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 122 THE DECLINE AND FALL dered them arrogant and contumacious : they were easily pro- voked by caprice or inj ury ; and their pi'ivileges were often violated by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy. In the midst of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred Manicha^ans deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus^-^^ and retired to their native homes. He dissembled till the moment of revenge ; invited the chiefs to a friendly conference ; and punished tiie innocent and guilty by imprisonment, confiscation, and baptism. In an interval of peace, the emperor undertook the pious oiKce of reconciling them to the church and state : his winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis ; and the thirteenth apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole days and nights in theological controversy. His arguments were fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the honours and rewards which lie bestowed on the most eminent proselytes ; and a new city, surrounded with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified with his own name, was founded by Alexius, for the residence of his vulgar converts. The important station of Philippopolis was wrested from their hands ; the contumacious leaders were secured in a dungeon or banished from their country ; and their lives were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an emperor at whose command a poor and solitary [AD. 1111] heretic was burnt alive before the church of St. Sophia. ^•^ But the proud hope of eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by the invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or refused to obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they soon resumed their civil and religious laws. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, their pope or primate (a manifest corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and Dalmatia, and governed by his vicars the »iThe Alexiad of Anna Couinena (1. v. p. 131 [c. 3], 1. vi. p. 154, 155 [c. 2], 1. xiv. p. 450457 [c. 8, 9], with the annotations ot Ducange) records the transactions of her apostolic father with the Manichaeans, whose abominable heresy she was desirous of refuting. "■^ Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a sect of Gnostics, who soon vanished (Anna Comnena, Alexiad, 1. xv. p. 486-494 [c 8, 9, 10]; Moshcini, Hist. Ecclesiastica, p. 420). ['I'his Basil was not ''the author of the Bogomils ". Bugumil is the Slavonic equivalent of the Greek name Theophitos ; and Bogomil, who founded the sect, lived in the tenth century under the Bulgarian prince I'eter (regn. 927-969). There arose soon two Bogouul churches : the Bulgarian, and that of the UragoviSi ; and from these two all the other later developments started. KaSki seeks the name of the second church among the Macedonian Dragovici on the Vardar ; while Golubinski identihes them with Uragovici in the neighbourhood of Philippopolis. See Jirecek, Gesch. der Bulgaren, p. 176. For the Bogomilian doctrines, see Appendix 6.J