The Bosnian Church (Krstjani)

Between Catholic Hungary and Orthodox Serbia, medieval Bosnia had a church of its own. Its members called themselves krstjani, Christians. It used a Slavonic liturgy, and it had its own hierarchy headed by a djed, a 'grandfather', with gosts and starci under him and communities called hiže, houses, scattered through the countryside. Rome repeatedly condemned it as heretical and periodically sent friars against it, while Bosnia's own rulers protected and made use of it. What its members actually believed remains genuinely disputed. The long-standing identification of them with Bogomil dualism has been rejected by most historians since the 1970s, and the one substantial document written from inside — the will of Gost Radin, made in 1466 — reads like conventional Christianity, with a cross drawn down its margin. Bosnia fell to the Ottomans in 1463, and the church did not outlast the kingdom.