BOG'OMILES. A religious sect which came into notice in the Twelfth Century, whose chief seat was in Thrace. They resembled the Pauli clans and Cathari. Their name, if derived from the Slay. Bog, 'God,' and milug, 'have mercy,' may perhaps refer to the frequency of their prayers; but more likely it comes from Bogomil, the name of their founder. The basis of their creed was as follows: Out of the eternal divine essence or being sprang two prin ciples—Satanael and Logos: the former, at first good, afterwards rebelled, and created in oppo sition to the original spiritual universe a world of matter and human beings. These human be ings. however, received from the Supreme Father a life-spirit : but this was kept in slavery by Satanael until the Logos or Christ came down front heaven, and, assuming a phantom body, broke the power of the evil spirit, who was hence forth called only Satan. The Bogomiles. like all similar sects, practiced a severe asceticism, despised images, and rejected the sacraments.
Instead of baptism, they placed their hands and an apocryphal Gospel of Saint John on the head of the neophyte, singing at the same time the Lord's Prayer, which they repeated seven times during the day and five times during the night. They accepted the whole of the New Testament. but of the Old Testament only the Psalms and Prophets. which they interpreted allegorically. In 111S that vehement hater of heretics, Alexius Comnenus, burned their leader Basilins. Per secution. however, did not put an end to the Bogomiles, and at the time of the Mohammedan conquest of Bosnia (Fifteenth Century), we find that the greatest number of the renegade Chris tians who embraced the religion of the conquer ors belonged to this sect. There are some Bogo miles even at the present day. Consult Heard. The Russian Church and Russian Dissent (New York, 1887).