| Nikolaj Velimirović | |
|---|---|
Photo of St. Nikolaj |
|
| Saint, Holy hierarch | |
| Born | January 5, 1881 Lelich, Valjevo, Serbia |
| Died | March 18, 1956 South Canaan, Pennsylvania |
| Honored in | Eastern Orthodox church |
| Canonized | May 24, 2003 by Serbian Orthodox Church |
| Major shrine | Celie Monastery, Serbia |
| Feast | March 18 |
| Attributes | Vested as a bishop |
Saint Nikolai Velimirovich of Ohrid and Žiča or Nikolaj Velimirović (Serbian Cyrillic: Николај Велимировић; January 4 1881 [O.S. December 23, 1880] – March 18 [O.S. March 5] 1956) was bishop of Ohrid and of Žiča in the Serbian Orthodox Church, an influential theological writer and a very gifted orator, therefore also known as The New Chrysostom.[1]
His birth name was Nikola. As a young man, he came close to dying of dysentery, and decided that he would dedicate his life to God if he survived. He did survive, and was tonsured as a monk under the name Nikolaj. He was also ordained into the clergy, and quickly became an important leader and spokesperson for the Serbian Orthodox Church, especially in its relations with the West. When the Germans occupied Yugoslavia in World War II, Nikolaj Velimirović was imprisoned and eventually taken to a camp in Austria. After being liberated by the Allies at the end of the war, he chose not to return to Yugoslavia (which had a Communist government by that time). Instead, he spent some time in Europe and moved to the United States in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life.
Velimirović strongly supported the unity of all Orthodox churches and established particularly good relations with the Anglican and Episcopal Church.
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Nikola Velimirović was born in the small village of Lelić, Valjevo municipality in Western Serbia, on the day of the feast of Saint Naum of Ohrid, whose monastery would later be his episcopal see. He was the first of nine children born to the family of pious farmers. Being very weak, he was baptised soon after his birth in the Ćelije monastery, where his relics are now placed. He was given the name Nikola because Saint Nicholas was the family's patron saint.
The first lessons about God, Jesus Christ, the lives of the saints and the holy days of the Church year were provided to him by his mother, who also regularly took him to the Celije monastery for prayer and Holy Communion.
His formal education also began in the Celije monastery, and then continued in Valjevo. Nikola applied for entrance into the Military Academy, but was refused because he didn't pass the physical exam. He was accepted in the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade, where he - apart from the usual subjects - was studying many significant texts of both Eastern and Western authors. He graduated in 1902 with great success.
As an excellent student, he was chosen to continue his studies in Russia and Western Europe.
In the autumn of 1909, Nikola returned home and became seriously ill with dysentery. He decided to become a monk and devote his life to God if he stayed alive.
At the end of 1909 his health got better and he was tonsured a monk, receiving the name Nikolaj. He was soon ordained a hieromonk and then elevated to the rank of Archimandrite.
Archimandrite Nikolaj was chosen a professor in the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade. It was decided that he needed to accomplish Orthodox studies before becoming a teacher. As was the custom in those days he was sent to Imperial Russia to continue his studies. He had a gift for languages and soon possessed a good knowledge of Russian, French and German. From St. Petersburg he went to Switzerland and obtained his doctorate of divinity from the Old Catholic Theological Faculty at the University of Berne. He received his doctorate in Theology in 1908, with the dissertation entitled Faith in the Resurrection of Christ as the Foundation of the Dogmas of the Apostolic Church. This original work was written in German and published in Switzerland in 1910, and later translated into Serbian.
His doctor's degree in philosophy was prepared at Oxford and defended in Geneva, in French. The title was Berkeley's Philosophy.
After his return to Belgrade, in 1911 when he was thirty-one years old he was appointed to the University of Belgrade's Academy of Theology, teaching philosophy, logic, history and foreign languages, and it was from that point in his career that he rapidly became celebrated. His talks and sermons, printed and distributed were read avidly throughout Serbia. It was partly because his exposition of the Christian faith was inspired by the life of St. Sava, the national patron saint of Serbia. In the Church itself he had only the authority of his words and personality: he was just a monk, but even so he seemed destined to exert great influence. It was not surprising that in 1915 he was entrusted with a mission to Great Britain in order to gain the co-operation of the Church of England in educating the young students who had been evacuated when the Austrian, German and Bulgarian forces threatened to overwhelm the country. One of his students in Belgrade was Justin Popović.
In his lifetime, Father Nikolaj visited the United States of America four times and perhaps, of all Eastern Orthodox churchmen, was the best known to America.
