St. Nicholas Church

The stone St. Nicholas Church replaced an earlier wooden church here: it was built for Zemun's Orthodox parish in the middle of the eighteenth century. The parish did more than hold services: within the church enclosure there was a primary school for the children of Orthodox families, maintained by the community itself; a parish house now stands in its place. The dedication is connected with the commemoration of the translation of St. Nicholas's relics. For a town whose trade depended on the Danube, he was the patron of those setting out by water, and a particle of his relics is still kept inside.

In the summer of eighteen oh six, the teacher and translator Joakim Vujić arrived in Zemun, intending to cross the Sava. On the other bank, Karađorđe's insurgents were fighting the Ottoman Empire, and Vujić hoped to find employment with them. He could not cross the border. He had to remain in Zemun and earn money by giving private lessons in French and Italian.

In January eighteen oh seven, the Orthodox community hired him as a teacher at the Serbian primary school attached to St. Nicholas Church. The school stood directly in the churchyard. At that time, the parish maintained the classrooms, paid the teachers, and decided what the children of Orthodox families would study. The stone church next door was built between seventeen forty-five and seventeen fifty-two on the site of an earlier wooden church.

The schools were run by Mihailo Pejić, the archpriest of Zemun—the head of the Orthodox community, responsible for order in the parish. Vujić wanted to publish his translations and still thought about Serbia. In the autumn of eighteen oh eight, after a conflict with Pejić, the community terminated the teacher's contract. Vujić remained in the town and spent the next five months living on the money he earned from private lessons.

Then anonymous pamphlets against the archpriest appeared, and they were attributed to the dismissed teacher. A search of Vujić's room uncovered a batch of calendars prepared for dispatch to Serbia. For the military administration of border-town Zemun, that was enough to suspect a secret connection with the insurgents and Karađorđe.

Later, Vujić claimed that Pejić had declared him an enemy of the state. The documents do not prove that the archpriest himself secured the arrest. The outcome is known: the investigators established no guilt, but Vujić spent several months in Zemun prison. There he translated “The Young Robinson” and the novella “Alexis and Nadina.” After his release, the military command forbade him to live anywhere in the Military Frontier and sent him under escort to his native Baja. The very next year, both prison translations were published in Buda. Later, Vujić staged plays in Serbian and headed the first permanent Serbian theater.

The church's full dedication is the Translation of the Relics of St. Nicholas. Nicholas was bishop of Myra in Lycia; Christians venerated him as the patron saint of travelers and seafarers. In ten eighty-seven, people from the Italian city of Bari removed his remains from Myra and brought them to their own city. The commemoration of this translation became a separate church feast. The parish in a Danube trading town acquired a heavenly patron for those setting out by water. Services continue here today, and inside a particle of St. Nicholas's own relics is kept.

The old school building has not survived. A parish house stands in its place, and on its wall hangs a plaque bearing Joakim Vujić's name and the years he worked here—from eighteen oh seven to eighteen oh nine.