Nikodim Milaš

Nikodim Milaš (Никодим Милаш; 16 April 1845 – 2 April 1915) was a Serbian Orthodox Church bishop in Dalmatia (nowaday Croatia). He was a writer, an authority on Church history and one of the most respected experts on Eastern Orthodox canon law. As a canon lawyer in Dalmatia, he defended the Serbian Orthodox Church against the state. He was a polyglot, fluent in German, French, Italian, Russian, Greek, Latin and Old Slavonic, and an author of numerous books.

Biography
Bishop Nikodim Milaš was born at Šibenik in Kingdom of Dalmatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) on 4 April 1845, as an illegitimate son of Serb Orthodox father Trifun Milaš from Cetina and Italian Catholic mother Maria Valmassoni from Šibenik. He was first baptized, as Nikola, in the Roman Catholic church, and three years later in the Eastern Orthodox church.

After attending the Jesuit Gymnasium in Zadar and graduating from the Serbian Orthodox Theological School at Sremski Karlovci, he studied at the oldest college of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Kievan Theological Academy and Seminary (then part of Imperial Russia), graduating in 1871. He received a master's degree in Canon Law and Church History, and wrote his dissertation Nomocanon of Patriarch Photius.

Upon his return home, he was appointed Professor of canon law at Zadar's Theological Orthodox Institute, where he taught from 1890 to 1910, serving as dean following the death of Bishop Stefan Knežević. In 1872, he published a study in which he criticized the Austro-Hungarian government for interfering in the life of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its faithful.

Professor Nikola Milaš was tonsured in 1873 and given the monastic name of Nikodim. Also, he was ordained deacon, and two years later, presbyter. He received the rank archimandrite in 1880. Under his administration, the theological institute in Zadar became one of the better Orthodox schools. Milaš advocated for the merger of the Serbian dioceses in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Karlovac metropolitans, which Austria-Hungary opposed. They instead merged two Serbian and one Romanian eparchy into the Bukovina-Dalmatia metropolitanate with its headquarters in Vienna, where none of the three archbishops resided. After the publication of his (hornbook), "Principles of Jurisdiction in the Eastern Orthodox Church," in which he again leveled criticism on the Austro-Hungarian authorities, he was forced to take refuge in Belgrade in late 1885.

In 1886, he became the rector of the Belgrade Seminary (Bogoslovija). However, not all of the teachers accepted him and he was accused of being an Austro-Hungarian agent. In early 1888 he was back in Zadar where he completed that same year two major works: "Roman Catholic Propaganda: its foundation and rules today" (1889) and his six-volume treatise on the Serbian Orthodox Church entitled "Orthodox Church and Canon Law" (1890). He was appointed Professor of Canon law and Church History at the Belgrade's Grande école (Velika škola) and Bogoslovija, the Theological Seminary. Two years later, when Bishop Stefan Knežević of Dalmatia died, Nikodim was elected Bishop of Dalmatia on 10 July 1890 and consecrated on 16 September 1890.

Throughout his tenure, he was under pressure from anti-Serb Orthodox authorities and forced to endure aggressive Roman Catholic proselytism. In 1901 Nikodim published "Orthodoxy in Dalmatia" in answer to a papal encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII appealed for the union. His book was criticized by the bishop of the Eparchy of Križevci.

Because of his fluency in German, French, Italian, Russian, as well as Greek and Latin, he was able to read primary sources and contribute to the field of history. He advocated for Serbian language in secondary schools, organized and helped educational and humanitarian foundations and engaged in missionary work fostering Orthodoxy and Serbian identity in Dalmatia. He also directed fiery passion at what he saw as proselytization by the Catholic Church's high priesthood.

He was politically active in the right-wing sector of the Serb Party in the Croatian Parliament. As such, he was targeted by the secret police and members of the intelligentsia. Under constant pressure from civil authorities and other enemies, Nikodim was forced to retire from the position of Bishop of Dalmatia in early 1912. It is alleged that he retired due to the scandal surrounding the embezzlement of the money and other goods of the Orthodox municipality.

