Their belief in the evilness of matter was productive, as such a belief always has been, of much asceticism; which, if the concurrent testimony of their enemies is to be believed, they carried at times to deplorable excesses. ‘They show themselves,’ says Cosmas, ‘strong ascetics, for they call the Devil the Creator of all things, and declare that it is his Commandment that men should take wives, eat flesh, and drink wine. Everything as it exists with us (the orthodox) is utterly rejected. They give themselves up to a celestial life, insomuch that they call married men and those living in the way of the world “Mammon’s Children.”’ The descriptions of Anna Comnena and the monk Cosmas bring before us the familiar Puritan type, as it has reproduced itself in all ages. They bowed their heads and groaned and pulled long faces, in the true Roundhead style. ‘You will see heretics,’ quoth Cosmas, ‘quiet and peaceful as lambs without, silent, and wan with hypocritical fasting, who do not speak much nor laugh loud, who let their beard grow, and leave their person incompt.’ These descriptions of their enemies must, however, be taken with this reserve: they apply, as a rule, only to a small minority of the sect. The Bogomiles, like most ascetic sects, were divided into two castes: the simple believers, the _Credentes_ of the West, who formed the large majority; and ‘the perfect,’ or those who by a long course of asceticism had successfully mortified the flesh. In the thirteenth century, at the most blooming period of their history, among the millions of these sectaries were reckoned less than 4,000 of ‘the perfect.’[31] These ‘perfect’ called themselves in Bosnia _Krstjani_, _dobri Bošniani_, _Svršiteli_, ‘Christians,’ that is, ‘good Bosnians,’ or ‘the elect,’ terms which reappear in a Romance guise in Italy and the Languedoc. The ‘perfect’ were clad like monks in long black gowns; they condemned themselves to perpetual celibacy; they abjured wine, nor tasted aught but vegetables, fish, and oil; they forsook the ‘pomps and vanities of this wicked world,’ and gave themselves up to devotion and good works. The women (for this saintly minority included both sexes) taught children or tended the sick, while the men acted as the spiritual guides of their weaker brethren or preached the Gospel among unbelievers.