Introduction
There exists in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church a rare but spiritually instructive phenomenon: spontaneous lay awakenings, in which simple believers — peasants, soldiers, craftsmen — begin, without institutional planning, to gather for prayer, to read Holy Scripture, to fast, to commune more frequently, and to call one another to a more serious Christian life. Such movements are rare not because the Holy Spirit works little in the Church, but because the fine balance between spontaneous lay fervor and sound hierarchical shepherding is rarely preserved. Most such awakenings, lacking the discernment of the Fathers, either die out quickly, slide into sectarianism, or transform themselves into political movements in disguise.
There exists, however, in the twentieth century, an exemplary case of authentic lay awakening, shepherded with patristic discernment and preserved fully under the omophorion of the Church: the Bogomoljci Movement (“those who pray to God”) — the spiritual awakening of the Serbian people in the interwar period, led by Saint Nikolai Velimirović (Bishop of Ohrid and Žiča, † 1956). Known officially as Pravoslavna narodna hrišćanska zajednica (NHZ) — the Orthodox People’s Christian Community —, the movement reached at its peak, according to the most serious estimates in the specialist literature, approximately 100,000 members organized in up to 500 brotherhoods, spread from Vojvodina to Macedonia.
This article follows four interwoven threads: the origins of the movement (the spontaneous prelude of the nineteenth century and the institutional birth in the 1920s), the Golden Age (1921–1939) with its central spiritual fruit (the formation of Saint Justin Popović and a generation of authentic Serbian theologians), the tragic end (German occupation 1941–1945 and the prohibition under the communist Tito regime), and — essentially — its placement within the universal patristic Tradition, alongside the Kollyvades Movement of the Athonite Fathers of the eighteenth century and the Russian starchestvo of the nineteenth century, as the three great Orthodox awakenings of modernity.
The subject is little known to the Western Orthodox reader — and yet it offers, perhaps, the clearest example of the way in which authentic lay awakening is shepherded with hierarchical discernment, without sliding into either sectarianism or cold clericalism. An example with a relevance that is not only historical, but profoundly contemporary.
The present article does not seek to idealize the Bogomoljci Movement, nor to ignore the shadows of the interwar Serbian context. On the contrary, precisely because the movement was spiritually fruitful, it must be viewed with discernment: with gratitude for its fruits, but also with lucidity toward the tensions and historical compromises of the epoch.
I. The Spontaneous Prelude (19th c. – 1920)
The Bogomoljci Movement, contrary to what one might think, was not an invention of Saint Nikolai Velimirović. He was its authentic shepherd, the hierarch who recognized it, blessed it, organized it canonically, and gave it a mature theological thought. But the phenomenon itself was older than he was.
First Appearances (c. 1850–1878)
Already in the first half of the nineteenth century there appeared in the Serbian space — first in Banat, then in Bačka, and throughout the entire Karlovci Metropolitanate — spontaneous groups of believers who began to gather for prayer outside the ordinary liturgical schedule, to read Holy Scripture in their homes, to fast more strictly than the rest, to sing spiritual songs of their own composition. The ecclesiastical chroniclers of the time called them “Pokret pobožnih” (“the Movement of the Devout”), and the phenomenon is described thus:
“The Bogomoljci groups appeared, which poured forth like a powerful spring of our piety, friendly but still young.” (Contemporary chronicler, cited by Bishop Hrizostom Vojinović in Tihi glas, Belgrade, 1991, p. 230)
After the Serbo-Turkish Wars of 1876–1878, the phenomenon also spread within Serbia proper — Šumadija, Mačva, Pomoravlje, Stig. It was a purely popular phenomenon: without institutional leaders, without publications, without regulations, without funding. Just laypeople who felt the need for a more serious Christian life and who called each other to prayer.
On the Salonika Front (1916–1918)
The turning point came in the First World War. On the Salonika Front, where the Serbian Army was fighting after the great retreat through Albania, groups of soldier-Bogomoljci formed spontaneously in the trenches. They read Holy Scripture together, gathered for common prayer, fasted during Great Lent, communed as often as the military chaplain allowed. The phenomenon drew the attention of military authorities, who initially viewed it with suspicion. The preserved testimony is surprising: “their prayer books and Holy Scriptures were confiscated, they were forced to break the fast, and they were punished” (chronicle preserved by Bishop Hrizostom).
The response came, however, from Metropolitan Dimitrije, the future Patriarch — who, having received the report on the soldier-Bogomoljci, responded favorably and stopped the military persecution against them. This is the foundational moment: a Serbian hierarch publicly recognized, in the midst of war, the authenticity of this lay awakening.
The same awakening appeared in parallel in the Austro-Hungarian prisoner-of-war camps where approximately 17,000 captured Serbs were being held. Saint Nikolai himself, in his book Divan, describes how the movement broke out spontaneously in the Nežider camp — without a priest, without a hierarch, without an organizer. Just believers who, in captivity, felt the deep need for common prayer.
The Krnjevo Assembly (July 20, 1920)
After the end of the war, the movement spread like wildfire throughout liberated Serbia. On July 20, 1920, in the village of Krnjevo (Pomoravlje), the first great Bogomoljci council was held — an assembly attended by hundreds of lay delegates from all regions, organized with the blessing of Metropolitan Dimitrije.
