Religious Movements

Medieval Bulgarian religious life included both movements that challenged established church authority and forms of spiritual practice cultivated within Orthodox monasticism. Bogomilism emerged in the First Bulgarian Empire in the tenth century, while hesychasm became influential in the Second Bulgarian Empire during the fourteenth. They were not successive stages of one tradition: Bogomilism was a dualist Christian movement, whereas hesychasm was a contemplative practice and theology within Orthodox Christianity. The two empires existed from 681 to 1018 and from 1185 until the Ottoman conquests of the late fourteenth century, separated by Byzantine rule from 1018 to 1185.

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Bogomilism in the First Bulgarian Empire

Bogomilism took its name from the priest Bogomil, associated with its beginnings during Peter I’s reign, 927–969. Christian writers describe a movement challenging established worship and authority within the already Christian state. Cosmas’s polemic also criticises failings among Orthodox clergy, revealing a wider argument over how Christians should live and whose teaching deserved trust.

A letter from Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople, to Peter I discusses dualist teachings in the mid-tenth century. The Bulgarian cleric Cosmas describes Bogomil and his followers in the work commonly called Treatise Against the Bogomils. Both wrote to oppose teaching they considered dangerous; their accounts identify the movement’s beliefs through the arguments Orthodox authorities made against them.

Teachings and community practices

Accounts commonly describe Bogomilism as dualist: it distinguished the good spiritual order from the material world, which was associated with an evil power. In some versions, the devil was a rebellious being subordinate to God; other accounts suggest a more absolute opposition between good and evil. Orthodox authors therefore described several forms of dualist teaching. Its teachings reinterpreted Christian accounts of creation and salvation, placing particular emphasis on release from the power of evil.

This outlook informed criticism of established religious institutions. Accounts attribute to Bogomils rejection of church hierarchy and of practices such as venerating the cross and icons, as well as worship in purpose-built churches. Some descriptions say that they gathered in homes, read and explained Gospel passages, and prayed together. Rather than relying on the sacramental and clerical structures of the Orthodox Church, they presented their own teachers and communities as a truer form of Christian life.

Some reports distinguish ordinary adherents from a smaller group called the elect or perfect. The latter were associated with strict ascetic discipline and preaching; ordinary believers could continue to work, marry, and live in society. Women are included among the elect in some accounts.

Bogomil teaching also had social implications because its criticism of religious and worldly hierarchy could challenge established authority. Cosmas accused its adherents of scorning the rich and urging servants not to work for their masters. Such statements reveal the concerns of an opponent as well as the reputation of the movement.

Church and royal responses

Orthodox opposition included written refutation, preaching and official condemnation. Cosmas attacked the rejection of church worship and connected it with disobedience to masters and rulers. The dispute therefore involved the authority to teach and command as well as the interpretation of Christian doctrine.

In 1211, Tsar Boril convened a church council at Tarnovo that condemned Bogomil teaching. Its decisions entered the Synodikon of Tsar Boril, a text recited to commemorate defenders of Orthodoxy and condemn named teachings. The council brought ruler and church leaders together in a public statement of religious allegiance.

Later polemical writers described dualist groups in other parts of the Balkans and Byzantium, sometimes using older names for new opponents. Their accounts preserve both regional contacts and changing ways of classifying dissent.

Hesychasm and the practice of inner prayer

Hesychasm was a contemplative tradition within Eastern Orthodox monasticism. Its name comes from the Greek word hēsychia, meaning stillness or quiet. The tradition drew on earlier Christian monastic writing, but acquired a distinctive form in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its practitioners sought inner stillness through sustained prayer and watchfulness over their thoughts, rather than through rejection of the Orthodox Church.

The Jesus Prayer was central to this practice. Repeated over long periods, it called on Jesus for mercy and helped the monk focus attention. Some hesychast teachers recommended quiet breathing and a particular posture as aids to concentration. Such physical methods were not supposed to compel a spiritual experience; they were tools for settling attention. Hesychasts also stressed watchfulness, the discipline of noticing and resisting distracting or tempting thoughts.

The theological debate surrounding hesychasm concerned the possibility of experiencing God. Gregory Palamas, a monk from Mount Athos, argued that God’s essence remained beyond human knowledge, while God’s uncreated energies, or activity, could be experienced through grace. Hesychasts associated this experience with the divine light seen at Christ’s Transfiguration, often called the light of Tabor. In their account, contemplation could lead to theosis, or participation in divine life through God’s grace. This was not a claim that a human being became God by nature.

Barlaam of Calabria objected to claims that monks could experience uncreated divine light, and criticized the theological account developed by Palamas. The dispute was considered at councils in Constantinople in 1341 and 1351. Barlaam withdrew after the first council; the later council affirmed the Palamite position as Orthodox teaching. The controversy involved theology and church authority, and also unfolded amid political conflict within the Byzantine Empire. It was not a dispute between Bogomils and Orthodox monks, even though opponents sometimes associated hesychast teaching with heresies.

Hesychasm in the Second Bulgarian Empire

Hesychast practice reached Bulgarian monastic communities through connections with Mount Athos and other centres of Orthodox monastic life. Gregory of Sinai was an important teacher in this transmission. His disciple Theodosius of Tarnovo helped establish the tradition in Bulgaria during the reign of Tsar Ivan Alexander. In the mid-fourteenth century, Theodosius founded the Kilifarevo monastery near Tarnovo, with royal support. The community attracted monks from different parts of the Balkans and beyond, and became a centre of religious learning as well as contemplative practice.

Monasteries helped sustain the movement through teaching, communal life, and the copying and translation of religious works. Kilifarevo had a library of Orthodox writings, and Greek texts were translated into Middle Bulgarian. Theodosius’s pupils included Euthymius of Tarnovo, who later became patriarch. Through such monastic networks, hesychast teaching could be transmitted beyond the individual hermit or monastery while remaining rooted in the Orthodox Church.

A life of Theodosius credits him with urging Tsar Ivan Alexander to convene a council around 1350 that condemned Bogomilism and other teachings. The account survives in a later Slavonic translation, and scholars have questioned aspects of its chronology and its portrayal of Theodosius’s role. It is therefore evidence for how later tradition remembered church action, but the details should not be treated as certain.