Touching baptism again, accounts are contradictory. Harmenopulos says that the Bogomiles practised the rite, but did not attribute to it any perfecting[26] virtue. On the other hand, the most recent investigations into the observances of the Bogomiles of Bosnia show that strictly speaking the rite did not exist among them at all, though they observed something analogous to it. Only adults could be admitted into the communion of the faithful; and, after they had first qualified themselves for admission by prayer and fasting, the mystery of initiation was performed, not by water—for did not water itself appertain to the evil realm of matter?—but by the laying on of St. John’s Gospel. Thus Cosmas is technically right in saying that the Bogomiles rejected baptism altogether, though it is probable that he was merely calumniating them when he added as a reason, that ‘they are afraid of the children to be baptized; and if by chance they see small children, they turn away from them as from carrion, and spit, and call them children of mammon, as being creations of the Devil;’ still under the sway, that is, of the Evil Creator Spirit. As regards Bosnia, at any rate, this is a foul slander. So far were the Bosnian Bogomiles from spurning little children, that the instruction of the young was considered a work worthy of the most saintly of the sect. They were staunch opponents of the prevailing Mariolatry. ‘They pay no honour to the Mother of God.’[27] ‘As to the cross,’ says the Presbyter, they say: ‘Wherefore should we bow to that which dishonoured God?’ and they ask further, ‘if any man slew the son of a king with a bit of wood, how could this bit of wood be dear to the king?’[28] They considered it idolatry to bow down before the icons of saints. ‘They further revile the ceremonies of the church and all church dignities, and they call orthodox priests blind Pharisees, and bay at them as dogs at horses.’[29] ‘As to the Lord’s Supper,’ continues the Bulgarian champion of orthodoxy, ‘they assert that it is not kept according to God’s commandment, and that it is not the body of God, but ordinary bread.’[30]