Nikolaj Velimirović
Sveti Nikolai (Velimirović) / Свети Николај (Велимировић); (December 23/January 5, 1880 - March 5/March 18, 1956). Most educated and top literate Serbian bishop and an influential theological writer (and political emigrant at the time of the Communist diaspora of Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia). As stated by the archbishop Brussels-Changhai Jovan and the orthodox theoretician Alexander Shmeman, holds the position "of the great theological writers" and "for all the people of Orthodox religion he is an epitome for the Orthodox spiritual quality". Simultaneously the bishop Nikolaj holds an important position among those who have rendered the Orthodox religion eternal in America.
He has strongly supported the unison of all Orthodox churches and has established particularly good relations with the Anglican and Episcopal Church.
Nikolaj Velimirović was born in the small village of Lelich in Western Serbia. He attended the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade and graduated in 1905. He obtained doctorates from the University of Berne (1908), while the thesis was published in German in 1910, whereas the doctor's degree in philosophy was prepared at Oxford and defended in Geneva (Filozofija Berklija - Berkeley's Philosophy, in French) in 1909. At the end of 1909 he entered a monastic order. In 1919, then Archimandrite Nikolai was consecrated Bishop of the Monastery Zica of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In April 1915 (during WWI) he was delegated to England and America by the Serbian Church, where he held numerous lectures, fighting for the unison of the Serbs and South Slavic peoples. At the beginning of 1919 he returned to Serbia, and in 1920 was posted to the Ohrid archbishopric in Macedonia, where in 1935, in Bitola he reconstructed the cemetery of the killed German soldiers.
During the Second World War in 1941 Bishop Nikolai was arrested by the Nazis in the Monastery of Žiča (which was soon afterwards robbed and ruined), after which he was confined in the Monastery of Ljubostinja (where, on the occasion of mass deaths by firing squad, he reacted saying:" Is this the German culture, to shoot hundred innocent Serbs, for one dead German soldier! The Turks have always proved to be more just..."). Further on this "new Eloquent preacher" was transferred to the Monastery of Vojlovica (near Pančevo) in which he was confined together with the Serbian patriarch, Gavrilo Dožić until the end 1944.
On December 14, 1944 he was sent to the Nazi death camp at Dachau, together with Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo. At Dachau he witnessed and was himself tortured until the camp was liberated in May 1945 by the United States Army.
After the War he left Communist Marshal Tito controlled Yugoslavia and immigrated as a refugee to the United States in 1946 where he taught at several Orthodox Christian seminaries such as St. Sava's Seminary in Libertyville, Illinois and St. Tikhon's Seminary and Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania (where he was rector and also where he died) and St. Vladimir's Seminary now in Scarsdale, New York (associated with Columbia University).
Nikolai was recently canonized as a saint by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Selected Bibliography
- Beyond Sin and Death (1914)
- The Spiritual Rebirth of Europe (1917)
- Orations on the Universal Man (1920)
- Thoughts on Good and Evil (1923)
- Homilias, volumes I and II (1925)
- Prologue from Ochrid (1926)
- The Faith of Educated People (1928)
- The War and the Bible (1931)
- The Symbols and Signs (1932)
- "Immanuel" (1937),
- The Religion of Njegos
- Speeches under the Mount
- The Faith of the Saints (1949) (an Orthodox Catechism in English)
- Cassiana - the Science on Love (1952)
- The Only Love of Mankind (1958) (posthumously)
- The First Gods Law and the Pyramid of Paradise (1959) (posthumously)
Quote
- God, bless one who enters this home,
- protect and keep one who exits it,
- give peace to one who stays in it.