Nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Encyclopedia II - Nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Brief history of religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Nations of Bosnia and Herzegovina - Brief history of religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina

South Slavs were christianized in 9th century. Until the Ottoman conqueror of Bosnia, we have evidence of three Christian denominations in Bosnia: Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and an indigenous church known as the Bosnian Church. Both Orthodox and Catholic officials declared this church to be a heresy. Apart from testimonies of inquisitors and a few excerpts from allegedly apocryphal texts, we have very little knowledge of the Bosnian Church. Its connection with Bogomils is spurious, however. Discussion about how numerous each of these denominations was is impossible with the amount of historical documents that are presently available to us.

The arrival of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic state, resulted in a thorough realignment of religious groups. The Church of Bosnia vanished, apparently because its leaders were either killed or converted. Many members of all three denominations converted to Islam. Other members of the Bosnian Church converted to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy. There are also evidence of part of the Catholic population converting to Orthodoxy. The effect of the so-called devşirme or blood tax on the presence of Muslims in Bosnia is negligible. The presence of large Muslim population in contemporary Bosnia is due to many factors, with motives ranging from effective propaganda to religious persecution of Catholics in the 15th to 18th centuries (Catholics being viewed as a sort of "fifth column" of the Ottoman arch-enemy, the Habsburg Empire) and understandable motive to improve one's social standing in the theocratic Ottoman empire.

It is known that during the 16th and 17th century numerous Catholics left Bosnia. Much of the population of the coastal regions of Croatia and the Adriatic islands has origins in Bosnia.

Eventually, by the end of the 17th century more than 80% of the population of Bosnia was Muslim. However, the following century saw a drastic decline in the number of Muslims in Bosnia. Reasons for this include the many defeats that the Ottoman army experienced during this century (in the Ottoman Empire Muslims were required to serve in the army, while non-Muslims were not), plague and other natural disasters that mainly hit the urban population (whereas Christians were mostly peasants) and immigration of Christians from neighbouring territories.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Brief history of religions in Bosnia and Herzegovina", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki