Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/312

 296 THE SLAVIC CATHARI. tion, to consummate the work. Ponsa, though bishop and legate, had no revenues and no resources, so Gregory ordered paid over to him the moneys collected from crusaders in redemption of vows, and the sum which Ninoslav, during his interval of orthodoxy, had given to found a cathedral. By the end of 1239 heresy seemed to be exterminated, but scarce had Coloman and his crusaders left the land when his work was undone and heresy was as vigorous as ever. In 1240 Ninoslav appears again as Ban, visiting Eagusa with a splendid retinue to rencAV the old treaty of trade and alli- ance. King Bela's energies, in fact, were just then turned in an- other direction, for Assan, the Bulgarian prince, had declared in favor of the Greeks ; his people therefore were denounced as here> tics and schismatics, and Bela was stimulated to undertake a cru- sade against him, for which, as usual. Holy Land indulgences were promised. It was hard to make head at once against so many enemies of the faith, and in the confusion the Cathari of Bosnia had a respite. Still more important for them as a preventive of persecution was the Tartar invasion which, in 1241, reduced Hun- gary to a desert. In the bloody day of Flusse Sajo the Hungarian army was destroyed, Bela barely escaped with his life, and Colo- man was slain. The respite was but temporary, however, for in 1244 Bela again overran Bosnia. Ninoslav made his peace and the heretics were persecuted, until 1246, when Hungary was in- volved in war with Austria, and promptly they rose again with Ninoslav at their head.* All these endeavors to diffuse the blessings of Christianity had not been made without bloodshed. We have few details of these obscure struggles in a land little removed from barbarism, but there is one document extant which shows that the Albigensian crusades, with all their horrors, had been repeated to no purpose. In 1247 Innocent lY., in making over the see of Bosnia to the i^^rchbishop of Kalocsa, alludes to the labors performed by him and his predecessors in the effort to redeem it from heresy. They had meritoriously devastated the greater part of the land ; they had carried away into captivity many thousands of heretics, with great effusion of blood, and no little slaughter of their own men RipoU 1. 102-4, 106-7.— Schmidt, 1. 122.— Klaic, pp. 97-107.
 * Potthast No. 10223-6, 10507, 10535, 10631-9, 10688-93, 10822-4, 10842.-