but in 1377 Ban Tvrtko profited by the embarrassments of his suzerain in
Poland and proclaimed himself king, the neighbouring kingdom of Serbia
having, after 1371, ceased to exist, and was duly crowned in Saint Sava's
monastery of Mile[)s]evo. The internal history of the kingdom was even
more turbulent than had been that of Serbia. To the endemic troubles of
succession and alternating alliances and wars with foreign powers were
added those of confession. Bosnia was always a no man's land as regards
religion; it was where the Eastern and Western Churches met, and
consequently the rivalry between them there was always, as it is now,
intense and bitter. The Bogomil heresy, too, early took root in Bosnia and
became extremely popular; it was the obvious refuge for those who did not
care to become involved in the strife of the Churches. One of the kings of
Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, who reigned from 1444 till 1461, was himself a
Bogomil, and when at the insistence of the Pope and of the King of
Hungary, whose friendship he was anxious to retain, he renounced his
heresy, became ostensibly a Roman Catholic, and began to persecute the
Bogomils, he brought about a revolution. The rebels fled to the south of
Bosnia, to the lands of one Stephen, who sheltered them, proclaimed his
independence of Bosnia, and on the strength of the fact that Saint Sava's
monastery of Mile[)s]evo was in his territory, announced himself Herzog,
or Duke (in Serbian Herceg, though the real Serb equivalent is _Vojvoda_)
of Saint Sava, ever since when (1448) that territory has been called
Hercegovina. In spite of many promises, neither the Pope nor the King of
Hungary did anything to help Bosnia when the Turks began to invade the
country after their final subjection of Serbia in 1459. In 1463 they
invaded Bosnia and pursued, captured, and slew the last king; their
conquest of the country was complete and rapid. A great exodus of the Serb
population took place to the south, west, and north; but large numbers,
especially of the landowning class, embraced the faith of their conquerors
in order to retain possession of their property. In 1482 a similar fate