01 — Foundations
Justin Popović’s origins in the southern Serbian town of Vranje, the priestly family into which he was born as Blagoje, and the years — the St. Sava Seminary, the Balkan Wars, and the retreat of the Serbian army in the Great War — at the end of which he became a monk.
This section covers the beginning: a boy named Blagoje born in 1894 into a family that, by its own tradition, had given priests to the Church for generations; his schooling at the St. Sava Seminary in Belgrade; and the crucible of the Balkan Wars and the First World War, through which he passed as a young theology student and orderly, and out of which — in the retreat across Albania and Scutari in 1916 — he emerged tonsured a monk with the name Justin.
Contents
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| blagoje-popovic-of-vranje.md | Birth in Vranje in 1894; the family and the name Blagoje; the priestly lineage and the town at the edge of the Ottoman world |
| formation-and-the-great-war.md | The St. Sava Seminary in Belgrade; the Balkan Wars and the Great War; typhus, the retreat across Albania, and the tonsure as Justin in 1916 |
See Also
- 02 — Student Years and Monastic Formation — Petrograd, Oxford, and Athens after the war
- St. Nikolai Velimirović — the elder whose orbit Justin entered in these years