Bogomili (Slav., 'lovers of God'), a religious sect which arose in the 12th century within the Greek Church in Thrace and Bulgaria. Their theology was dualistic, and resembled that of the Paulicians and Cathari. Out of the eternal Divine Essence or Being sprang two principles—Satanael and Logos; the former, at first good, afterwards rebelled, and created in opposition to the original spiritual universe a world of matter and human beings. These human beings, however, received from the Supreme Father a life-spirit; but this was kept in slavery by Satanael until the Logos or
Christ came down from heaven, and assuming a phantom body, broke the power of the evil spirit, who was henceforth called only Satan. The Bogomili practised a severe asceticism, despised images, and rejected the sacraments. They accepted the whole of the New Testament, but of the Old Testament only the Psalms and Prophets, which they interpreted allegorically. In 1118, that vehement hater of heretics, Alexius Comnenus, burned their leader Basilus. Persecution, however, did not put an end to the Bogomili, and to the time of the Mohammedan conquest of Bosnia (16th century), we find that the greatest number of the renegade Christians who embraced the religion of the conquerors belonged to this sect. See Gaster's Greek-Slavonic Literature (1887); Heard's The Russian Church and Russian Dissent (1887).