On 23 July 1914, the day Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia, the police searched his apartment and took possession of his private correspondences along with a copy of his last book The Church and the State in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Bishop Nikodim died at Dubrovnik on 20 March 1915. On 4 October 1930 his remains were transferred to Šibenik and buried the next day in a special chapel near the Dormition Temple.

Legacy
Nikodim Milaš grew up in a region where jurisprudence was founded on Roman and Byzantine law. Most of his work was translated into Russian, German, Romanian, Bulgarian and Greek, and has greatly influenced modern Orthodox canonists. Nikodim produced a number of collections of canonical texts and was particularly interested in the churches of North Africa in the Roman period. He was largely active on the matter of Church-State relations, a subject which preoccupied most of his work. He translated The Constitution (Syntagma) of the Divine and Sacred Canons by Rallis and Potlis, and placed his commentaries in the context of previous Biblical hermeneutic works. He was an authority on Church history and became one of the most respected experts on Eastern Orthodox canon law. His bibliography includes more than 180 published works, either books or texts in various magazines. He was an honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy, Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU), member of the Society for recent history of Austria in Vienna, Matica Dalmatinska, Matica Srpska, the Serb Archaeological Society and the Society of Saint Sava in Belgrade.

Related to the romantic nationalist ideology of the time, Milaš in his work about the history of Dalmatia, invented various historical stories and accounts about the pre-Ottoman presence of Serbs and foundation of Serb Orthodox monasteries in Dalmatia (Dragović, Krka, Krupa) which plagues historiographies, especially Serbian, even today. Among his controversial claims are that Orthodoxy can be traced in Dalmatia since Apostolic Age, Serbs settled in Dalmatia in the 4th century, arrived there before the Croats, the region was ethnically Serbian until the 9th-11th century when Croatian rulers "imposed Catholicism and Croatism on the Serbs", that the Serbs re-settled Dalmatia in the 13th century, the Vlachs of Croatia since the 15th century represented a new wave of Serbs, during Ottoman time Dalmatia was exclusively settled by Serbs, among others. He was also highly critical and made heavy accusations against the pope and Roman church, claiming that the Croats initially were Orthodox Christians, and sacral heritage of Split was part of Serbian Orthodox heritage as well. He also shared Vuk Karadžić's viewpoint that all speakers of Shtokavian dialect are ethnic Serbs. Croatian academics have contended that such ideas and claims were used as arguments and justification for "Greater Serbian" pretensions during the Yugoslav Wars.

He is included in The 100 most prominent Serbs.

On October 2, 2012, he was locally glorified as a saint by the Diocese of Dalmatia of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Selected works

 * Historical-Canonical view on establishment of Serbo-Romanian Metropolis of Bukovina and Dalmatia (1873);
 * Clerical dignities in the Orthodox Church (1879);
 * Codex canonum ecclesiae africane (1881);
 * St. Sava's Kormchya Book (1884);
 * Das Synodal-Statut der orth. Oriental Metropolie der Bukowina i Dalmatien mit Erläuterungen (1885);
 * Orthodox Church and Canon Law in six volumes (first edition 1890; second revised edition 1890, translated in Russian 1897, in German 1897, in Bulgarian 1903);
 * Roman Catholic Propaganda, its foundation and rules today (1889; translated in Russian 1889, and in Bulgarian 1890);
 * Orthodoxy in Dalmatia, a historical perspective (1901);
 * Question of Eastern Church and task of Austria in it (1889; 1890 translated in Romanian and German);
 * Principles of jurisdiction in Orthodox Church
 * Orthodox Monasticism (Mostar 1902);
 * Slavic Apostles Ss. Cyril and Methodius
 * Rules (Κανόνες) of Orthodox Church with commentary (I 1895, II 1896)
 * Documenta spectantia historiam orthodoxae dioeceseos Dalmatiae et Istriae a XV usque ad XIX saeculum (I, 1899),