Valerijan Pribićević (Serbian Cyrillic:Валеријан Прибићевић; 25 April 1870 – 10 July 1941) was a prominentvicar bishop of theSerbian Orthodox Church atSremski Karlovci during the latter part of the 19th- and the beginning of the 20th-century.[1] He died in Split after theNazi-occupation of theKingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941.
Bishop Valerijan's secular name was Vasilije Pribićević, born on 25 April 1870 in the village of Dubica, near Kostanjica, to a well-known Serbian family in what was thenAustria-Hungary. Valerijan had three younger brothers:Svetozar Pribićević,Milan Pribićević, andAdam Pribićević.[2]
Vasilije Pribićević graduated fromhigh school with honors in Rakovec nearKarlovac, and theKiev Theological Academy inKiev, then part ofImperial Russia. After two years of teaching at the Monastic School in theNovo Hopovo Monastery, he became a monk on 8 May 1894 in theKrušedol Monastery and was given the nameValerijan.[citation needed]
From 1897 to 1899, Valerijan Pribićević was a teacher at theSerbian Gymnasium inConstantinople. He was dismissed from service because he refused to sign a congratulatory telegram on the occasion of KingMilan's return to theKingdom of Serbia. Later, he took post-graduate Greek and Byzantine studies atVienna andLeipzig, and upon his return, he was appointedprofessor at the oldKarlovci Theological Seminary.[citation needed]
Pribićević was one of the Serbs arrested and tried inZagreb in what became known as theAgram Trial; thirty-one Serbs of the fifty-two arrested were sentenced to jail terms, among them Valerijan and Adam Pribićević, who each received 12 years in prison.[3] Along with the rest, both Valerijan and Adam were finally released from prison after the abolition of thepenal colony in 1910.
In 1914, before the war broke out, the Austrian authorities were harassing the then-ruling Croat-Serb Coalition in Croatia that sought better conditions for its constituent people. Politician and writerSvetozar Pribićević was first arrested, as was his older brother Valerijan.[4] They were both eventually released after being interrogated.
After theGreat War (from 1918), Valerijan was regularly elected as a member of parliament of the newKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, until6 January 1929 whenKing Alexander I dissolved the National Assembly and abrogated theVidovdan Constitution after Serbian and Croatian parties in Croatia refused to cooperate in governing the country.[5] The king attempted to unify the nation by suppressing political parties based onethnicity; this later led to the renaming of the country --Yugoslavia—on 3 October 1929. Valerijan's brotherSvetozar Pribićević, along with CroatiansVlatko Maček and a churchmanFran Barac played a role in provoking the monarch to take such drastic measures, and among other cumulative factors as well.
For many years,Archimandrite Valerijan was the abbot of theJazak Monastery[6] and as such was elected vicar bishop ofSrem on 8 December 1939. He was ordained bishop on 28 January 1940.
Vicar Bishop Valerijan (Pribićević) died on 10 July 1941 inSplit, where he was temporarily buried in the tomb of his friend Miloš Jelaska. After theSecond World War, more precisely in 1959, he was transferred to theJazak Monastery and buried near the monastery church.[citation needed]
In August 1941, GeneralHeinrich Dankelmann, commanding the German occupation troops in Serbia, received an urgent letter written in early July of that year by Bishop Valerijan before he died. He gave an alarming account concerning wanton atrocities committed byAnte Pavelić'sUstashi on the constituent population in theIndependent State of Croatia, mentioning theconcentration camps at Jasenovac.[7]