Dositej Obradović
1739–1811 7 entries
Biography
Dositej Obradović was a Serbian writer, philosopher and educator, the leading figure of the Serbian Enlightenment. He was born around 1739 in Čakovo in the Banat and baptised Dimitrije, and, orphaned young, he became a monk at the Hopovo monastery on Fruška Gora, taking the name Dositej. Hungry for learning, he left the monastery in 1760 and spent decades travelling and studying, from Dalmatia, Mount Athos and Smyrna to the universities of Halle and Leipzig, to Paris, London and Russia.
In 1783 he published his autobiography, Life and Adventures, and a year later Counsels of Sound Reason, written not in the Church Slavonic of the learned but close to the language the people spoke. In his books and fables he urged his people to seek reason, learning and tolerance, and to choose “books, not bells and baubles”. In 1807, during the First Serbian Uprising, he came to Belgrade, where he helped to found the Great School, the forerunner of the University of Belgrade, and in 1811 he became the first minister of education of the new Serbian state. He died in Belgrade that same year and is buried at the entrance of the Cathedral Church.
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