Velimirović had been in England in 1910. He studied English and even then was capable of addressing an audience and making a strong impression on his listeners. For that and for other reasons he was sent by his government shortly after the beginning of Wold War I on a mission to Serbs in the United States. In 1915, as an unknown Serbian monk, he visited most of the major U.S. cities, where he held numerous lectures, fighting for the union of the Serbs and Sout Slavic peoples. This mission was successful and America sent over 20,000 volunteers to Europe, most of whom fought on the Salonika Front. During that visit occurred the great retreat of the Serbian Army through the mountains of Albania. He started home again (1916); but since his country was now in the hands of the enemy, he went to England instead. Pure circumstances had brought him there; but his own eloquence and the striking force of his character made him a kind of unofficial spokesman of his people. His success was such, that not only he fulfilled the mission, but was also awarded a Doctorate of Divinity honoris causa from the University of Cambridge. Also, his presence in England during the years of the Great War did much to strengthen the friendship of the Church of England with the Eastern Orthodox churches in general and the Serb Church in particular. His original Christian eloquence made a deep impression and his warm personality won him many friends. As the Bishop of London wrote at the time:
Father Nikolaj Velimirović by his simplicity of character and devotion has won all our hearts.
He gave a series of notable lectures at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and preached in St. Paul's Cathedral as well as in other cathedrals and churches throughout the land. He also preached in the Episcopal chapel, where his practical discourse attracted many hearers. Velimirović became justly celebrated. At the same time he was active in the promotion of the Serbian Relief Fund and was successful in obtaining a university education for Serb students, several of whom, including Bishop Irinej of Dalmatia, took their degrees before they returned to their own country after the war. In London, Professor Pavle Popović, a literary historian and critic, was in charge of Serbian schoolboys and undergraduates who, after Serbia was overrun by the enemy, were brought to England in the summer of 1916 through the generosity of the British people and the enterprise of the Serbian Relief Fund, founded by Lady Paget, the wife of Sir Ralph Paget.
In 1918 Velimirović came back to America, for a second visit, but as a celebrity who was to address the American people as a whole on behalf of Serbian relief. In 1919 he received another Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the University of Glasgow. From Glasgow his repute as a theological scholar and preacher spread throughout the United Kingdom. After the war, he returned to Belgrade in April 1919.
Of course the revolution and the destruction of the Orthodox Church in Russia struck a devastating blow at Slav Christianity and left the Serb Orthodox Church sadly isolated. A revival of European idealism following the defeat of Germany failed to occur because a group of atheistic adventurers of low morality and mentality calling themselves Bolsheviks had seized "Holy Russia," the largest, most influential and most devoutly Christian state on the planet, and extinguished the star in the East. The Russian revolution began to dominate history and such small states as that of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were left to develop as best they might. There was no such thing as a "Marshal Plan" to help them. The Southern Slavs had most encouragement from France; and the Anglophiles, even Father Nikolaj, had less influence than would have been the case had Christian Russia not disappeared.
In 1919, Archimandrite Nikolaj was consecrated Bishop of Žiča but did not remain long in that diocese, being asked to take over the functions of the diocese of Ohrid and Bitola, in Macedonia. Whether that was his own wish is not clear. It was in a way a mission post for the people of the lately-recovered Serbian territory were backward and there was still vestiges of the Ottoman days still prevailing in habit, pagan superstition and even black magic. The proportion of illiteracy was very high and the population was for the most part very poor. He had many difficulties there but a great number of humble folk became attached to him and felt that even to touch his hand was to receive blessing. For many years his seat was the ancient monastery of Sveti Naum at the south end of the Lake Ohrid. It was there he wrote his remarkable Ohridski Prologue. In 1920, for the third time, he journeyed again in the United States, this time on a mission to organize the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of North America.
The Outlook Magazine carried an interesting story about Bishop Nikolaj after visiting the United States in their 23 February 1921 issue (pages 285-286):
He is Bishop of Ohrid, near the Albanian border, and is a popular and beloved leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Last summer an American accompanied him on a journey into the mountians, where he was to preach in a remote village church. They found the roads lined for twenty-five miles with men, women and children, who had journeyed far on foot to greet him, and in the mountain church the densely packed people had been standing all through the night....