The Metropolitan’s personal envoy at this assembly was a young Bishop of only 38, recently returned from England where he had preached at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London and received honorary doctorates at Cambridge and Glasgow: Bishop Nikolai Velimirović, then Bishop of Žiča. For him, Krnjevo was — as the chronicles testify — “his first meeting with the multitude of the Bogomoljci.” The young Bishop watched, listened, blessed — and understood, with the spiritual intuition that characterized him, that the Holy Spirit was at work in this movement.
A second, larger assembly followed, on October 23, 1921, at Kragujevac. There participated “over 180 delegates of the religious movement from various regions of the country.” The preserved chronicle testifies: “It was no ordinary assembly.” At that council, Saint Nikolai was unanimously elected leader of the Movement — a choice officially ratified a few months earlier (March 2, 1921) by decision of Patriarch Dimitrije, who had approved the Regulations of the Orthodox People’s Christian Community (NHZ).
That was the moment of the institutional birth of the Bogomoljci Movement as a canonical form within the bosom of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
II. The Configuration of the Movement — What Was a “Bogomoljac” in Fact?
Before tracing the Golden Age, it is necessary to understand exactly what a Bogomoljac was — because the term has often been misunderstood, both by friends and by adversaries.
What a Bogomoljac Was Not
First, what the Bogomoljci were not:
They were not a sect. They never separated themselves from the Serbian Orthodox Church. They never rejected the hierarchy. They never made their own “presbyters” or “priests” outside of canonical ordination. The Bogomoljci attended the Liturgy of their parish, confessed to their canonical priests, received Holy Communion from the appointed priest. Their brotherhoods were forms of additional gathering, not replacements of parish liturgical life.
They were not a political movement. Originally, the movement had no political agenda. (The political tensions of the 1930s, when some brotherhoods drew close to Dimitrije Ljotić’s Zbor movement, are a late, partial, and controversial deviation — we shall return to it.) The Bogomoljci prayed for their king, for their hierarchy, for their people — in the traditional language of the Liturgy.
They were not an elitist or intellectual phenomenon. Unlike the Russian Slavophile circles (Kireevsky, Khomyakov, Leontiev), which were formed of aristocratic intellectuals, the Bogomoljci were peasants. Most had only primary school education. Their great spiritual leaders were not university professors, but simple village priests and hieromonks.
They were not cultivators of a “private pietistic spirituality.” Unlike German Protestant pietism, which placed emphasis on the “personal experience” of faith, the Bogomoljci were profoundly liturgical — their spiritual life revolved around the Divine Liturgy, the ecclesiastical fast, the calendar feasts.
What a Bogomoljac Was, In Fact
He was an Orthodox layperson who, with rigor, did four things which the Church has always asked of all, but which few were actually doing in modern times:
- He read Holy Scripture daily, at home, alone or with the family — often aloud, with reverence, with a simplicity that was not afraid to “comment on” the text as many academic priests were, yet without falling into private interpretations (the brotherhoods often had spiritual fathers who guided them).
- They fasted throughout the entire ecclesiastical fast, without exceptions (the four great fasts, Wednesdays and Fridays, the fast-days). Their fasting was stricter than that of ordinary Orthodox, but no stricter than that of monks.
- They communed frequently — far more often than was customary in the Serbian Church of the time (where many laypeople communed once or twice a year). The Bogomoljci communed at every great feast, after due preparation through confession and fasting.
- They prayed personally, outside of liturgical services — with the Jesus Prayer, with the Psalms, with morning and evening prayers, with the monastic rule adapted for laypeople.
In addition, the brotherhoods had a strong communal dimension: mutual aid among poor members, support of the sick, devout burial of those who had fallen asleep, organization of pilgrimages to monasteries, construction and restoration of village churches, assistance to poor monasteries. As one observer of the time testifies:
“The fruits of the Bogomoljci work in this period are inestimable: the people returned more to the church, prayed more to God in their homes, the ecclesiastical feasts were more honored, the fasts more kept, there were fewer broken marriages, fewer profanities among the people, new churches were built, old ones renewed, the poor, the elderly, and the sick were aided. The Bogomoljci themselves gave personal example.” (Chronicle cited by Diaspora Media Group)
III. The Golden Age (1921–1939)
The nearly twenty years from official recognition (1921) until the outbreak of the Second World War (1941) are called in Serbian Orthodox historiography “Zlatno bogomoljačko doba” — “the Golden Bogomoljci Age.” In this interval, the movement grew from a few thousand members to — according to the favorable estimates of the specialist literature — approximately 100,000 active believers, organized in up to 500 brotherhoods (the figures from 1939, closer to the end, are about 450 brotherhoods documentarily attested; other academic estimates are more conservative).
The geographical spread was impressive: from Vojvodina and Banat, through Šumadija and Pomoravlje, through the Eparchy of Šabac-Valjevo (the strongest concentration), through the Eparchy of Žiča, to Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Practically, all the eparchies of the Serbian Orthodox Church had Bogomoljci brotherhoods.
