Nikiforos Perić

Metropolitan Nikiforos Perić (in the world Nikola, 1862-1918) was metropolitan of Raška and Prizren from 1901 to 1911, a Serbian hierarch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and died in Bulgarian captivity in Sofia on 1 February 1918. He was canonized in May 2017 by the Serbian Orthodox Church, among the saints killed by the Bulgarian occupiers in the First World War (the martyrs of Surdulica); he is commemorated on 16 May (29 May by the new calendar).

Youth and studies

He was born on 4 December 1862 in the Banat village of Baranda, to Petar and Olimpia, and received at baptism the name Nikola. He attended the village school, then crossed into the Principality of Serbia and finished the gymnasium in Belgrade and, later, as an already ordained priest (1881, at Karanovac), the seminary (1889). He was tonsured a monk on 14 September 1880 in the Vraćevšnica Monastery and ordained hierodeacon in the same year, and on 1 March 1881 hieromonk. On the advice of the seminary professor Firmilian he was sent to the theological school on the island of Halki, at Constantinople, which he finished in 1892. Back in Serbia, he was an official in the chancery of Metropolitan Mihailo of Belgrade and then abbot at Ravanica; then he went again to Constantinople, where in March 1893 he was named professor at the Serbian gymnasium. He entered the service of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and served at the church of the Holy Apostles, was raised to archimandrite by Patriarch Anthimus VII and, at the request of the Greeks, was sent as protosyncellus to the diocese of Skopje.

Metropolitan of Raška and Prizren

When, after the death of Metropolitan Methodius, the Greek successor, Ambrose, came to Skopje, the Slav people rose up and drove him out of the church and out of the city. For his role as a popular leader in those days the patriarch of Constantinople punished him in 1896 and sent him into exile on the island of Patmos, where he stayed a few months, between July and November 1897. At the request of the Serbs the patriarch brought him back to Skopje. From the end of 1899 until his election he stayed at Constantinople, as parish priest of the church of the Holy Apostles at Pharikeia. After the death of Metropolitan Dionysius Petrović (1900), he was elected metropolitan of Raška and Prizren and consecrated on 21 January 1901 in the patriarchal church of Saint George at Constantinople. He reorganised the spiritual court at Prizren and set up a mixed court for ordinary disputes, made up of priests and laymen, and founded a main education committee, with subcommittees in the larger places, for the schools of the eparchy. At Priština, on 16 September 1905, he celebrated twenty-⁠five years of pastoral service and received from Serbia the Order of Saint Sava, first class. He described conditions in Old Serbia in his "Travel Notes of Metropolitan Nikiforos Perić through the Sanjak of Kosovo in 1906." Several times he tried to protect the Serbian people from the abuses of local Turkish officials and from Albanian violence in the vilayet of Kosovo. He had great difficulties with the "Dečani question," born of the poor management of Archimandrite Joanikije at Visoki Dečani monastery; by removing Joanikije and saving Dečani he gained great respect among the people, but also the displeasure of some weighty persons. The bringing to Dečani of some Russian monks from the cell of Saint John Chrysostom on Athos stirred new discussions; the chief opponent of the Russian monks and of the metropolitan was Hieromonk Gavrilo Dožić, later patriarch of Serbia. After disagreements with Serbian diplomacy he resigned in 1911; in his place came the next year Gavrilo Dožić himself.

Last years

After withdrawing from the see he lived in retirement until the outbreak of the first Balkan war. He returned from Serbia as a volunteer in the Serbian army; for his courage and boldness it was said that he was more for a voivode than for a bishop. He was captured during the fighting by the Bulgarian occupying authorities and interned in Bulgaria in 1915; he died on 1 February 1918, "in unclear circumstances," at Sofia, according to some sources in the Rila Monastery.