The Bosnian Church and its significance for Bosnias political situation in the 13th-14th centuries

The doctrine and history of the so-called Bosnian Church were one of the chief problems studied by researchers into religious issues in the Balkans. The interest was understandable insofar as - if sources are to be believed - Bosnia developed a heresy complete with ceremonies, structures, and hierarchy that embraced even the elites with the ban himself. First reports of the heresy go back to the early 13lh century and continue to the country’s collapse in the mid-15Ih century. The Bosnian Church seems to have played an important part in Bosnia’s social life and its followers maintained links with heterodox groups in Western Europe. The article proposes to analyze the history of the Bosnian Church in the context of its influence on Bosnia’s international situation in the 13th and 14th centuries and to answer the questions: How did Bosnia’s opinion as a “heretical” country affect its rulers’ political decisions and its relations with neighboring countries? How did the Apostolic See view Bosnia? And finally, What dangers were involved and how did they become manifest? Following a detailed analysis of Bosnia’s relations with its neighbors and the Apostolic See, the author concludes that Bosnia gained an opinion of a heretical country already in the early 13lh century, at the time when fierce war was waged in the West against the Manichean heresy of the Cathars. Warnings came especially from neighboring Hungary and were used as a weapon against political opponents. Hungarian actions were made easier by the fact that from the 1220’s, the Bosnian bishop resided in Slavonian Dakovo. This afforded the Arpads, and later the Anjou, freedom of action in Bosnia’s religious affairs and to maintain this state of affairs became one of their political objectives. The arrival of Franciscans, an independent channel of information to the pope, seriously inconvenienced Hungarian rulers. At the same time, the lack of a bishop’s supervision in Bosnia profoundly influenced the growth of heretical church structures there. Accusations of support for a heresy, a propaganda weapon against the ban, were used also by Croatian lords and even by the Bosnians themselves in internal struggles. Bosnia’s opinion as a country overrun by heresy at the peak of its political power does not seem to have affected its political partners’ readiness to cooperate with it.