Mihailo Jovanović (metropolitan)

Mihailo was born Miloje Jovanović on 19 August 1826 in Sokobanja. He attended elementary school at his hometown, and studied gymnasium in Zaječar and Negotin. He graduated from the Belgrade Seminary.[3]

At the initiative of Metropolitan Petar Jovanović, he went to Kiev in July 1846 with six friends under the leadership of Sima Milutinović Sarajlija. There, he graduated from the Theological Academy with a master's degree. He was tonsured a monk on 29 May 1853 in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra and was given the name Mihailo. After completing his studies, Mihailo stayed in Russia for almost another year, where he visited Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Optina Monastery near Kozelsk and studied the life of Russian monks.[4]

In June 1854, Mihailo returned to Serbia and became a teacher at the Seminary, where he stayed until 14 October 1854 when he was ordained Bishop of Šabac.[4]

On 25 July 1859, he succeeded Petar Jovanović as the Metropolitan of Belgrade.[4]

Mihailo's time in office was marked with modernization in church management and in the education of priests. He oversaw a new church law on 30 September 1862 which modernized the ecclesiastical apparatus, and on 27 September 1863 a law was passed which modernized teaching at the seminary. In 1873, a separate department was opened at the Belgrade seminary for the training of priests that were to proselytize in areas that were still part of the Ottoman Empire. According to the law of 11 January 1896, training in the seminary lasted nine years.[4]

Mihailo also laid the foundations of the discipline of theology in Serbia. He was particularly interested in dogmatic problems and practical theology. His works on Serbian church history, “Pravoslavna srbska crkva u Knjažestvu Srbii” (The Orthodox Serbian Church in the Principality of Serbia, 1874) and “Pravoslavna crkva u Kraljevini Srbiji” (The Orthodox Church in the Kingdom of Serbia, 1895) are also of interest. Within the church, he separated administration from the judiciary, improved the training of clergy and promoted the monasteries.[4]

On 20 October 1879, the Orthodox Church in Serbia gained autocephaly in agreement with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.[4]

Mihailo was a convinced Russophile and worked for the unification of South Slavs. He maintained close ties with Slavophile circles in the Russian Empire. He was an honorary member of universities in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Through them, he materially helped the Herzegovina uprising (1875–1877). His decisive opposition to the policy of rapprochement with Austria-Hungary, led by Prince Milan Obrenović after the Congress of Berlin, provoked his removal from the position of Metropolitan in October 1881.[4]

From 1883, he lived in exile in the Principality of Bulgaria and the Russian Empire. He returned to the position of Metropolitan in 1889, just a few months following the abdication of Milan (by then King Milan I).[4]

Mihailo remained the Metropolitan of Belgrade until his death in 1898, during the reign of Milan's son King Alexander I.

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  Portrait of Mihailo Jovanović
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  Bust of Mihailo Jovanović
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  Front page of the Sarajevo-based Bosnian Serb literary magazine Bosanska vila (Bosnian fairy) on 15 January 1897, depicting Metropolitan Mihailo.

Metropolitan Mihailo authored publications about church history:

• Pravoslavna crkva u Kneževini Srbiji (Orthodox Church in the Principality of Serbia, published in 1874)
• Pravoslavna crkva u Kraljevini Srbiji (Orthodox Church in the Kingdom of Serbia, published in 1895)