Nikolaj Velimirovic

Childhood

Nikola Velimirovic was born in the small village of Lelic, 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 Celije monastery, where his relics are now resting. 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.

Education, First and Second Doctor Degree

His formal education also began in the Celije monastery and continued in Valjevo. Nikola applied for admission into the Military Academy, but was refused because he didn't pass the physical exam. He was admitted to the Seminary of Saint Sava in Belgrade, where he - apart from the standard subjects - explored significant number of writings of both Eastern and Western theological authors. He graduated in 1902 with great success.

As an outstanding student, he was chosen to continue his studies in Russia and Western Europe. 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.

Monastic life

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.

Studies in Russia

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. 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 Popovic.

Missions during World War I

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.

Velimirovic has visited England in 1910. He studied English and was capable of addressing an audience and making strong impression on the listeners. Shortly after the outbreak of the World War I this contributed to his appointment by the Serbian government to a mission in the United States. In 1915, as an unknown Serbian monk, he toured most of the major U.S. cities, where he held numerous lectures, fighting for the union of the Serbs and South Slavic peoples. This mission gained grounds: America has sent over 20,000 volunteers to Europe, most of whom later fought on the Salonika Front. During Velimirovic's US-campaign occurred the great retreat of the Serbian Army through the mountains of Albania. He embarked towards home in 1916; but since his country was now in the enemy hands, he went to England instead. Sheer chance had brought him there; but his own eloquence and the striking force of his character made him an unofficial spokesman of his people. His success was such, that not only has he fulfilled the mission, but has also been 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 between the Church of England and the Eastern Orthodox churches in general and the Serbian 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 Velimirovic 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. Velimirovic became 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 Popovic, 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 Velimirovic returned 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 Serbian Orthodox Church sadly isolated. The success of the Communists in the Russian revolution meant that small states as that of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were left to develop as best they might.

A Bishop

In 1919, Archimandrite Nikolaj was consecrated Bishop of Zica 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 mountains, 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 Institute of Politics in Williamstown, Massachusetts. 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.

Velimirovic would almost certainly have become ultimately Patriarch but for political considerations. During the Milan Stojadinovic 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 Stojadinovic leaned towards Germany and Italy.

Still, except for his unwavering opposition to Communism, there was very little that could be labelled "political" in Velimirovic'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 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 burning and icons and attendant monks.

The Thirties

Early in the thirties he resumed his original diocese of Zica, returning for the Monastery of Zica is near Valjevo and not far distant from Lelic where he was born. At Zica 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 Velimirovic 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 Velimirovic had acquired in Serbia and elsewhere, he would probably have obtained some good preferment had he been on the powerful side in politics.

Detention and imprisonment in World War II

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 Zica, after which he was confined in the Monastery of Ljubostinja. Later he was transferred to the Monastery of Vojlovica (near Pancevo) 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 (Dozic) 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 Velimirovic and Dozic were held as special prisoners (Ehrenhaftlinge) 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.

In August 1943 German general Hermann Neubacher became special emissary of the German Foreign Office for Southeastern Europe. From 11 September 1943 he was also made responsible for Albania. In December 1944 Velimirovic and Dozic were transferred from Dachau to Slovenia, together with Milan Nedic, the Serbian collaborationist PM, 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 Dozic testified himself that both he and Velimirovic were treated normally.

Later, Patriarch Gavrilo (Dozic) and Bishop Nikolaj (Velimirovic) 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. Velimirovic and Dozic were at Westminster Abbey at the baptism of King Peter II of Yugoslavia's son and heir, Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia. Velimirovic 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, where he died soon after his arrival. Bishop Nikolaj opted to emigrate to the United States instead.

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 Velimirovic sounding through the air on the loudspeakers.

Immigration and Last Years

After the war he never returned to the Socialist Federal Republic of 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 and included on the icons and frescoes All American Saints.

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.

