History. Effects of Bogomil persecution - include conversion to Muslim faith

Bogomil gravestone, Bosnia

Balkan wars. Ethnic cleansing. Familiar. Deep roots. Origins.

Driving from Sinj, Croatia, to Mostar, Bosnia, we passed and went right through groups and groups of headstones. There are people there on this headstone, and a cross.

What happens when one group tries to stamp out another - the persecuted may turn to others for deliverance. Here, many Bogomils turned to the Turks. See M. Edith Durham in "The Burden of the Balkans," at http://www.peacelink.nu/Boker/Durham/Durham.

Bogomil beliefs: Also influenced other groups then deemed to be heretical - the Cathars and Albigenses. See http://www.bulgariaembindia.com/history.

Search for Bogomil in those larger sites.

More on unintended effects: Rebecca West, in her classic account of Yugoslavia in "Black Lamb and Gray Falcon," Viking Press 1941, at pages 300-302, writes in the Bosnia chapter that it was this Christian intolerance that forced the Bogomils into the camp of the Turks. This in turn paved the way for the Turks to succeed in their own invasion and occupy much of eastern Europe for 500 years.

The book is still in print - at 1000 pages - and here is an overview of it:
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0003/articles/west">www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0003/articles/west. See the index itself in the Black Lamb book itself. The book is also an e-book. See http://prp.contentdirections.com/mr/gale_edoc_biblio.jsp/doi=10.1223/GALFSNCFS000049

The Bogomil name. University of Wisconsin site listed at the end here notes that the name "Bogomil" comes from a monk of that name, meaning roughly "Pleasing to God." See "The Disastrous 14th Century" at http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/WestTech/x14thc. Scroll down to the section on "Militant Islamic Advances." See http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03435a. Bogomils, and other heresies.