Debate on the origins and teachings of the Bosnian Church: a Historical Retrospective

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the historiography of the issue of the origin of the medieval Bosnian Church. This church, whose origin and the nature of whose doctrine are still the subject of debate in the scientific community, is a problematic phenomenon in the history of the Western Balkans in the 13th–15th centuries. Some authors considered the Bosnian Church to be the last hotbed of the Bogomil heresy, while others objected, insisting on the distinctive character of the Bosnian Church and its close ties with Eastern Orthodoxy. The purpose of this article was to identify the main trends in the domestic and foreign historiography of the Bosnian Church, presenting the history of the development of the debate on the issue of its origin and doctrine. In this, we relied on a combination of historical-comparative and genetic methods. Based on the studied literature, it is concluded that the dualistic interpretation of the nature of the Bosnian Church in modern historiography is gradually giving way to new interpretations that take into account the complex multi-confessional landscape of medieval Bosnia.