Funeral

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. It is unknown what happened in Zica, at Ohrid, and at Sveti Naum. In the U.S. and Canada, Serbs (Vlastimir Tomic, Petar Bizic, Milan M. Karlo, Risto Seslija, Mileta Milanovic, Milutin Devrnja, Sava Vujinovic, Jovan Bratic) 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 Ducic 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.

Nikolaj's wish, however, did come true with the fall of communism; his remains were ultimately re-buried in his home town of Lelic on the 12th of May 1991, next to his parents and his nephew, Bishop Jovan (Velimirovic).

Canonisation

On May 19, 2003, the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church recognized Bishop Nikolaj (Velimirovic) of Ohrid and Zica as a saint and decided to include him into the calendar of saints of Holy Orthodox Church (March 18 and May 3).

Allegations of Anti-semitism

Some of Velimirovic's writings are viewed as anti-semitic. 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.

According to the social psychologist Jovan Byford, similar but less violent remarks can be found in New Speeches under the Mountain, The Ohrid Prologue or Indian Letters

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.

Despite the Anti-Semitism accusations, it is recorded that he protected and helped one Jewish family escape from Nazi-occupied Serbia. Ela Trifunovic, 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 Velimirovic, guarded and later helped move on with false papers.

Velimirovic and Hitler

Adolf Hitler decorated Nikolaj Velimirovic in 1935 for his contributions to the restoration of German military cemetery in Bitola in 1926. Contrary to some claims that the order was returned in protest at German aggression in 1941, some of Velimirovic's supporters mentioned it as a way of pacifying Germans after Velimirovic's arrest.

In a treatise on Saint Sava in 1935, he supported Hitler's treatment of German national church 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.

Velimirovic and Ljotic

Velimirovic had high opinion of Dimitrije Ljotic, a Serbian fascist politician and German collaborationist. In an interview given in the United States in 1953, Velimirovic claimed that he was the spiritual gray eminence behind the nationalist and collaborating extreme-right ZBOR organization. The military arm of that organization (SDK - Srpski Dobrovoljacki 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 Ljotic, was arrested in 1940 by the Yugoslav government, Velimirovic protested in a letter to the PM, Dragisa Cvetkovic. Velimirovic attended Ljotic's funeral in 1945 and spoke very positively of him even though it was already known that Ljotic was collaborating with the Germans. He spoke of Ljotic as of "ideologue of Serbian nationalism".

What Velimirovic was saying is that Ljotic was not responsible for the Nazi-occupation of Yugoslavia. Knowing Ljotic 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!.

Velimirovic and Germans

In spite of accusations of collaboration leveled during Communist times, some of Velimirovic's actions and writings were directed against the Germans who got suspicious of him when he supported the coup in April 1941. 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 Velimirovic was liberated when American 36th American division reached Dachau, both he and Patriarch Dozic 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. However, there is documented evidence, including photographs of Bishop Nikolaj (Velimirovic) and Patriarch Gavrilo (Dozic) present at the baptismal of Prince Alexander (Karadordevic) in London, England, in 1945 before Nikolaj emigrated in 1946 to the U.S. and Patriarch Gavrilo returned home.

Literary criticism

Velimirovic is universally recognised and affirmed among Orthodox theologians.

Amfilohije Radovic points out that part of his success lies in his high education and ability to write well and his understanding of European culture.

He is viewed as less original by non-theological writers. Literary critic Milan Bogdanovic claims that everything Velimirovic wrote after his Ohrid years did nothing more than paraphrase orthodox canon and dogma. Bogdanovic views him as a conservative who glorifies church as an institution and its ceremony. Others have noted that Velimirovic brought little novelty into Orthodox thought. This, however, is explained by true Orthodox thought, because, as Saint John of Damascus writes, "It is for that reason that I say (teach) nothing of what is mine. I briefly express the thoughts and words passed down by Godly and wise men." This is the consensus of Orthodox thought, which is to preserve what has always been taught by Christ, the Apostles, and the Church. Even the Scriptures write, "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed" (Galatians 1:8). The goal in Orthodoxy is not to create "new" thought, but to preserve Holy Tradition handed down by divine revelation.