01 — Foundations

Nikolai Velimirović’s origins in the western Serbian village of Lelić, his peasant childhood and the epithet “New Chrysostom,” and the extraordinary doctoral formation that made him one of the most educated churchmen of his generation.

This section covers the beginnings: the village, the family, the schooling that carried a peasant’s son from Lelić to the seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade, and the years of study abroad in Bern, Geneva, and Britain that produced (at least) two doctorates and a lifelong facility in several languages. Where the record is contested — his birth year and the subject of his second doctorate — the files flag it rather than assert a single value.

Files

File	Description
lelic-and-early-life.md	Birth c. 1881 at Lelić near Valjevo; peasant origins; early schooling and monastic formation; the “Serbian / New Chrysostom” epithet
education-of-a-polymath.md	The seminary of St. Sava; the doctorate in theology at Bern (1908); the second doctorate and the studies in Geneva and Britain; the disputed thesis subjects

See Also

• 02 — The Scholar-Bishop — where the formation issues in a bishopric
• St. Sava of Serbia — the saint whose name marked Nikolai’s seminary and his later thought