Sometimes the monks condescended to work miracles to forward the work of conversion. One, while addressing a congregation of heretics, ‘stepped,’ we are assured, ‘into a large fire, and with great hilarity stood in the middle of the flames while he recited the fiftieth Psalm.’ We hardly need the further assurance that many were turned from the error of their ways by miracles like this, especially when it is remembered that the heretics had the alternative of repenting, or repeating the experiment. Nor were there wanting, we are told, miraculous tokens in the sky to manifest the displeasure of heaven itself at these scoffers at Catholic verity. The mountains whither the Bogomiles had been driven by the pious zeal of Ban Stephen were struck by celestial fire. ‘Upon the eve of St. Catharine, 1367, a mighty heavenly flame appeared in the East, with an intense light terribly apparent to the whole globe. At that time they say that the loftiest mountains of Bosnia, with all rocks, cattle, wild beasts, and fowls of the air, were miraculously consumed, so that they were reduced to a plain; and there dwell the Patarene Manichæans, and say that God burnt up those mountains for their convenience, because He loved their faith.’[67] In fact, neither the Bogomiles nor the new Ban Stephen Tvartko, who favoured them, seem to have been the least appalled by this phenomenon. Only two years after this miraculous conflagration, Urban V. writes to the King of Hungary to complain of the Ban of Bosnia, ‘who, following in the detestable footsteps of his fathers, fosters and defends the heretics who flow together into these parts from divers corners of the world as into a sink of iniquity.’[68] The Bans of Bosnia, even when Catholics themselves, seem to have been forced by the strength of national feeling into an attitude at least of toleration towards the Bogomiles, and their position in this respect has been aptly compared by Hilferding to that of the Bulgarian Czars.