At that time, the great schism broke out more violently than ever
between the Greek church, under the Patriarch Photius, and the Latin
church, under Pope Nicholas I. The Bulgarians took part with the Greek
church; and from that time, probably, it was that they were treated in
the west as heretics, with the addition of that fine epithet, which has
clung to them to the present day.
In 871, the Emperor Basil sent them a preacher, named Peter of Sicily,
to save them from the heresy of Manichæism; and it is added, that they
no sooner heard him than they turned Manichæans. It is not very
surprising that the Bulgarians, who drank out of the skulls of their
enemies, were not extraordinary theologians any more than Peter of
Sicily.
It is singular that these barbarians, who could neither write nor read,
should have been regarded as very knowing heretics, with whom it was
dangerous to dispute. They certainly had other things to think of than
controversy, since they carried on a sanguinary war against the emperors
of Constantinople for four successive centuries, and even besieged the
capital of the empire.
At the commencement of the thirteenth century, the Emperor Alexis,
wishing to make himself recognized by the Bulgarians, their king,
Joannic, replied, that he would never be his vassal. Pope Innocent III.
was careful to seize this opportunity of attaching the kingdom of
Bulgaria to himself: he sent a legate to Joannic, to anoint him king;
and pretended that he had conferred the kingdom upon him, and that he
could never more hold it but from the holy see.
This was the most violent period of the crusades. The indignant
Bulgarians entered into an alliance with the Turks, declared war against
the pope and his crusaders, took the pretended Emperor Baldwin prisoner,
had his head cut off, and made a bowl of his skull, after the manner of
Krom. This was quite enough to make the Bulgarians abhorred by all
Europe. It was no longer necessary to call them Manichæans, a name which
was at that time given to every class of heretics: for Manichæan,
Patarin, and Vaudois were the same thing. These terms were lavished upon
whosoever would not submit to the Roman church.
BULL.
A quadruped, armed with horns, having cloven feet, strong legs, a slow
pace, a thick body, a hard skin, a tail not quite so long as that of the
horse, with some long hairs at the end. Its blood has been looked upon
as a poison, but it is no more so than that of other animals; and the
ancients, who wrote that Themistocles and others poisoned themselves
with bull's blood, were false both to nature and to history. Lucian, who
reproaches Jupiter with having placed the bull's horns above his eyes,
reproaches him unjustly; for the eye of a bull being large, round, and
open, he sees very well where he strikes; and if his eyes had been
placed higher than his horns, he could not have seen the grass which he
crops.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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