Balgarski bogomilski i apokrifni predstavi v angliiskata srednovekovna kultura: Obrazat na Hrostos Orach v poemata na William Langland “Videnieto na Petar Oracha”

[Bulgarian Bogomil and apocryphal ideas in medieval English culture: The Image of Christ as Piers Plowman in William Langland’s The Vision of Piers Plowman]

It is well known that Bogomilism, or haeresia Bulgarorum, spread all over Europe by the Cathars, Patarenes, Poblicans (Popelicani), Beguines, and the Spirituals. English medievalists have assumed that the heresy reached England only occasionally, appearing in Oxford in 1162, for instance. Yet they have overlooked the work of three impressive, yet earlier, scholars: Moses Gaster (1887), Alexander Vesselovsky (1872) and Ivan Franko (1899)-all of whom (particularly Gaster and Franko) reliably argued for the transfer of apocrypha and Bogomil texts and ideas to medieval England. The texts include De arbore crucis (The Legend of the Cross, or the Legend of the Tree) of Father Jeremiah; the Oration on the Holy Cross and the Two Outlaws (ascribed to Gregory the Great); The Secret Book of the Bogomils; On Adam and Eve and the End of the World; the Gospel of icodemus; The Vision of Isaiah; and The Book of Enoch. PPl, this book argues, is full of Bogomil-Cathar imagery and theology. There is the Fall of Lucifer, and Christ’s Harrowing of Hell; and, in B.19, when Christ instructs Piers how to plow the spiritual field of the world, this is an English version of the scene in De arbore crucis in which Christ teaches the plowman to plow. In De arbore crucis, we have the covenant whereby the land is given to Adam-in L’s poem it is given to PPl. [GV/AC]