214 IN THE LAND OF THE BORA. 



Bosnian kings leant more and more on the 

 Hungarian throne, a frequently made condition 

 of support was that energetic measures should 

 be taken for the suppression of this heresy. One 

 result of this was that many Bogumilites publicly 

 conformed to the Catholic Church, whilst privately 

 retaining their own faith. 



In 1443, Thomas, son of Stephen Ostoja, was 

 elected King of Bosnia. Like his ancestors, he 

 was a Bogumilite, but, confronted by double 

 danger from his own vassals and from the Turks, 

 he too turned for support to Hungary. The 

 Pope vainly endeavoured to induce him to take 

 an active part against the heretics. But what 

 religious feeling could not do, policy did, and at 

 the instigation of John Hunyadi he embraced 

 Catholicism. Eome and Hungary now demanded 

 energetic measures, and as a result of these, in 

 1450, the Bogumilite priors, many nobles, and 

 nearly forty thousand of the people fled, partly 

 to Stephen Wukcic, Voivode of Chlum, to George 

 Brankovic of Servia, and to the Turks, whose 

 absence of outward ceremonial seems from the 

 first to have attracted the Bogumilites, who were 

 ever more ready to embrace Islam than either 

 Eastern or Western Christianity. 



Stephen Wukcic had long sought the oppor- 

 tunity to throw off the Bosnian rule. He now 

 recognized the claim of the Emperor Frederick III. 



