The Bosnian kingdom had collapsed entirely; 100,000 prisoners had been taken, and 30,000 youths enrolled in the corps of Janissaries. The Sultan was in doubt as to what to do with Stephen Tomašević. It was his invariable practice to put the rulers of the lands which he conquered to death, but in this case his lieutenant had pledged the Imperial word that the King should be spared. A learned Persian mufti helped him out of the difficulty by declaring that a safe-conduct given without the Sultan’s direct assent to be invalid, and he himself cut off Stephen’s head. The King’s widow, Mary Helena, fled to Croatia and afterwards to Spalato, accompanied by many magnates, including the Vojvod Ivaniš Vlatković, and eventually died in Hungary. The Queen-mother, Catherine, lingered for a while in the convent of Sutjeska (Herzegovina), until the advance of the Turks forced her to escape by way of Stagno to Ragusa, where she received hospitality and was given a pension of 500 ducats a year. She remained there until 1475, when she retired to a convent in Rome; she died in the Eternal City three years later, and was buried in the church of Ara Cœli. Countless fugitives from Bosnia now fled to the Dalmatian towns, especially to the ever-hospitable Ragusa, until at last Mohammed’s attention was called by a Franciscan monk to the depopulation of the country, and he was induced to modify his policy of persecution and grant privileges to that Order, which thenceforth ministered to the spiritual needs of the Bosnian Catholics.[413] Religious differences had thus brought about the final ruin of the land, and subjected it to the awful blight of Turkish misrule for over four centuries; but they survived the conquest. The Bogomils gradually dropped into Muhamedanism, which from its purely monotheistic character was less repugnant to them than Catholicism; but a few adhered to their old tenets for a long time, and there were Bogomils in Bosnia and the Herzegovina until sixty or seventy years ago; indeed it is asserted that Bogomil rites are still practised by the Muhamedans of certain villages near Konjica and elsewhere. The Orthodox Church, however, gained large numbers of adherents, and is to-day the most numerous of the three communities in Bosnia and the Herzegovina.