Finally, in 1927, he came to the U.S. once more, to speak before the ‹The template Dab button is being considered for deletion.› [//toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/dab_solver.py?page=Nikolaj_Velimirovi%C4%87&editintro=Template:Disambiguation_needed/editintro&client=Dab_button&fixlinks=Institute+of+Politics ] in Williamstown, Mass. A reporter covering the event, wrote:
His black monk's robe, his long black beard, and his dark, living eyes, set in an oval Slavic face, gave him an appearance which contrasted as strongly with that of conventionally dressed professors and diplomats as did his views of the common problems of world peace contrast with theirs. His charm and urbanity of manner, the completeness of his grasp upon international problems only emphasized the difference in his thought....Bishop Nikolaj, speaking from the point of view of a civilization in which men still are more important than institutions, points out that peace or war is a matter of the way men think and feel toward each other, and that all other things are only outgrowths of this. The greatest force for affecting men's attitudes toward each other he believes would be a reunited Christian Church (Living Age, Vol. 335-6, 1928-1929).
In 1935, he reconstructed the cemetery of the fallen German soldiers from World War I in Bitola.
Velimirović would almost certainly have become ultimately Patriarch but for political considerations. During the Milan Stojadinović administration when the Patriarchate became vacant (after the poisoning of Patriarch Varnava and the failed attempt at ratifying a Concordat with the Vatican) he was the obvious choice but he was too greatly identified with the democratic idealism of England and the United States of America (places he frequently visited) while Stojadinović leaned towards Germany and Italy.
Still, except for his unwavering opposition to Communism, there was very little that could be labelled "political" in Velimirović's ministrations and writings. The most that could be said was that he strove to keep Serbia alive after it had been merged in the larger state of Yugoslavia. He started a movement for the renewal and care of the old churches, shrines and cemeteries in South Serbia, now called Macedonia. It had been at his suggestion that the large illustrated volume South Slav Monuments was compiled and then published in London and when he was made Bishop of Ohrid he began that work of restoration which still continues to this day. For instance, the caves of the anchorites on Lake Ohrid shores became once more Christian cells with lamps burining and icons and attendant monks.
Early in the thirties he resumed his original diocese of Žiča, returning for the Monastery of Žiča is near Valjevo and not far distant from Lelić where he was born. At Žiča he started a movement for the revival of the Serb Church evoking the inspiration of its patron saint St. Sava. He seldom gave a sermon without mentioning the saint's name. Eventually in exile he wrote the only substantial biography of St. Sava which we have.
In the years preceding the outbreak of World War II Velimirović continuing his campaign for a Serb revival instituted what may be called a Society of Prayer and renewed the ancient custom of Christians gathering together to visit a friend's house for prayer, in that way making Christianity social rather than individualistic and solitary. This social prayer extended over a large area and drew national attention. It was described in the newspapers, and pictures of the benign and now almost apostolic countenance of Bishop Nikolaj appeared in Sunday editions. He became famous.
With the brilliant reputation that Nikolaj Velimirović had acquired in Serbia and elsewhere, he would probably have obtained some good preferment had he been on the powerful side in politics.
During World War II in 1941, as soon as the German forces occupied Yugoslavia, Bishop Nikolaj was arrested by the Nazis in the Monastery of Žiča, after which he was confined in the Monastery of Ljubostinja. Later he was transferred to the Monastery of Vojlovica (near Pančevo) in which he was confined together with the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo V of Serbia until the end of 1944.
On September 15, 1944 both Patriarch Gavrilo V of Serbia (Dožić) and Bishop Nikolaj were sent to the Dachau concentration camp, which was at that time the main concentration camp for priests arrested by the Nazis. Both Velimirović and Dožić were held as special prisoners (Ehrenhäftlinge) imprisoned in the so-called Ehrenbunker (or Prominentenbunker) separated from the work camp area, together with high-ranking Nazi enemy officers and other prominent prisoners whose arrest has been dictated by Hitler directly.[2] In December 1944 they were transferred from Dachau to Slovenia, together with Milan Nedić, the Serbian collaborationist PM, and German general Hermann Neubacher, the first Nazi mayor of Vienna (1938–1939), as the Nazis attempted to make use of Patriarch Gavrilo's and Nikolaj's authority among the Serbs in order to gain allies in the anti-Communist movements. Contrary to claims of torture and abuse at the camp, Patriarch Dožić testified himself that both he and Velimirović were treated normally.[3]
Later, Patriarch Dožić and Bishop Nikolaj were moved to Austria, and were finally liberated by the US 36th Infantry Division in Tyrol in 1945. He was physically weakened by these vicissitudes and grew to look very old and frail. He was brought to England. Velimirović and Dožić were at Westminster Abbey at the baptism of King Peter II of Yugoslavia's son and heir, Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia. Velimirović preached a very moving sermon at the Serb chapel in the house in Egerton Gardens. But there was no place for him in England such as there had been during the First World War. Patriarch Gavrilo, being old and ill, returned to what then came to be known as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, while Bishop Nikolaj opted to emigrate to the United States.
