One of the most renowned gospels of the New Testament was The Gospel of Thomas (or The Infancy Gospel), named after the apostle Thomas, to whom the latter is ascribed. In this apocryphal text Jesus Christ is portrayed as a child of supernatural powers, demonstrated at the age of four already. He could turn dirty water into a clear one “with a word only”. While playing with the rest of the children with mud, he made 12 birds, brought them to life and let them fly. As they played, one of the children muddled up with a willow stick the pond with which Christ played. He got mad and ordered for the child to dry up as a willow stick. Another occurrence is the one when some child jumped on Christ’s back. In an act of revenge he ordered for the child to become paralyzed. Thus Christ generated fear and panic among the locals, who communicated their complaints to his father. The father reprimanded him, but Jesus revenged by making all of those who said things about him blind. Joseph took the child and “pulled his ear”, but Jesus went furious and called him a bandit. Next, the father sent him to school, but the teachers sent the child back for he defied them with his knowledge.
These episodes from Jesus’ life substantiate the dualistic teaching of the Bogomils of him being more of a spirit, and being of an illusive human dimension.
For similar reasons, the Bogomils opted for other apocryphal gospels as well, such as: The Proto-Gospel of Jacob and the Gospel of Nicodemus. The Proto-Gospel of Jacob speaks of the earliest legend of the Holy Mother of God, her provenance and the birth of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of Nicodemus elaborates the suffering and the death of Christ.
Apart from the gospels, the Apocrypha of the New Testament built on the events and personalities of The Works of the Apostles as well, those of the apostles Thomas, Andrew and Mathew in particular. In these scriptures emphasis was given to their suffering and the miracles generated about them on their Christian missions through the lands of the Far East.
Even more popular were the Apocalyptical Apocrypha of the New Testament, written in a form of mental images and “visions”. They depicted life after death, the suffering of the sinners in Hell and the enjoyment of the righteous in Paradise; however, certain eschatological motives such as the final judgment and the end of the world were elaborated as well. In this view, emblematic is the case of The Vision of the Apostle Paul, in which the latter, accompanied by Archangel Michael, walked through Hell and witnessed the suffering of the sinners. A particular general interest, out of those “visions”, caused the apocryphal text on The Vision of Isaiah, which represents a sort of a contamination between one apocryphal scripture of the Old Testament and one of the New Testament. After his legendary death and suffering, Isaiah also traveled the seven skies, where he had a vision of Christ’s birth and death. There are several examples of dualistic belief in this scripture, which illustrates the degree of its popularity not only among our Bogomils, but also among some of the western dualists, the Cathars and the Albigensians.
It can be hereupon understood that the heretical literature and culture are the first agents of critique in relation to the feudal society governed by the Church. By acting so, the heresies demand the improvement of the feudal system in the spirit of the principles of the primary Orthodox Christianity.
Hence, heresy was of progressive nature in these circumstances since it accelerated the fall of the feudal system.
The Apocrypha are one of the most popular literary phenomena in our medieval literature. Within the frames of one’s ideological capabilities, one was provided with further understanding of the world and its phenomena through them. Medieval people could picture their ideals – Paradise, the Heavenly world and life therein – by the means of these Apocrypha and personal imagination.
The fictional substance was told in a realistic manner. Poetic tales, legends and narratives were written for that purpose.
As a result, the Apocrypha were much preferred texts in our medieval literature, alike in the literature of others.
Generally Christian Hagiographa
As it reads in the very title (aitos – a saint), the hagiographies were biographies of prominent Christian individuals, who were proclaimed to be saints by the Church. The hagiography phenomenon has a long history, which has its start in the initial centuries of Christianity, up to the Middle Ages, and furthermore, to more recent times. The first ever written hagiographies were testimonies of the first persecutions of the Christians, which gradually evolved into artistic hagiographies. The writers on martyries would find their model in the simple story-telling tone of the holly books, in Christ’s suffering given in the gospels, in the First Christian Martyr Stephen’s death in the Apostles Acts, etc. Undoubtedly, the biographies that arose during Antiquity played their own exclusive part thereat.
The hagiography holds a very important position within the system of medieval prose genres. Some parts of the hagiography were available for individual reading, whilst others were related to the religious service.
The religious service uses the so-called short hagiographies, which present the holly biographies in a dense form. The short/ prologue hagiographies are read during the service in honor of the saint, after the sixth song of the canon. The extended hagiographies are intended for shared reading (in the monastery dining room, for instance).
The worldwide spread Christian legends historically result from the martyrs’ cult.1F The bloody persecutions of the earliest Christians and their martyr death were but the basis on which the religious version of the saint was built. The cult of the martyrs created the cult of the holly one. In the generally Christian hagiographies the saints are religious heroes. They bring light to humankind. The Christian saints preserved their powers even after their death, because their relics nonetheless kept on generating miracles. It is the legend phenomenon that is of vital importance for the maintenance of the saint’s cult. The Christian legends, although anonymous, are works of writers who created whilst facing a certain goal. And – the purpose of the legends was of a cult nature.
In most of the cases hagiographies depict the lives of the distinguished and renowned ascetics, who lead a monk life in the eminent ascetic centers of Palestine, Constantinople, Mount Athos, the Olympic Mounts in Asia Minor.
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1. Hippolute Delehaue, Les legendes hagiographiques, Bruxelles, 1905, str. 187. – Les origines du culte des marturs, Bruhelles 1912, Chapitre IX.