Letters of the highest ranking church officials to the author of the first volume of the History of the Serbian Orhtodox Church, Prof dr. Djoko Slijepcevic

Abstract

The year 2022 marks the 60th anniversary of the publication of the first comprehen?sive History of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Its author, Professor of the Belgrade University - Dr. Djoko Slijepcevic, was an ecclesiastical historian who published this work as a political emigrant in Munich, from his own financial resources. Several highly ranked church dignitaries, including the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC), decided to send him letters of gratitude, even though well aware that all correspondence at the time had been under sur?veillance. The appendix of this work contains letters written by the Serbian Patriarch German Djoric, Bishop of Bachka Nikanor Ilichic, dissident and spiritual elder Archimandrite Prof Dr. Justin Popovic (who had been canonized as saint by the SOC), Archimandrite Dr. Firmilian Otsokolyic, as well as protopriest Stevan Lastavitsa. The last two had been later ordained as bishops of SOC in America and Canada in 1963. These short letters which express gratitude and recognition of the author`s diligent work across several decades provide an opportunity to understand how the highest ranking officials of the Church reacted to the publication of the exiled authors`s History of the Serbian Orthodox Church in emigration. Up until late 1980s, this work had been unwanted and hard to find in Yugoslavia and had not been accessible in the state libraries, nor at the historical Institutes.