Bosnian Church

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The Bosnian Church ( Bosnian Crkva Bosanska / Црква Босанска ; Latin Ecclesia Bosniensis ) is an independent Christian community and church organization in Bosnia in the 13th to 15th centuries that was independent of Catholicism and Orthodoxy . It is sometimes mistakenly identified with the Bogomils .

The phenomenon of the Bosnian Church is historically controversial. The Serbian Orthodox historian Božidar Petranović put forward the thesis in 1867 that the Bosnian Church was a church that had fallen away from Serbian Orthodoxy. This interpretation is popular in Serbia and is used as evidence of the medieval Serbian presence in Bosnia. The Croatian historian Franjo Rački countered Petranović's theses in 1869/70 with studies in which he tried to prove that the Bosnian Church emerged from the dualistic sect of the Bulgarian Bogomils. This interpretation found strong resonance, especially among Bosniak scholars, as the Bogumil theory implied "an authentic ... Bosnian church" and offered itself as an explanation for the later conversion of a considerable part of the population to Islam .

In Croatia, after the Second World War, a theory developed ( Leon Petrović , Jaroslav Šidak ) that saw the Bosnian Church as "basically a branch of the Roman Catholic Church" that became schismatic in isolation and took up heretical tendencies. Dragutin Pavličević writes that the Bosnian Church was created at the time of Ban Kulin by separating from the "wings" of the Roman Catholic Church in the form of its own ceremonies or rites.

The members of the Bosnian Church referred to themselves as Krstjani (Christians) or Dobri Bošnjani (good Bosnians). Their organization showed parallels to the monastic order organization . The Slavic language was used in the liturgy , the Glagolitic script and later the Bosančica . Names for hierarchical ranks were Djed for the head of the church or Gost . The entire hierarchy was of native origin. Whether the church as a monastic organization had many simple lay members is open. Apart from the will of Gost Radin, there are no Bosnian sources about the organization, ceremonies and theology of the Bosnian Church.

After the Franciscan mission offensive in Bosnia in the 14th and 15th centuries, the Bosnian Church shrank. By the time the Ottomans took power, the Bosnian Church was probably already broken. In the Ottoman land registers from the 15th and 16th centuries, only a few residents are listed as "Kr (i) stjani" .

See also

literature

  • Elvira Bijedić: The Bogomil Myth. A controversial “historical unknown” as a source of identity in the nation-building of the Bosniaks . New edition as printed work on demand , Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, Saarbrücken 2011, ISBN 978-3-8381-1711-9 (At the same time dissertation at the Philosophical Faculty of Heidelberg University , Institute for Religious Studies, 2010).
  • Srećko Matko Džaja : The “Bosnian Church” and the Islamization problem in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Second World War. Trofenik, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-87828-115-3 (= contributions to the knowledge of Southeast Europe and the Near East . Volume 28).
  • John VA Fine: The Bosnian Church: A New Interpretation. Boulder, Colorado 1975.
  • Mustafa Imamović: Bosnia-Herzegovina until 1918 . In: Dunja Melčić: The Yugoslavian War: Handbook on Prehistory, Course and Consequences. 2nd edition, VS, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 3-531-33219-8 ( excerpts on books.google ).
  • Noel Malcolm: The Bosnian Church. In: Noel Malcolm: History of Bosnia. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, pp. 45-62, ISBN 3-10-029202-2 .
  • Božidar Petranović: Bogomili, crkva bosanska i krstjani. Zadar 1867.
  • Franjo Rački: Bogomili i patareni. Srpska kraljeva akademija, posebna izdanja. Vol. 87. Belgrade 1931.
  • Zrinka Štimac: The Bosnian Church. Attempt at a religious studies approach . Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2004, ISBN 978-3-631-52022-2 (= Würzburg Studies on Fundamental Theology , Volume 29, also Master's thesis at the University of Hanover 2001).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Elvira Bijedić: The Bogomil Myth. A controversial 'historical unknown' as a source of identity in the nation-building of the Bosniaks . Phil. Diss. Heidelberg 2009 ( online version; PDF; 2.9 MB ).
  2. ^ Dragutin Pavličević : Kratka politicka i kulturna povijest Bosne i Hercegovine . Ed .: Hrvatski informativni centar. 2000 (Croatian, hic.hr ).