Velimirović, the Shepherd
Saint Nikolai was the leader of the movement for twenty years — from 1921 until his arrest by the Nazis in 1941. His pastoral strength lay in three things:
First: he kept the movement in the Church. He succeeded, through his spiritual authority and his pastoral diplomacy, in preventing both deviations toward sectarianism (some brotherhoods, in their enthusiasm, would have separated from the “cold” canonical priesthood) and institutional marginalization on the part of the more academic clergy who looked with suspicion upon popular enthusiasm. The balance was not easy — and the evidence is the very dissatisfaction of the Patriarchate with some of Velimirović’s own formulations (he was twice called to the Synod for explanations, in 1927 and 1929).
Second: he offered mature theology to the simple people. Velimirović did not address the Bogomoljci “in their language” by descending to their level — he raised them to the level of the Holy Fathers. His books from this period — The Prologue of Ohrid (1926), Prayers by the Lake (1922), Reflections on Good and Evil (1923) — are written with an apparently popular simplicity, but with a profound theological substance, nourished by the Greek Fathers and by the hesychast tradition.
Third: he recognized the authority of the Athonite Tradition over the movement. The mature phase of his thought — the “Ohrid phase” (1921–1934) — coincides with his personal rediscovery of the Holy Fathers and of the Holy Mountain Tradition. This was decisive: it impregnated the Bogomoljci Movement with authentic hesychast spirit, not with modern Western pietism. As one academic commentator notes:
“The Bogomoljci are a specific Serbian phenomenon, a product of the circumstances and people of this Orthodox region. Similar movements are found in Greece, the so-called ‘Kollyvades,’ and in Russia the ‘starchevtsi’ are mentioned.” (Dr. Dragan Subotić, Episkop Nikolaj i pravoslavni bogomoljački pokret, Belgrade, Nova iskra, 1996)
The Concrete Spiritual Life of a Brotherhood
What did the life of a Bogomoljci brotherhood look like in practice, in a Serbian village of the 1930s? The sources preserved by Bishop Hrizostom and by Subotić’s monograph allow us an approximate reconstruction.
The weekly gatherings. As a rule, on Sunday evening, after Vespers, the brotherhood would gather either in a larger private home, or in a parish hall, or — if the weather permitted — under a tree at the edge of the village. The gathering began with the prayer “Heavenly King,” followed by the reading of a passage from Holy Scripture (usually the Gospel of the following or the past Sunday) and by Bogomoljci spiritual songs — narodne pobožne pesme, “popular pious songs,” often composed by the peasants themselves on popular tunes, with texts about Christ, the Mother of God, the Saints, and the Christian death. Then someone — the priest when he was present, an older layperson when not — would read several pages from a Father: most often from The Prologue of Ohrid by Saint Nikolai, which was read day by day in all the brotherhoods. The gathering ended with the prayer “It is truly meet” and with the mutual kiss in Christ.
The daily rule of each member. The Bogomoljci had a personal daily prayer rule adapted for laypeople — gentler than the monastic rule, but much more consistent than the prayer of the ordinary Orthodox. It included: the morning and evening prayers (from the Horologion), a chapter from the Gospel, a chapter from the Apostle, thirty to fifty Jesus Prayers on the prayer rope (for the more advanced, more), a personal commemoration of the living and reposed of one’s family. This was the minimum rule. Many exceeded it on feast days and during Great Lent.
The pilgrimages. One of the liveliest dimensions of the movement were the pilgrimages organized to the great monasteries of Serbia — particularly Žiča (Saint Sava’s foundation), Studenica, Lelić (Saint Nikolai’s birthplace), Ostrog (with the relics of Saint Basil of Ostrog). The brotherhoods went on foot, sometimes several days of walking, singing spiritual songs on the way, fasting on the way, sleeping in the houses of the faithful. Monastic feasts gathered tens of thousands of Bogomoljci. At Žiča, in 1935, on the feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, there were present approximately 30,000 pilgrims — most of them Bogomoljci from across Serbia.
The written word. The movement had its own publications: the official magazine Hrišćanska zajednica (later Misionar), annual almanacs with abridged Lives of the Saints, cheap brochures with words of Saint Nikolai, a weekly leaflet for the brotherhoods. These publications were read aloud in the gatherings, because many peasants could read only with difficulty. The Prologue of Ohrid, in particular, was the daily handbook of the movement: for each day of the year — the life of a Saint, a word of teaching, a liturgical hymn, and a contemplation. Saint Nikolai wrote it explicitly for the Bogomoljci — as a common spiritual rule.
The real fast. The Bogomoljci kept the four great fasts, Wednesdays and Fridays, and the fast-days (the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the Beheading of Saint John, the Eve of Theophany). Their fast was the classical ecclesiastical fast: without meat, without dairy, without eggs, without fish (except on days with fish allowance). It was not the “relaxed” fast of modernity, but the authentic fast. Many also kept the complete fast until the Liturgy on Wednesdays and Fridays of Great Lent.
Frequent Communion. In the Serbian Church of the time, ordinary laypeople communed four times a year (at the four great fasts) or even less frequently — once a year, at Pascha. The Bogomoljci reintroduced Communion at every great feast (approximately once a month), and the more advanced communed at every Sunday, after weekly confession to their spiritual father. This was a break with the slow custom of modernity — and a return to the original patristic practice.