He was allowed to spend the last years of his life in the United States of America, only returning once to England when he came to consecrate the Church of St. Sava in 1952, an occasion when Serbs in their thousands rallied from the mines and factories of England to the walls of the great church in Ladbroke Grove. The sacred edifice was packed out and the overflow crowd streamed all the way to the London Underground, the voice of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović sounding through the air on the loudspeakers.
After the war he never returned to the Communist Yugoslavia, but after spending some time in Europe, he finally immigrated as a refugee to the United States in 1946.
There, in spite of his health problems, he continued his missionary work, for which he is considered An Apostle and Missionary of the New Continent (quote by Fr. Alexander Schmemann), and has also been enlisted as an American Saint[4] and included on the icons and frescoes All American Saints.[5][6]
He taught at several Orthodox Christian seminaries such as St. Sava's Seminary in Libertyville, Illinois, Saint Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary and Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary now in Crestwood, New York.
In June 1946, he was awarded for his an honorary Doctorate of Sacred Theology from Columbia University for "demonstrated compassion, holiness and great spiritual strength".
He was elected a dean and rector of the St. Tikhon's Seminary where he spent the last years of his life as an example in humility being an elder to the students and monastics at St. Tikhon's Monastery. He lived an unassuming life of an ecclesiastical hierarch when at his one-bedroom apartment in the South Canaan monastery and when he travelled in the United States or abroad lived as unostentatiously as possible, consistent with his teachings, and always of stainless integritry and blemish.
Nikolaj was greatly loved and esteemed by a great circle of friends, among his co-religionsits and others, and he lived to be recognized and honoured as a man whose opinion on theological subjects carried great weight.
He died on March 18, 1956, while in prayer at the foot of his bed before the Liturgy, at the Russian Orthodox Monastery of St. Tikhon in South Canaan Township, Wayne County, Pennsylvania in the United States. When the news of his death had been announced in Belgrade all the bells of the churches in the city tolled simultaneously. There was grief and agitation even in public places, and a sense of great personal loss in every Orthodox Serbian home. What happened at Žiča, at Ohrid, and at Sveti Naum we do not know but can imagine. In the U.S. and Canada, we know, Serbs (Vlastimir Tomić, Petar Bizić, Milan M. Karlo, Risto Seslija, Mileta Milanović, Milutin Devrnja, Sava Vujinović, Jovan Bratić) and people of many denominations that he befriended through the years (Richard Felman, Charles Davis, and other U.S. airmen) followed his hearse to the grave. He was buried near the tomb of poet Jovan Dučić at the Monastery of St. Sava at Libertyville in the state of Illinois. This makes the Monastery of St. Sava a shrine for the Orthodox in America. The only regret of the Bishop in his latter years was that he was not likely to be buried in the earth of his beloved Serbia. For besides being a holy man and wise and wholly devoted to Christ he was a great patriot and had been so all his life, believing fervently in the destiny of his own people. He belonged to Serbia and was the greatest spiritual leader emerging from the Slavs in our time but in a larger sense he belongs to the world. In England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and America, and even in Germany where he was a prisoner the many who came in contact with him can now realize they had the rare blessing of having met a living saint.
Nikolaj's wish, however, did come true with the fall of communism; his remains were ultimately re-buried in his home town of Lelić on the 12th of May 1991, next to his parents and his nephew, Bishop Jovan (Velimirović).
On May 19, 2003, the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church recognized Bishop Nikolaj (Velimirović) of Ohrid and Žiča as a saint and decided to include him into the calendar of saints of Holy Orthodox Church (March 18 and May 13).
