Education of a Polymath

After the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade, Nikolai Velimirović studied abroad on Church support, earning a doctorate in theology at Bern in 1908 and a second doctorate in 1909, with further study in Geneva and Britain. The exact subjects of his theses are partly disputed in the sources, and this file pins what can be documented and flags what cannot.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox (glorified 2003)

From St. Sava’s to Europe

Having graduated from the Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade, the chief theological school of the Serbian Church, Velimirović was sent abroad for advanced study — a deliberate investment by a Church rebuilding its learned clergy in the young Kingdom of Serbia (Slobodan G. Markovich, “Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1880–1956) and his studies in Bern”; “Serbian Orthodox Presence in Switzerland in the Early Twentieth Century: Nikolaj Velimirović and His Doctoral Theses at the University of Bern,” in Orthodox Christianity and Modern Europe, Springer, 2022). The natural destination for an Orthodox theological student who could not, at that date, study Orthodox theology at a Western university was the Old Catholic Faculty of Theology at the University of Bern — the Old Catholics, who had separated from Rome after the First Vatican Council (1870) over papal infallibility, maintaining a faculty congenial to Orthodox students and cultivating relations with the Eastern Churches (Markovich, “Studies in Bern”; the Springer chapter on the Old Catholic–Serbian Orthodox context).

The Bern Doctorate in Theology (1908)

Velimirović was enrolled at the Bern Old Catholic faculty in the years 1906–1908, and on 18 July 1908 he defended his theological dissertation summa cum laude, under the supervision of the Old Catholic Bishop Eduard Herzog. The thesis was titled Der Glaube an die Auferstehung Christi als Grunddogma der apostolischen Kirche — “Faith in the Resurrection of Christ as the Fundamental Dogma of the Apostolic Church” (Markovich, “Studies in Bern”; Springer, “Nikolaj Velimirović and His Doctoral Theses at the University of Bern,” 2022). This is the securely documented doctorate, and its subject — the Resurrection as the foundational dogma of the apostolic Church — is well attested and characteristic of his lifelong Christocentrism (see The Philosophy of the God-Man).

[Corrected: some popular accounts describe Nikolai's Bern doctoral thesis as a study of the ecclesiology of the Russian lay theologian Aleksei Khomiakov. The documented Bern theological dissertation (18 July 1908, supervised by Bishop Eduard Herzog) was *Der Glaube an die Auferstehung Christi als Grunddogma der apostolischen Kirche* — on the Resurrection, not on Khomiakov (Markovich, "Studies in Bern"; Springer, 2022). Velimirović did engage the Slavophile and Khomiakovian tradition of thought on the Church, and it shaped his ecclesiology, but the attribution of a *doctoral thesis on Khomiakov's ecclesiology* is not supported by the scholarly account of the Bern theses and should not be stated as fact.]

The Second Doctorate and the Studies in Britain (1909)

Velimirović took a second doctorate in 1909, but the sources do not agree on its faculty or subject, and the honest course is to report the disagreement rather than choose.

[Disputed: the subject and place of Nikolai's second doctorate are given differently in the sources. (a) One tradition, followed by OrthodoxWiki and much popular biography, places a doctorate in philosophy at Geneva in 1909, with a French-language dissertation on *the philosophy of Berkeley*; Slobodan Markovich notes, however, that there is no evidence Velimirović was ever registered at a British university or completed a study of Berkeley, and that no such work was ever published. (b) The scholarly account of the Bern archives records a second doctorate conferred on 29 June 1909 by the Faculty of Humanities (Philosophy) at Bern, *magna cum laude*, on the basis of a historical thesis, *Französisch-slavische Kämpfe in der Bocca di Cattaro 1806–1814* ("French–Slavic Battles in the Bay of Kotor, 1806–1814") — i.e., a doctorate in history rather than in philosophy (Markovich, "Studies in Bern"; Springer, 2022). This collection reports both and asserts neither; the well-documented fact is that Velimirović held a second earned doctorate from 1909.]

Alongside the doctorates, Velimirović spent time in study in the West that included periods in Geneva and in Britain (Oxford and London are named in the biographies), acquiring the fluency in English, German, and French and the acquaintance with Western Christianity and philosophy that would make him an effective spokesman for his Church during the First World War (Markovich, “Studies in Bern”; “Nikolaj Velimirović,” Wikipedia, used to locate the outline of the British study). He would later be honored with a Doctorate of Divinity, honoris causa, from the University of Cambridge, a recognition of his wartime lectures and preaching in England (see Wartime Diplomat); the honorary Cambridge doctorate is distinct from the earned Continental doctorates and should not be conflated with them.

A Formation Between East and West

The upshot of these years is a churchman with a rare profile. Velimirović was ordained and tonsured a monk in this period, taking the name Nikolaj, and he returned to Serbia to teach at the Seminary of St. Sava before the war (Markovich, “Studies in Bern”). But he returned as something new in the Serbian Church of his day: a monk-priest with two earned Western doctorates, fluent in the major European languages, formed by the Old Catholic theological world and by the philosophy and religious life of Switzerland and Britain, and yet rooted in the Orthodox piety of the Serbian village. This is the intellectual equipment behind everything that follows — the wartime diplomacy, the poetic and homiletic corpus, the leadership of a national revival, and the sweeping cultural and historical arguments of his interwar and wartime writing, whose confidence and range (and, his critics say, whose overreach) are the confidence and range of an unusually learned man addressing the whole of European civilization.

Precisely because the range of his learning is part of his authority and part of the debate about him, it matters to state it accurately: two earned doctorates (theology at Bern, 1908; a second in 1909 of disputed faculty), further study in Geneva and Britain, and an honorary Cambridge D.D. — not more, and pinned to what the archives bear.

See Also

• Lelić and Early Life — the village origins and seminary that preceded the years abroad
• Wartime Diplomat — where the languages and Western contacts were put to use, and the Cambridge D.D. earned
• The Philosophy of the God-Man — the Christocentric theology rooted in the Resurrection thesis
• Orthodoxy: Church Fathers — the patristic learning that accompanied the Western academic formation

References

• Markovich, Slobodan G. “Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović (1880–1956) and his studies in Bern within the context of the Old Catholic–Serbian Orthodox relationship.” University of Belgrade / Balcanica and related venues. (The Bern enrollment 1906–1908; the 18 July 1908 theology doctorate under Bishop Herzog; the Auferstehung dissertation; the 29 June 1909 second doctorate and the Kotor-battles thesis; the doubt about the Berkeley/Britain study.)
• “Serbian Orthodox Presence in Switzerland in the Early Twentieth Century: Nikolaj Velimirović and His Doctoral Theses at the University of Bern.” In Orthodox Christianity and Modern Europe. Springer, 2022. link.springer.com. (The Old Catholic context and the doctoral theses.)
• “Nikolaj Velimirović.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org. (Used to locate the outline of study in Geneva and Britain and the honorary Cambridge D.D.; not a terminal citation.)
• “Nicholas (Velimirović) of Žiča.” OrthodoxWiki, orthodoxwiki.org. (Used to locate the Geneva-philosophy account of the second doctorate; not a terminal citation.)