The concrete fruits. The chronicler of the time enumerates with sobriety what was visible: “The people returned more to the church, prayed more to God in their homes, the ecclesiastical feasts were more honored, the fasts more kept, there were fewer broken marriages, fewer profanities among the people, new churches were built, old ones renewed, the poor, the elderly, and the sick were aided. The Bogomoljci themselves gave personal example.” This is, in essence, the icon of a living Christian village — which modernity has forgotten, but which the Bogomoljci reconstituted, for two decades, in the midst of the twentieth century.
A Public Struggle: Against the Concordat of 1937
The only moment when the movement stepped out of the liturgical-communal space into the public political space was the struggle against the Concordat between the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Vatican (1937), which was to grant the Roman Catholic Church substantial privileges in the Orthodox-majority Yugoslavia. The Bogomoljci were the hand and soul of the Orthodox opposition — they organized public litanies, services of repentance, peaceful marches. On July 19, 1937, during the “Litany of Blood” (Krvna litija) through the center of Belgrade, Patriarch Varnava fell ill; he died four days later. The Concordat was rejected by Parliament under the pressure of the Serbian Church supported by the Bogomoljci people. It was the last great public success of the movement.
IV. The Three Great Patristic Awakenings of Modernity
To understand the true historical breadth of the Bogomoljci Movement, we must place it in the broader context of the Orthodox patristic Tradition and of the parallel phenomena. As the Serbian academic Dragan Subotić rightly perceived, the Bogomoljci are not an isolated phenomenon — they are part of a universal patristic triad of Orthodox modernity.
1. The Kollyvades Movement (Athos, 18th c.)
The oldest of the three waves of awakening was the Kollyvades Movement (Κολλυβάδες — “those of the boiled wheat for the commemoration of the dead”). The movement broke out in the middle of the eighteenth century on the Holy Mountain Athos, around an apparently minor matter: whether the memorial services for the dead, with the traditional koliva, could be performed on days other than Saturday (the traditional canonical day).
The dispute was quickly extended to greater matters: frequent Communion (the Kollyvades maintained that laypeople and monks must commune often, not just four times a year as had become customary under Ottoman rule), the rediscovery of the neptic Fathers, the practice of the Jesus Prayer, the defense of the Athonite Tradition against innovations. The leaders of the movement were great Fathers of the Church:
- Saint Macarius of Corinth (1731–1805), the initiator of the movement and collector of the texts of the Philokalia
- Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite (1749–1809), the editor of the Philokalia and of the Pedalion
- Saint Athanasius of Paros (1721–1813), the principal apologist of the movement
- Saint Cosmas of Aetolia (1714–1779), the apostle of the Church of Greece
- Saint Paisius Velichkovsky (1722–1794) — bridge between Athos and the Slavic world
The fruit of the Kollyvades Movement was **the publication of the *Philokalia*** at Venice in 1782 — an epochal event that made possible the entire Orthodox patristic renaissance of the following centuries. The Philokalia was then translated by Paisius Velichkovsky into Slavonic (Dobrotolyubie, 1793), by Saint Theophan the Recluse into Russian (1877–1889), and much later by Father Dumitru Stăniloae into Romanian (1946–1991).
2. Russian Starchestvo (19th c.)
The second great Orthodox awakening of modernity was **the revival of the spiritual eldership (starchestvo)** in nineteenth-century Russia, beginning from Optina Monastery and Sarov Monastery.
The starting point was Saint Paisius Velichkovsky — the same Father who had made the connection with the Athonite Kollyvades Movement. His monastic disciples, returning to the Russian monasteries, brought with them the Athonite spirit, the Slavonic translation of the Philokalia, and — essentially — the model of the elder as spiritual father of the community and of the people.
The high point was Optina Monastery in the nineteenth century, under the successive eldership of:
- Saint Leonid of Optina († 1841)
- Saint Macarius of Optina († 1860) — who, together with the Slavophile intellectual Ivan Kireevsky, published in Russian a series of Holy Fathers (St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Mark the Ascetic, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Symeon the New Theologian)
- Saint Ambrose of Optina († 1891) — to whom came Russian intellectuals (Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky) and thousands of simple people
In parallel, Saint Seraphim of Sarov († 1833) was renewing in the Russian forests the hesychast tradition of the heart. And Saint John of Kronstadt († 1908) — a married priest, not a monk, but spiritually akin to this tradition — was becoming the spiritual father of all Russia.
The particularity of Russian starchestvo was that the central figure was the monk-spiritual father, not the organized lay assembly. The laity came to Optina, but they did not organize themselves into “Optina brotherhoods.” It was a spiritual awakening through the spiritual father, not through the organized community.
3. The Bogomoljci Movement (Serbia, 20th c.)
The third great awakening — and the last of this magnitude — was the Bogomoljci Movement in interwar Serbia. Its particularity was that it combined two dimensions:
- The monastic-patristic dimension (through Saint Nikolai Velimirović and his disciples, in continuity with Athos) — a continuous thread with the Kollyvades and starchestvo
- The organized lay dimension — popular brotherhoods with massive participation of peasants and soldiers
This combination is almost unique in the modern history of Orthodoxy. The Kollyvades were Athonite monks with diffuse impact on the laity. Russian starchestvo was Optina monks with impact through individual pilgrimage. The Bogomoljci were laypeople collectively organized, in brotherhoods, under explicit hierarchical shepherding. This structure could have been dangerous — sectarianism could have erupted at any moment —, but the pastoral genius of Saint Nikolai kept it under the omophorion of the Church for two decades.
