The Bogomil movement got its name from its initiator- Priest Bogomil. Like other mediaeval Christian heresies, such as those of the Paulicians and Massalians which had existed before the Bogomil movement, it was based on the dual principle of good and evil which were in constant op-position. The Bogomils preached that the world man lives in was the creation of the evil forces, and for that reason the rulers on earth – tsars, boyars, superior clergy, etc. — were servants of the devil and to fight them meant to fight Satan and to serve God. The ideal of the Bogomils was the early Christian community, such as it was described in the New Testament and they built their communes after its pattern.
Like all peasant heresies of the time, the Bogomil ideology too contained certain retrograde and utopian elements. To revive the early Christian commune was an unrealistic task, for social development had gone far ahead. This and other negative features of the movement, however, were compensated by the critical, militant charge contained in the Bogomil teaching.
Bulgarian literature
The contribution of the Bogomils to the dissemination of education among the people and to enriching old Bulgarian literature was of particular importance. The literary works of the Bogomils were so voluminous that they created in fact a second literary stream alongside the official one in Mediaeval Bulgaria. These works were characterized not only by their greater rationalism, but also by a vivid and picturesque language.
It is to be pitied that this underground literature of the Bogomils was persecuted and mercilessly destroyed in the course of centuries. Only a few samples of it have come down to us: The Secret Book', The Cathari Book of Prayers' and a few more. Bogomil literature marked its flowering during the 11th and 12th centuries. Books of the Bulgarian Bogomils were translated into Latin, Greek, French, Rus-sian, Serbian, Romanian, Ethiopian and other languages.
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