easants but the bans. Just
as Du[vs]an and other Balkan princes had made of an autocephalous
Church the surest foundation of their States, so did the Bans of
Bosnia, beginning with Kulin at the close of the twelfth century, see
in the Bogomile movement a national Church that would render their
subjects more intractable to outside influences, to religious
suggestions emanating from Rome, and to political ambitions that came
from Hungary. The people, for their part, flocked to the ranks of the
"good Christians," as the sect was called, on account of the Bogomile
humility, the democratic organization of a Church that was in such
contrast with the formalism of Byzantine ceremonial, and also on
account of some pagan superstitions that were mingled with this
Christianity and made to these simple, recently converted Christians a
most potent appeal. It was in vain that the Popes preached a crusade
against the Bogomiles, in vain that the Kings of Hungary descended on
their heretical vassals; for the ban, in one way or another, would
divert that wrath--sometimes, if no other choice presented itself, he
became the temporary instrument of this wrath while standing at the
people's back. From all the world, so say contemporary records, there
was a constant stream of heretics to Bosnia, where now the Bogomiles
were found in the most exalted positions. Ceaselessly the Popes
persecuted them, and when at last in Sigismund of Hungary an ardent
extirpator visited the land there came about a terrible result, which
has made Bosnia so different from other Serbian territories.

KOSSOVO

Tvertko did his utmost to make of Bosnia the kernel of another great
Slav State. The death of Lewis of Hungary freed him from his most
redoubtable adversary; Dalmatia, Croatia and other lands were joining
him--but then in 1389 came Kossovo, the fatal field of blackbirds,
where a disloyal coalition of Serbian, Croatian, Albanian and
Bulgarian chieftains went down in irretrievable disaster. Milos
Obili['c], who is now one of Serbia's popular heroes, had been
suspected of lukewarmness; he answered his accusers by gaining access
to the Sultan's camp and slaying the Sultan. Not only did the Turks
put him to death, but they decapitated their prisoner, Prince Lazar,
and all the other chiefs.

The Slavs along the Adriatic were now also on the eve of dire
misfortune: protracted wars of succession, in consequence of the death
in 1382 of Lewis of Hungary, had ravage