Common Traits of the Three Awakenings
With all their differences, the three great awakenings have seven common traits that define them as authentically patristic:
- Return to the Holy Fathers — not to modern innovations, but to the sources of Tradition
- The practice of the Jesus Prayer — either as hesychast technique (Athos, Optina), or as daily practice for all (Bogomoljci)
- Frequent Communion — against the modernized custom of rare Communion
- The centrality of the Liturgy — not a private pietism, but the liturgical life of the Church
- Real and severe fasting — not as scruple, but as conscious ascetic practice
- The spiritual father — in all three movements, the central figures were great spiritual fathers with the gift of the word and the discernment of spirits
- The defense of Tradition against modern innovations — whether Western Enlightenment (Kollyvades), Russian intellectual rationalism (Optina), or Protestant pietism and atheistic Marxism (Bogomoljci)
Where these seven elements are absent, an “awakening” is not patristic — however zealous it may be. Where they are present, the movement bears the seal of the Holy Spirit.
V. The Internal Conflict: The Velimirović–Dionisije Crisis of 1932
No historical phenomenon, not even the most luminous, is without shadows. The Bogomoljci Movement experienced, in the midst of its Golden Age, a grave internal crisis worth recalling — both for historical fidelity and for the spiritual lesson it offers.
The Hieromonk Dragoljub Milivojević (1898–1979), the future Bishop Dionisije of America, had been since 1921 the editor of the official journal of the NHZ — Hrišćanska zajednica (Christian Community), printed at Kragujevac. He was an ambitious young cleric, energetic, with great organizational qualities — but also with a difficult temperament.
The most serious testimony about the crisis that broke out between Dionisije and Velimirović comes from Bishop Hrizostom Vojinović of Braničevo († 1989), disciple of Saint Justin Popović, in his volume Tihi glas (Belgrade, 1991, pp. 229–253). Bishop Hrizostom had access to the archives of the Serbian Holy Synod and recorded two facts of exceptional gravity:
Methodological note: The information that follows — the 267-page complaint, the conference at Rakovica on August 29, 1932, and the temporary withdrawal of Saint Nikolai — is taken exclusively from the account of Bishop Hrizostom Vojinović (Tihi glas, 1991), who consulted directly the archives of the Serbian Holy Synod. This ecclesiastical source is restated in contemporary Serbian literature (pravda.rs, September 24, 2025), but has not yet been translated into other languages.
First: Before 1932, a representative of a rival federation of Orthodox Christian brotherhoods had filed at the Serbian Holy Synod a 267-page complaint against the Hieromonk Dionisije personally. The complaint was documented with substantial annexes. Bishop Hrizostom, evaluating it retrospectively, writes with bitterness: “It is perhaps a great pity that this complaint was not taken seriously at the time by anyone, and that no one read it in full. Had this been done, perhaps we would later have been spared certain great troubles and turmoil…” — a clear allusion to the American Schism of 1963, when Dionisije would separate himself from the Serbian Patriarchate.
Second: In 1932, the crisis broke out openly. Bishop Hrizostom records: “There had already been certain misunderstandings and disagreements between the editor of the journal, Hieromonk Dionisije, and the leader of the Movement, Bishop Nikolai. In 1932 these became particularly aggravated, and that year not even the annual council was convened.”
Dionisije’s attempted institutional coup: in place of the annual council presided by Saint Nikolai, Dionisije convened on his own initiative, on August 29, 1932, approximately two hundred delegates at Rakovica Monastery, personally presiding over the conference. Moreover, beforehand he had personally written to Patriarch Varnava asking him to take the leadership of the Movement in place of Saint Nikolai, on the grounds that the Saint “had not communicated with the NHZ Center for half a year.” Patriarch Varnava effectively came to Rakovica and accepted to take the leadership of the Movement. Bishop Hrizostom adds: “Immediately after the conference resumed its work, the question arose: is it not, in fact, the intent of this conference to remove Bishop Nikolai?”
Saint Nikolai’s reaction was — exactly as he would do two decades later in America — silent withdrawal, without public polemic. He distanced himself from the NHZ Center for half a year. In the January 1933 issue of the journal, under the diplomatic formula “due to the great workload at the seminary” — a euphemism masking the behind-the-scenes events — Dionisije was removed from the editorial board.
In the autumn of 1933, at the council at Kovilj Monastery in Bačka, Saint Nikolai appeared alongside Patriarch Varnava — official reconciliation. But, Bishop Hrizostom writes, Dionisije “broke off all communication with the journal and never again collaborated in its pages.” The resentment remained. It crossed the ocean. And it erupted again in 1951, at Libertyville, in the persecution of Saint Nikolai during his American exile — an episode treated in detail in our article “Saint Nikolai Velimirović in America.”
