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SECTION XXII.
THE REFORMATION IN BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY ABOGOMIL
MOVEMENT.—RENEWAL OF PERSECUTION UNDER KINGS STEPHEN THOMAS
AND STEPHEN TOMASEVIC.—THE POBRATIMTSVO.
DURING this period the Bogomils, availingthemselves of all their opportunities for missionary work, were sending aid andencouragement to their brethren in Bohemia and Hungary, and the Reformation under JohnHuss and Jerome of Prague was avowedly a Bogomil movement. At this time also their leaderswere men of such learning and culture that Pope Pius II. in 1462 found it necessary tosend the most learned men he could find to Bosnia to refute their heresies.[34]
But with the death of Tvart-ko III. therecame a change. His successor, Stephen Thomas, was the illegitimate son of one ofTvart-ko's rivals, and was raised to the throne by the Bogomils,to whose communion hebelonged.But he was a man of weak and vacillating temper, and when the crafty papal legate,Thomasini, threatened him with the rejection of his claims to the throne unless he abjuredhis faith and became a Roman Catholic, and promised to reconcile his rivals and to givehim a consecrated crown if he yielded to his demands, the weak king, after a feebleresistance, consented, abjured, and was baptized into the Roman Catholic fold in 1444. oneof his vassals, Stephen Cosaccia, Duke of St. Sava, was a strict Roman Catholic, andrefused allegiance to him unless he thus abjured his faith. But no sooner had StephenThomas. the Bosnian king, commenced or permitted the persecution of the Bogomils than theDuke of St. Sava (the modern Herzegovina) cut loose from the papal party and joined theBogomils himself.
In 1446, Stephen Thomas found thesentiments of his people so strongly arrayed against him that, like the English King John,he was compelled to assemble the magnates of his realm, and the Bogomil leaders amongthem, at Coinica, and grant them large privileges, and, among others,tolerationfor the Bogomils, but his cowardly and craven nature led him to falsify his oath anddeliver them over to the power of the Inquisition. In 1450 the Bogomils, wearied anddisgusted with his treachery and the cruelty of the Inquisition, turned for protection tothe Turks, and compelled the king to buy an ignoble peace by the payment of a largetribute. In 1457 he appealed to the whole Christian world for help against the infidel,but he was said to have already made with the Turkish sultan that solemn alliance of swornbrotherhood known to the Sclavonic race as thePobratimtsvo.*These constantchanges and tergiversations had alienated all his friends from him, and his assassinationon the field of Bielaj in 1459 by his step-brother and his own illegitimate son, StephenTomasevic, caused little sorrow.
*TheProbratimtsvo wasa secretrite, performed with much ceremony and the mingling of the blood of the two parties to it,by which they became sworn brothers and the recipients of each other’s fullestconfidence. The violation of the vow of brotherhood was considered the most horrible ofcrimes.
The parricide at once usurped the throne,and proved a baser man than his father. He claimed to be a Roman Catholic pure and simple,and solicited the aid of the pope, Pius II (AEneas Sylvius), on the express ground of hisdesire to commence immediately the extirpation of the Bogomil heresy. In the first year ofhis reign he turned the arms of his troops against his unoffending Bogomil subjects, andin a few months had slaughtered or driven out of his kingdom forty thousand of them. In1463 he again appealed to the pope, apparently in great distress at the near approach ofthe Turks. He had occasion for this appeal. He had continued his persecution of theBogomils, and they, the majority of the population of his realm, and especially of thecities, were justly incensed against him.
The prospect of another influx of Romishheresy-hunters was not a pleasing one to them, and, finding that they had nothing to hopefor from their king, they turned to the Turkish sultan and opened negotiations with him.An agreement was made that they would transfer their allegiance to him, and he in returnguaranteed them their personal liberty, free toleration for their religion, freedom fromtaxation, protection of property, and other privileges.
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