Some of Velimirović's writings are viewed as anti-semitic.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] He has been criticized for his writings in the book "Through the Prison Window" written while he was a prisoner in the Dachau concentration camp:
“[Europe] is presently the main battlefield of the Jew and his father, the devil, against the heavenly Father and his only begotten Son. […] [Jews] first need to become legally equal with Christians in order to repress Christianity next, turn Christians into faithless, and step on their necks. All the modern European slogans have been made up by Jews, the crucifiers of Christ: democracy, strikes, socialism, atheism, tolerance of all faiths, pacifism, universal revolution, capitalism and communism… All of these are invention of the Jews and their father , the Devil.[19]
According to the social psychologist Jovan Byford, similar and although less violent remarks can be found in New Speeches under the Mountain, The Ohrid Prologue or Indian Letters[20][21][22]
In his "Through the Prison Window", he was puzzled why the Europeans showed so much tolerance to the Jews and could not see through their "ploys". He also criticized European scientific achievements in the field of particle physics for being anti-Christian and possibly introduced by Jews. Further, he criticized the "mania for cleanliness" as being introduced by the Jews.[23]
Despite the Anti-Semitism accusations, it is recorded that he protected and helped escape from Nazi-occupied Serbia one Jewish family. Ela Trifunović, born Neuheus, wrote to the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2001, claiming that she had spent 18 months hiding in Ljubostinja monastery where she was smuggled by Velimirović, guarded and later helped move on with false papers.[24]
Adolf Hitler decorated Nikolaj Velimirović in 1935 for his contributions to the restoration of German military cemetery in Bitola in 1926.[25] Contrary to some claims that the order was returned in protest at German aggression in 1941,[26] some of Velimirović's supporters mentioned it as a way of pacifying Germans after Velimirović's arrest.
In a treatise on Saint Sava in 1935, he supported Hitler's treatment of German national church[27] and is quoted as saying:
However, a due respect is to be to the current German Leader, who being a simple craftsman and a man from the people, realized that nationalism without faith is an anomaly, a cold and insecure mechanism. And so, in the XX century, he came to the idea of Saint Sava, and as a layman undertook among his people that most important work, befitting a saint, a genius and a hero. And for us that work has been accomplished by Saint Sava, the first among the saints, the first among the geniuses and the first among the heroes in our history. He accomplished it perfectly, he accomplished it without fight and without blood, and he accomplished it not yesterday or the day before, but 700 years ago. [28]
Velimirović had high opinion of Dimitrije Ljotić, a Serbian right-wing politician and German collaborationist.[29] In an interview given in the United States in 1953, Velimirović claimed that he was the spiritual gray eminence behind the nationalist and collaborating extreme-right ZBOR organization.[30] The military arm of that organization (SDK - Srpski Dobrovoljački Korpus - Serbian Volunteer Corps) was fighting against both Partisans and Chetniks in World War II and was responsible for numerous civilian executions in Serbia of both Serbs and other nationals (Jews, Roma, etc.) When the leader of ZBOR, Dimitrije Ljotić, was arrested in 1940 by the Yugoslav government, Velimirović protested in a letter to the PM, Dragiša Cvetković.[31] Velimirović attended Ljotić's funeral in 1945 and spoke very positively of him even though it was already known that Ljotić was collaborating with the Germans. He spoke of Ljotić as of "ideologue of Serbian nationalism".[32]
What Velimirović was saying is that Ljotić was not responsible for the Nazi-occupation of Yugoslavia. Knowing Ljotić as a Serb patriot in the past (the Balkan Wars and World War I), there was no reason whatsoever to question his loyalty at a time when chaos was in control!.
In spite of accusations of collaboration leveled during Communist times, some of Velimirović's actions and writings were directed against the Germans who got suspicious of him when he supported the coup in April 1941.[33] They suspected him of collaborating with the Chetniks and formally arrested him and kept him first in Ljubostinja Monastery in 1941 and then in 1944 in Dachau concentration camp. In Dachau, he was imprisoned in Ehrenbunker, together with other clergy and high-ranking Nazi enemy officers, and was allowed to wear his own religious clothes, having access to officer's canteen. It is claimed that he was never tortured and had access to officer's medical services. Contrary to the reports that Velimirović was liberated when American 36th American division reached Dachau, both he and Patriarch Dožić were actually released in December 1944, having spent three months in the camp. They travelled to Slovenia, from where Velimirovic continued first to Austria then to United States.[34]
Velimirović is universally recognised and affirmed among Orthodox theologians.
Amfilohije Radović points out that part of his success lies in his high education and ability to write well and his understanding of European culture.[35]
He is viewed as less original by non-theological writers. Literary critic Milan Bogdanović claims that everything Velimirović wrote after his Ohrid years did nothing more than paraphrase orthodox canon and dogma. Bogdanović views him as a conservative who glorifies church as an institution and its ceremony.[36] Others have noted that Velimirović brought little novelty into Orthodox thought.[37]
| Preceded by Sava (Barać) |
Bishop of Žiča 1919-1920 |
Succeeded by Jefrem (Bojović) |
| Preceded by Chrysostom (Kavourides), Metropolitan of Pelagonia |
Bishop of Ohrid 1920-1929 |
Succeeded by St. Platon |
| Preceded by Jefrem (Bojović) |
Bishop of Žiča 1937-1956 |
Succeeded by German |