The spiritual lesson of this episode, for the contemporary Orthodox reader, is this: even within an authentic spiritual awakening, shepherded by a saint, there is the possibility of human falls — clerical ambition, institutional maneuvering, attacks against the spiritual father. But the saint’s authentic response — silence, withdrawal, refusal of polemic — becomes, paradoxically, a more powerful lesson than any doctrinal formulation.
VI. Saint Justin Popović and the Connection with the Movement
One of the most important spiritual connections of the Bogomoljci Movement — and one that the Eastern Orthodox reader may know without realizing — is the relationship between Saint Nikolai Velimirović and Saint Justin Popović (Blagoje Popović, 1894–1979; canonized May 2, 2010, as Saint Justin of Ćelije).
Saint Justin was not a simple “product” of the Bogomoljci. He was formed in a multistratified manner: the theological experience at Oxford during the First World War, his studies and doctorate at Athens (1926, with a dissertation on the problem of person and knowledge in Saint Macarius of Egypt), patristic formation through Athonite readings (St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Symeon the New Theologian), a profound relationship with the work of Dostoevsky, the monastic experience at Ćelije Monastery, and his own ascetic path. He was a great patristic theologian through his own formation, not merely through filiation.
And yet, the spiritual relationship with Saint Nikolai was decisive in his maturation. The two saints were, for nearly four decades, in a continuous spiritual and pastoral dialogue. **Justin calls Velimirović, in his own writings, “the thirteenth Apostle,” “the Serbian evangelist,” and *”the greatest Serb after Saint Sava”*** — titulatures that express the gratitude of one saint toward another, without this gratitude canceling his own identity.
Saint Justin became, in his turn, the spiritual father of a generation of Serbian hierarchs who defined the face of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the second half of the twentieth century:
- Bishop Artemije Radosavljević, author of the standard Serbian biography of Saint Nikolai (Novi Zlatoust, 1986)
- Metropolitan Amfilohije Radović († 2020) of Cetinje — one of the most significant Orthodox hierarchs of the late twentieth century
- Bishop Atanasije Jevtić († 2021), the best-known theologian of the contemporary Serbian Patriarchate
- Bishop Hrizostom Vojinović († 1989) of Braničevo — author of the principal historical memoir about the movement, Tihi glas (1991)
These were not directly organizational members of the old Bogomoljci brotherhoods (the movement had already been forbidden during the years of their formation), but disciples of Saint Justin. Yet an essential part of the Serbian patristic renaissance of the second half of the twentieth century can be understood in continuity with the spirit of the Bogomoljci, especially through the link between Saint Nikolai Velimirović, Saint Justin Popović, and the generation formed around Ćelije Monastery.
VII. The Tragic End (1941–1948)
The Golden Age of the Bogomoljci Movement came to an abrupt end — in a single week, in April 1941.
April 1941: The German Occupation
On April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The capital Belgrade was massively bombed, without a declaration of war. In two weeks the Yugoslav army was crushed. The country was dismembered: central Serbia under direct German administration, Croatia under the Ustaše regime, Bosnia integrated into Croatia, Slovenia divided between Germany and Italy, Vojvodina occupied by Hungary, Macedonia occupied by Bulgaria, Kosovo by Italy.
Saint Nikolai was arrested almost immediately and held under guard first at Ljubostinja Monastery, then at Vojlovica Monastery near Pančevo, together with Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić. Saint Justin Popović was forced into hiding to avoid arrest — Ćelije Monastery, where he was located, had been visited several times by the Gestapo.
The Bogomoljci Movement as an organized structure was immediately suspended. Public gatherings were forbidden. The journals were stopped. The brotherhoods managed as best they could, in secret, through private prayer and mutual aid.
A sensitive detail that demands historical honesty: a part of the clergy and of the milieus close to the Bogomoljci Movement drew close, during the occupation years, to the circles of Dimitrije Ljotić and the organization Zbor — an authoritarian movement of the extreme right, anticommunist, but also profoundly compromised by its collaboration with the German occupation regime and by its antisemitic rhetoric. This approach does not define the entire Bogomoljci Movement, but it cannot be passed over in silence either. It remains one of the real historical shadows of the interwar Serbian milieu.
The most painful aspect — and one that we cannot place merely on “a part of the milieus” — is that Saint Nikolai himself manifested sympathy for Ljotić as a believing and anticommunist man, a fact documented in his correspondence and in his sermons, including in his funeral address of April 1945. This reality, documented in academic literature (particularly in Jovan Byford, Denial and Repression of Antisemitism, CEU Press, 2008), cannot be either denied or “fully explained” by the anticommunist context. It remains a real stain on the memory of the interwar period, which Orthodox discernment views with sorrow, but without thereby annulling the spiritual fruits of Saint Nikolai’s pastoral work or of the Bogomoljci Movement as a whole. The saint exists with his historical shadows as well; canonization honors his spiritual work, not every political judgment.
