Mateja Matejić ( sr-Cyrl, Матеја Матејић; 19 February 1924 – 27 July 2018) was a

Serbian American Serbian Americans ( sr, / ) or American Serbs (), are Americans of Serb ethnic ancestry. As of 2013, there were about 190,000 American citizens who identified as having Serb ancestry. However, the number may be significantly higher, as there w ...

writer, translator, anthologist,

Serbian Orthodox The Serbian Orthodox Church ( sr-Cyrl, Српска православна црква, Srpska pravoslavna crkva) is one of the autocephalous (ecclesiastically independent) Eastern Orthodox Christian churches. The majority of the population in ...

priest, and

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Emeritus of

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

and Literatures at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...

Biography

Matejić was born in

Smederevo Smederevo ( sr-Cyrl, Смедерево, ) is a city and the administrative center of the Podunavlje District in eastern Serbia. It is situated on the right bank of the Danube, about downstream of the Serbian capital, Belgrade. According to ...

in what was then the

Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes Kingdom commonly refers to: * A monarchy ruled by a king or queen * Kingdom (biology), a category in biological taxonomy Kingdom may also refer to: Arts and media Television * ''Kingdom'' (British TV series), a 2007 British television drama s ...

(today Serbia) and educated there. As a seminarian at

Bitola Bitola (; mk, Битола ) is a city in the southwestern part of North Macedonia. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba, Nidže, and Kajmakčalan mountain ranges, north of the Medžitlija-Níki ...

during the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, he left the country and completed his seminary education in a

displaced persons camp A refugee camp is a temporary Human settlement, settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for interna ...

Eboli Eboli ( Ebolitano: ) is a town and ''comune'' of Campania, southern Italy, in the province of Salerno. An agricultural centre, Eboli is known mainly for olive oil and for its dairy products, among which the famous buffalo mozzarella from the ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

. In 1949, at another camp in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

, he married Ljubica Nebrigić of

Srem Syrmia ( sh, Srem/Срем or sh, Srijem/Сријем, label=none) is a region of the southern Pannonian Plain, which lies between the Danube and Sava rivers. It is divided between Serbia and Croatia. Most of the region is flat, with the exce ...

(who preceded him in death on 17 April 2016). He was ordained as a Serbian Orthodox priest in a camp in 1951. He and his young family emigrated to the United States in 1956. As a priest, he founded two parishes and encouraged and physically contributed to the building of two places of worship, the Church of St. George in

Monroe, Michigan Monroe is the largest city and county seat of Monroe County in the U.S. state of Michigan. Monroe had a population of 20,462 in the 2020 census. The city is bordered on the south by Monroe Charter Township, but the two are administered autonomo ...

(where he served from 1956 to 1967), and the Church of St. Stevan of Dečani in Columbus, Ohio (where he served from 1967 until his retirement in 1990). He graduated from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

where he received his Ph.D. Mateja Matejić was a founder of the

Hilandar Research Library The Hilandar Research Library (HRL), located in the Thompson Library on the campus of Ohio State University, has the largest collection of medieval Slavic manuscripts on microform in the world. Hilandar Research Library Collection The collection ...

scientific project at the Ohio State University in

Columbus Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to: * Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer * Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio Columbus may also refer to: Places ...

, where he taught Slavic languages since 1968. He was the first director of the ''Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies'' and founder and director of the publishing house ''Kosovo'', as well as the editor of the ''Paths of Orthodoxy'' magazine. A translator and

anthologist In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically catego ...

Medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

and foreign

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

, he had also authored several books of poems and Eastern Orthodox history, two of which are acclaimed: ''An Anthology of Medieval Serbian Literature'' (as co-author) and ''The

Holy Mount Holy Mount, , is a prominent peak in the Taconic Mountains of western Massachusetts, formerly used as the location of religious ceremonies by a nearby Shaker community. Geography The mountain is located in Pittsfield State Forest and is tra ...

and

Hilandar The Hilandar Monastery ( sr-cyr, Манастир Хиландар, Manastir Hilandar, , el, Μονή Χιλανδαρίου) is one of the twenty Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Mount Athos in Greece and the only Serbian monastery there. It wa ...

monastery''. In September 2000 he received two awards from the

Serbian Orthodox Church The Serbian Orthodox Church ( sr-Cyrl, Српска православна црква, Srpska pravoslavna crkva) is one of the autocephalous (ecclesiastically independent) Eastern Orthodox Christian denomination, Christian churches. The majori ...

, the ''St. Sava Medal'' (the highest), presented to him in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, and the next day a ''gramata'' from Patriarch Pavle in

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

Works

* Na stazama izbeglickim: srpsko pesnistvo u izbeglistvu 1945-1968 (On Exile Paths: Serbian Poetry Diaspora 1945–1968) ''in Serbian'' co-author Bor. M. Karapandzic (1969) * A Brief History of the Russian Orthodox Church ''in English'' * Biography of Saint Sava ''in English'' (1976) * An Anthology of Medieval Serbian Literature ''in English'' co-author Dragan Milivojevic (1978) * The Holy Mount and Hilandar Monastery ''in English'' (1983) * Relationship between the Russian and the Serbian Churches through the centuries ''in English'' {1988)
Kosovo and Vidovdan After Six Hundred Years
''in English'' (1992) * Troubles in Chiiandar ''in Serbian'' (1994) * Scriptural instructions for Christian life ''in English'' (1997) * Hilandar manuscript / Hilandarski rukopis ''in English and Serbian'' (1998) * Remaining Unchanged ''in Serbian'' (1998) * The oldest Christian liturgy ''in English'' (1999) * A festschrift for Leon Twarog ''in English'' co-editor Irene Masing-Delic (2001)

External links

The Hilandar Research Library (''website'')
has the largest collection of

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

Slavic

manuscripts A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in ...

microfilm Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either photographic film, films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the origin ...

in the world. {{DEFAULTSORT:Matejic, Mateja 1924 births 2018 deaths Writers from Smederevo Serbian Orthodox clergy Ohio State University faculty University of Michigan alumni Yugoslav emigrants to the United States