was reduced to an archbishopric, and in 1025 the see was given to a Greek,
who lost no time in eliminating the Bulgarian element from positions of
importance throughout his diocese. Many of the nobles were transplanted to
Constantinople, where their opposition was numbed by the bestowal of
honours. During the eleventh century the peninsula was invaded frequently
by the Tartar Pechenegs and Kumans, whose aid was invoked both by Greeks
and Bulgars; the result of these incursions was not always favourable to
those who had promoted them; the barbarians invariably stayed longer and
did more damage than had been bargained for, and usually left some of
their number behind as unwelcome settlers.

In this way the ethnological map of the Balkan peninsula became ever more
variegated. To the Tartar settlers were added colonies of Armenians and
Vlakhs by various emperors. The last touch was given by the arrival of the
Normans in 1081 and the passage of the crusaders in 1096. The wholesale
depredations of the latter naturally made the inhabitants of the Balkan
peninsula anything but sympathetically disposed towards their cause. One
of the results of all this turmoil and of the heavy hand of the Greeks was
a great increase in the vitality of the Bogomil heresy already referred to;
it became a refuge for patriotism and an outlet for its expression. The
Emperor Alexis Comnenus instituted a bitter persecution of it, which only
led to its growth and rapid propagation westwards into Serbia from its
centre Philippopolis.

The reason of the complete overthrow of the Bulgarian monarchy by the
Greeks was of course that the nation itself was totally lacking in
cohesion and organization, and could only achieve any lasting success when
an exceptionally gifted ruler managed to discount the centrifugal
tendencies of the feudal nobles, as Simeon and Samuel had done. Other
discouraging factors wore the permeation of the Church and State by