December 1944: Saint Nikolai Transferred to Dachau
Toward the end of 1944, both Serbian hierarchs (Nikolai and Patriarch Gavrilo) were transferred to Germany, to Dachau concentration camp, where they were held in a special regime, as Ehrenhäftlinge (“honor prisoners”), in a section separated from the mass of ordinary inmates. The fact of the detention remains real, but the details of their status require precision, to avoid both the minimization of suffering and hagiographic exaggeration — this matter is treated in detail in our article “Saint Nikolai Velimirović in America.” For our present subject, what is important is that the leader of the Bogomoljci Movement was physically torn from the midst of his people and would never return.
In May 1945, freed by the American army in Tyrol, Saint Nikolai refused repatriation. He went to England, then in 1946 to the United States. The Bogomoljci Movement remained without its historical shepherd, forever.
1945–1948: The Prohibition Under the Tito Regime
The communist regime of Josip Broz Tito, installed after January 1946, initiated a systematic campaign against the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Bogomoljci, as the liveliest expression of the organized Christian life of the Serbian people, were a priority target.
The concrete measures:
- In 1947, the Tito regime officially banned all books of Saint Nikolai Velimirović. Public libraries were forced to withdraw them; those found in popular hands could lead to penalties
- The public activities of the brotherhoods were forbidden. Prayer gatherings were considered “illegal meetings”
- The lay Bogomoljci leaders were pursued, arrested, imprisoned; many died in Tito’s prisons (Goli Otok, Sremska Mitrovica, Stara Gradiška)
- Saint Justin Popović was expelled from the Faculty of Theology of Belgrade in 1948 and exiled to Ćelije Monastery in Valjevo, where he remained until his death (1979) — under constant surveillance of the UDBA (the Yugoslav State Security)
- Justin’s disciples — Artemije, Amfilohije, Atanasije, Irinej — were also marginalized, pursued, harassed by the regime
- The village churches that had been active Bogomoljci centers were closed under various pretexts
- Many village priests, especially those who had been the spiritual fathers of the Bogomoljci brotherhoods, were arrested under fabricated charges of “collaboration with the Nazis” or “Serbian nationalism”
The most painful blow was, however, the organizational emptying of the movement. The brotherhoods were forbidden. The members who had not been arrested were forced into silence. The living tradition of public common prayer was extinguished.
And yet — and here is seen the mystery of the work of the Holy Spirit — the movement did not vanish completely. It continued in the depths, in secret, through the memory of the elderly peasants who still kept in secret the rule of prayer, through the monasteries that preserved the tradition (Ćelije, Žiča, Lelić), through the writings of Saint Justin which continued to appear samizdat, through his disciples who formed the next generation of Serbian hierarchs.
After 1990: Fragmentary Reappearance
After the collapse of the communist regime and the dissolution of Yugoslavia, in the 1990s, the memory of the Bogomoljci Movement reemerged. The books of Saint Nikolai were massively reprinted. Saint Justin was canonized in 2010. The key monasteries were restored. Saint Nikolai himself was canonized in 2003.
But the movement as such has not been revived in its interwar form. There appeared, instead, new phenomena: mass pilgrimages to Lelić, reprints of the historic journals, youth groups inspired by it, but without the direct organizational continuity of the old brotherhoods. The spiritual tradition has been inherited — but the organized lay structure has not been reconstructed.
This is, perhaps, one of the great losses of contemporary Orthodoxy: that a unique structure, through which laypeople could live Christianity with monastic intensity without becoming monks, has been too quickly forgotten under the weight of history.
VIII. The Spiritual Lesson for the Contemporary Orthodox Reader
What, in conclusion, is the lesson of the Bogomoljci Movement for the Orthodox reader of today?
I believe it is sevenfold.
1. Authentic Lay Awakening Exists — And Has Specific Forms
There is a widespread reading — coming both from cold clericalism and from Protestantism — that says authentic spiritual awakenings would be either clerical or particular. The Bogomoljci dismantle this dichotomy: there exist lay awakenings that are organized, communal, under hierarchical shepherding, which are neither sectarianism nor clericalism. This way exists. It was lived historically. It can be reactivated.
2. Hierarchical Discernment Is Essential
The difference between the Bogomoljci (who remained in the Church) and other lay movements that slid into sectarianism (for example, the Russian Stundists, the Molokans, or various contemporary charismatic movements) is not in their zeal — they were all zealous —, but in the shepherding. A hierarch like Saint Nikolai Velimirović was able, for twenty years, to keep the balance. Without him, the movement would have slid. Where the spiritual father-shepherd is lacking, lay zeal becomes dangerous.
3. The Centrality of the Liturgy and of Fasting
An authentic Orthodox awakening does not separate itself from the liturgical life of the Church — on the contrary, it goes deeper into it. The Bogomoljci did not invent “alternative prayers.” They took up the prayers of the Church and made them daily. They did not invent “spiritual fasts.” They kept the fasts of the Church with rigor. This is the seal of authenticity.
4. The Spiritual Father-Hierarch as Model
The Bogomoljci did not have a single “mystical leader,” but they had a holy Bishop who was both their administrative leader and their spiritual father. This is the original patristic norm — which we have lost in modern Orthodoxy, where the Bishop is often administrator, and the spiritual father is a separate confessor. The reunion of the two functions is the ideal.
