed to be willingto dedicate to his service his person, his lands, and all the goods he at that timepossessed. This was in 1233.
The subjects of the Ban were not inclinedto be included in this abject surrender. The violent persecution which had raged foreleven years had not terrified them, though it had subjugated their Ban, and their answerto their persecutor was the erection of more places of worship and the setting apart of agreater number ofdjeds,or elders, both for home and missionary work. Pope GregoryIX. was enraged at the boldness of these heretics. Provence had been overrun and purged ofits heresies, the Waldenses had been driven into the fastnesses of Piedmont, and should hebe thus flouted by these Serbian BogomiIs? It was not to be thought of for a moment. A newcrusade was proclaimed, and Coloman, Ban of Sclavonia and brother of the King of Hungary,was to lead it. In 1238 he entered Bosnia. with a large army to exterminate the heretics.The weak and treacherous Zibisclav permitted without protest or resistance the havoc anddevastation which this ruffianly crusader made among his best subjects. Coloman"purged"—so they called it—the whole kingdom, and extended his ravagesthrough the principality of Chelm, which formed the south-western portion of the presentHerzegovina. No troubadour has sung, no historian has recorded, the barbarities andatrocities of this war of extermination: we only know that many thousands were enrolledamong the glorious army of martyrs, and that from under the altar, the souls of them thatwere slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held, uttered again theircries for vengeance on the cruel persecutor of the saints. Pope Gregory IX., in 1240,congratulated Coloman on " wiping out the heresy, and restoring the light of Catholicpurity;" but ere his death, in 1241, he had discovered that his congratulations werepremature.
The Tartar invasion of 1241, whichweakened the power of Hungary, and in which the crusader Coloman and the base cowardZibisclav both fell on the field under the fierce assault of the Khan Ugadai, relieved theBogomils from persecution for a time.[30]
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