Nikolaj Velimirović (Serbian Cyrillic: Николај Велимировић; – ) was a Serbian Orthodox prelate who served as Bishop of Ohrid and Žiča from 1920 to 1956. An influential theological writer and a gifted orator, he was often referred to as the "new John Chrysostom". According to a number of historians he is one of the most influential bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the twentieth century.
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 lived and was tonsured as a monk under the name Nikolaj in 1909. He was ordained into the clergy, and quickly became an important leader and spokesman for the Serbian Orthodox Church, especially in its relations with the West. When Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia in World War II, Velimirović was imprisoned and eventually taken to Dachau concentration camp. After being released by Germans in December 1944, Velimirović spent time in Slovenia, where he blessed anti-communist volunteers such as Dimitrije Ljotić and other Nazi collaborators. After the war, he moved to the United States in 1946, where he remained until his death in 1956. He strongly supported the unity of all Eastern Orthodox churches and established particularly good relationships with the Anglican and Episcopal Churches.
Nikolaj is held in high regard in the Serbian Orthodox Church and among Serbian right-wing political elite. On 24 May 2003, he was glorified as a saint by the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church as Saint Nikolaj of Ohrid and Žiča (). Many of his views and writings remain controversial. Nikolaj's critics point out to instances of antisemitism in his work, to his early admiration of Adolf Hitler and to his links with Ljotić.
Biography Childhood He was born as Nikola Velimirović in the small village of Lelić, Valjevo in the Principality of Serbia,Milorad Tomanić, Srpska crkva u ratu i ratovi u njoj, p44 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 Dragomir and Katarina Velimirović (née Filipović), pious farmers. Being very weak, he was baptised soon after his birth in the Ćelije monastery. 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 Ćelije monastery for prayer and Holy Communion.
Education
His formal education also began in the Ćelije monastery and continued in Valjevo. He 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, apart from the standard subjects, he explored a significant number of writings of both Eastern and Western authors, such as Shakespeare, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Marx, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and others.Milorad Tomanić, Srpska crkva u ratu i ratovi u njoj, p45 He graduated in 1905.
Nikola had been chosen to become a professor in the Seminary of Saint Sava, but it was decided that he needed to pursue further Eastern Orthodox studies before becoming a teacher. As an outstanding student, he was chosen to continue his studies in Western Europe. He had a gift for languages and soon possessed a good knowledge of Russian, French and German. He went to Switzerland and obtained his doctorate of divinity from the Old Catholic Theological Faculty at the University of Berne with magna cum laude.
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. During the stay in Switzerland, he completed a second thesis, The French-Slavonic Battles in the Bay of Kotor, a historical treatise on the battles between “Slavs” and Napoleon’s army in Boka Kotorska between 1806 and 1814. For this work he was awarded a second doctorate from the University in Bern in 1910.
Upon his return to Serbia, benefactor priest Aleksa Ilić loaned him money to continue studies in Britain, where he researched the philosophy of George Berkeley. Based on church publication reporting at the time, it has been alleged that he was based in Oxford where he was awarded a second doctorate there. This is an impossibility given that the honorary Doctorate of Divinity was awarded exclusively to Anglican clergy, and Oxford University did not award doctorates until 1917. Others claim that his work at Oxford formed the basis for a doctoral thesis which he later defended at the University of Geneva or the University of Halle in Germany, or that he had not been at Oxford at all, but at Cambridge. There is no evidence that Velimirović was ever registered at a British university or that he completed his study on Berkeley. It is most likely that he abandoned this project due to lack of income and returned early to Serbia.
His stay in Britain left an impact on his views and education, which is seen from the fact that he quotes or mentions Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, John Milton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Carlyle, Shakespeare and George Berkeley.
Monastic life In the autumn of 1909, Nikolaj returned home and became seriously ill with dysentery. He decided that if he recovered he would become a monk and devote his life to God. At the end of 1909 his health got better and he was tonsured a monk, receiving the name Nikolaj.Repose of St Nicholas of Zhicha. OCA - Lives of the Saints. He was soon ordained a hieromonk and then elevated to the rank of Archimandrite. Shortly after his ordainment, Nikolaj once again left Serbia. He was sent to study at the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg. He traveled around Russia, visited monasteries and other holy places and familiarized himself with Russian culture. The philosophical writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky made a particular impression on him.
