Bosnian Church - Bosnian Church Scholarship

Bosnian Church Scholarship

The phenomenon of Bosnian medieval Christians has been attracting scholars' attention for centuries, but it was not until the latter half of the 19th century that the most important monograph on the subject, "Bogomili i Patareni" (Bogomils and Patarens), 1870, by eminent Croatian historian Franjo Rački, had been published. Rački argued that the Bosnian Church was essentially Gnostic and Manichaean in nature. This interpretation has been accepted, expanded and elaborated upon by a host of later historians, most prominent among them being Dominik Mandić, Sima Ćirković, Vladimir Ćorović, Miroslav Brandt and Franjo Šanjek. However, a number of other historians (Leon Petrović, Jaroslav Šidak, Dragoljub Dragojlović, Dubravko Lovrenović, and Noel Malcolm) stressed theologically the impeccably orthodox character of Bosnian Christian writings and claimed that for the explanation of this phenomenon suffices the relative isolation of Bosnian Christianity, which retained many archaic traits predating the East-West Schism in 1054.

On the other hand, the American historian of the Balkans, prof. John Fine, does not believe in the dualism of the Bosnian Church at all. Though he represents his theory as a "new interpretation of the Bosnian Church", his view is very close to J. Šidak's early theory and several other scholars before him. He believes that there could well have been heretical groups alongside of the Bosnian Church, however, the church itself was Catholic.