5. The Lay Community vs. Religious Individualism
Unlike modern individualistic spirituality (even Orthodox), the Bogomoljci lived Christianity in an organized community — brotherhoods with common prayer, mutual aid, common feasts, common pilgrimages. This was not a modern invention — it was a resumption of the apostolic and patristic model of the Christian community. Spiritual singularity is not Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is, by nature, communal.
6. Continuity with Patristic Tradition
The Bogomoljci were not an isolated awakening — they were the Serbian link of the universal patristic chain: Kollyvades (Athos, 18th c.) → starchestvo (Russia, 19th c.) → Bogomoljci (Serbia, 20th c.). All three movements have in common the seven traits enumerated above. Where these traits are absent, it is not a question of a patristic awakening — however “authentic” it may present itself. This is the criterion.
7. Darkness Does Not Overcome the Light
The harshest historical fact of the Bogomoljci Movement is its tragic end — banned by the Nazis, destroyed by the communists, its shepherd dead in American exile, its disciples exiled and harassed, its structure dissolved. And yet: the seed remained. Today the books of Saint Nikolai are read again on three continents. Today Saint Justin Popović is canonized. Today the Bogomoljci spirit lives in fragmentary but real form in the monasteries of Serbia and of the diaspora.
“The word of God is not bound.” (II Tim. 2:9)
An awakening can be repressed institutionally. It cannot be repressed spiritually. The spiritual seed waits, beneath the snow of history, for its spring. And it rises — always — when the Lord wills.
Conclusion
The Bogomoljci Movement is, without doubt, one of the most significant Orthodox phenomena of the twentieth century — and one of the least known in the Eastern Orthodox space. It succeeded, for two decades, in what few modern religious movements succeed in: to be at the same time popular, communal, profoundly liturgical, doctrinally authentic, hierarchically obedient, and spiritually fruitful.
Its historical foundation was the spontaneous lay awakening that emerged in the Serbian space already in the nineteenth century, matured through the experience of the Serbo-Turkish wars and the First World War. Its institutional constitution took place in 1920–1921, under Patriarch Dimitrije and under the shepherding of Saint Nikolai Velimirović. Its central fruit was the formation of Saint Justin Popović and of the generation of great Serbian hierarchs of the second half of the twentieth century. Its tragic end, under the communist Tito regime, did not annul its spiritual legacy.
Today, when Orthodoxy is called to rediscover its own patristic roots against sentimental pietism and cold clericalism, the Bogomoljci legacy can be one of the great inspirations. Not to copy it mechanically — historical forms do not repeat themselves —, but to learn its principles: the bond between laity and hierarchy, the centrality of the Liturgy and of fasting, spiritual obedience, the organized community, continuity with the Holy Fathers.
In the end, what the Bogomoljci did was not something new. They did what the Church has always asked of all Christians: to read the Scripture, to fast, to commune, to pray. Their originality was that they actually did what others merely invoked as theoretical norm.
This is, perhaps, the highest honor they can receive: that they were not original, only authentic.
“Whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 5:19)
Holy Hierarch Father Nikolai, shepherd of the Bogomoljci, pray to God for us. Venerable Father Justin of Ćelije, disciple of Saint Nikolai, pray to God for us.
Principal Sources
Fundamental Serbian sources:
- **Bishop Hrizostom Vojinović of Braničevo († 1989), disciple of Saint Justin Popović, “Narodna hrišćanska zajednica: Nastanak i razvoj Bogomoljačkog pokreta” (The People’s Christian Community: The Birth and Development of the Bogomoljci Movement), in the volume Tihi glas (The Silent Voice, Belgrade, 1991, pp. 229–253), reprinted on pravda.rs (September 24, 2025)** — the fundamental ecclesiastical source for the internal history of the movement
- **Dragan Subotić, Episkop Nikolaj i pravoslavni bogomoljački pokret: Pravoslavna narodna hrišćanska zajednica u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1920–1941, Nova iskra Publishing, Belgrade, 1996** — the standard academic monograph of the movement, indexed in the Stanford University Libraries catalog
- St. Nikolai Velimirović, Divan (on the Bogomoljci, written in the Nežider camp)
- St. Justin Popović, Pravoslavna crkva i ekumenizam (Belgrade, 1974) — references to the Bogomoljci matrix
- Diaspora Media Group, “Ko su bili bogomoljci Vladike Nikolaja?” (April 2021)
Comparative patristic sources:
- Kollyvades Movement, OrthodoxWiki and Routledge Handbook of Mount Athos (2022)
- Fr. John Sanidopoulos, “The Kollyvades Fathers: The Renaissance of Greek Orthodoxy” (2020)
- The Orthodox Faith — Russia: Spiritual Renewal, Orthodox Church in America (oca.org)
- Eastern Orthodoxy (Encyclopædia Britannica), articles on starchestvo, Optina, and St. Seraphim of Sarov in Orthodox Wiki and Orthodox Encyclopedia
Critical academic sources:
- Jovan Byford, Denial and Repression of Antisemitism: Post-Communist Remembrance of the Serbian Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, Central European University Press, Budapest, 2008 — critically analyzes the interwar period of the movement and the association with Zbor
Related OrtodoxWay articles:
- “Saint Nikolai Velimirović in America: The Exile, the Last Liturgy, and the Death on His Knees” — the companion article