Missions during World War I Shortly after the outbreak of World War I, in April 1915, he was appointed by the Serbian government to a mission in the United States. As an unknown Serbian monk, he toured and lectured in major U.S. cities, fighting for the union of the Serbs and South Slavic peoples. During Velimirović's US-campaign occurred the great retreat of the Serbian Army through the mountains of Albania. He embarked home in 1916; as his country was now in enemy hands, he went to Britain instead. Not only did he fulfill his mission, but he was also awarded a Doctorate of Divinity honoris causa from the University of Cambridge.Bank, Jan and Gevers, Lieve. Churches and Religion in the Second World War, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016, , p. 267
He gave a series of notable lectures at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, making him the first Eastern Orthodox Christian to preach at St Paul's. Professor at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology Bogdan Lubardić has identified three phases in the development of Velimirović's ideas: the pre-Ohrid phase (1902–1919), the Ohrid phase (1920–1936), and the post-Ohrid phase (1936–1956).
Bishop
In 1919, Archimandrite Nikolaj was consecrated Bishop of Žiča but did not remain long in that diocese, being asked to take over the office of Bishop in the Eparchy of Ohrid (1920–1931) and Eparchy of Ohrid and Bitola (1931–1936) in southern parts of Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
He wrote an article for The Times, presenting the martyrdom of the Serbian clergy in the First World War. He states that according to official data "the Bulgarian authorities have massacred no fewer than 148 priests in Eastern Serbia during the period of their occupation in winter 1914". Among the victims of "Bulgarian savagery" was the Archbishop of Skopje Vićentije Krdžić. Many younger clerics were deported to Bulgaria "to work on the road as manual labourers", and only a few of them survived "the terrible ordeal". The Austrian authorities deported "no fewer than 400 priests to their internment camps in Austria". Many of them "succumbed to cold and hunger", and those who survived and returned home "have fallen victims to tuberculosis and rheumatism". Velimović concludes that "probably no part of the Christian Universal Church has lost so much in lives and goods as the Church of Serbia", because the Serbian clergy was "considered as the incarnation of Yugo-Slav ideal of national liberation" and was "the most vital opposition in the policy of denationalization of Serbs".
In 1920, he journeyed again to the United States for the third time, on a mission to organise the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of North America.The Outlook Magazine carried a story about Bishop Nikolaj after visiting the United States in their 23 February 1921 issue (pp. 285–86) He made another trip to the United States in 1927.Living Age, Vol. 335-36, 1928-29
German Chancellor Adolf Hitler awarded him with a civil medal in 1935 for his contribution in 1926 to the renovation of the German military cemetery in Bitola. In 1936, he finally resumed his original office of Bishop in the Eparchy of Žiča, returning to the Monastery of Žiča not far from Valjevo and Lelić, where he was born.
During the Concordate Crisis, Velimirović was a leading figure against the adoption of the Concordate by the Yugoslav assembly and one of the organisers of the protest liturgy in 1937. He wrote to the Serb parliamentarians that the Concordate "gives enormous rights and privileges to an international organisation at the expense of our national Saint Sava's Church". In a sermon held on 26 September 1937, he stated:
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 Žiča after the suspicion of contributing to the resistance. 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. On 15 September 1944, both Patriarch Gavrilo V (Dožić) and Bishop Nikolaj were sent to Dachau concentration camp, which was at that time the main concentration camp for clerics 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 arrests had been dictated by Hitler directly.Leisner, Karl. Priesterweihe und Primiz im KZ Dachau, pg. 183, LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2004;
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 as part of a settlement of Neubacher with Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić Germans were release Velimirović and Dožić who were transferred from Dachau to Slovenia, 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.Glasnik Pravoslavne Crkve, July 1946, pp 66-67. Also in Dožić G., Memoari patrijarha srpskog Gavrila (Beograd: Sfairos 1990), entries for December 1944. During his stay in Slovenia, Velimirović blessed volunteers of Dimitrije Ljotić and other collaborators and war criminals such as Dobroslav Jevđević and Momčilo Đujić.
Later, Velimirović and Patriarch Gavrilo (Dožić) were moved to Austria, and were finally liberated by the US 36th Infantry Division in Tyrol in 1945.
Immigration and Last Years