out the teachings of the Gospel in relative seclusion, widespread and open preaching challenged the fundamental tenets of the Church. The centres of these movements were in northern Italy and Languedoc. Some of them, such as the Waldensians in Lyons, or the Humiliati of northern Italy were groups in the old tradition. The Humiliati earned their simple living as weavers, whilst many of the followers of Peter Valdès were merchants who had given away their wealth to follow a life of poverty.
But two somewhat different figures, Peter of Bruis and Henry the Monk, were active in the mid-twelfth century and, in their teaching, revealed much more extreme views than those voiced by the advocates of apostolic simplicity. Henry the Monk, active for a time in northern France, appeared in the lands of the count of Toulouse about the year 1145, preaching the validity of wandering clergy with no sacramental functions and the need to eliminate the mass. His teaching had much in common with that of Peter of Bruis, but the Petrobusian condemnation of church buildings, the externals of worship, masses, and prayers for the dead shows even more clearly the indications of contact with the heretical tradition of the eastern Mediterranean, in particular the influence of the Bogomils.
For Byzantine theologians, the adherents of the priest Bogomil were merely 'filthy Manichaeans', later followers of the fourth-century heretic Mani who had taught that there were two creative urges, good and evil, and that all earthly creation was the work of the Devil. Man's spirit, imprisoned within the prison of the flesh, would only be released by death and the only purpose of his existence was a struggle to escape from the evil of the material world. Bogomilism certainly belonged to this dualist tradition, but its adherents in Bulgaria and the northern Balkans also resented the authoritarian influence of the Church in Constantinople and the increasing use of Greek-speaking clergy in the regions which came under Byzantine control after the campaigns of Basil II. Whilst Bogomilism was far from the 'nationalist opposition' postulated by some modern Balkan historians, the account of Bogomil practices composed by the tenth-century orthodox priest, Cosmas, indicates that it did present a challenge to the
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