Dimitrije Ljubavić

Dimitrije Ljubavić (Venice, January 1519 - Brașov, 1564) was a Serbian Orthodox deacon, humanist, writer and printer who, together with Philip Melanchthon, the German reformer, initiated the first formal contact between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Lutherans in 1559 when Ljubavić took a copy of the Augsburg Confession to Patriarch Joasaph II of Constantinople. He is also referred to as Demetrios Mysos or Demetrius Mysos (also Demetrius of Thessalonica) in Lutheran and other Western books.

He came from a distinguished family of early printers, scholars, diplomats and humanists. He is best known as the founder of the second printing press in Târgoviște in Wallachia in 1545. He had many apprentices, among whom were Romanian deacon Coresi, the Serbian monks Mojsije, Petar, and Opar (Oprea). The Lutheran leader Philip Melanchthon entrusted him with a letter addressed to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to join forces against the Holy Roman Empire and the Ottomans, but all came to naught.

The House of Ljubavić is a great example of how printing became a family enterprise. Božidar Ljubavić (1460-1527) was the head of a printing dynasty from the city and municipality of Goražde in the Serbian land of Bosnia-Hercegovina just at the time when the Turkish invasions had taken place. He was best known for printing textbooks and biblical material in Church Slavonic, Greek and Latin for the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Lutherans during the Reformation.

Dimitrije's grandfather is that famed Serbian printer Božidar Ljubavić, who is better-known as Božidar Goraždanin. In 1518, Božidar Ljubavić sent his sons, Đurađ and hieromonk Teodor, to Božidar Vuković in Venice to learn the art of printing before purchasing a printing press for Gorazde. The Ljubavić brothers procured a press and began printing a hieratikon (priest's service book), copies of which had been completed by 2 October 1519 either in Venice or at the Church of Saint George, built by Stjepan Vukčić Kosača, near Goražde. After Đurađ Ljubavić died in Gorazde on March 1519, it is unclear whether his brother transported the press to Goražde before or after finishing the work on the hieratikon. Because members of Ljubavić family were from Goražde, they brought printing press to their hometown. At the Church of Saint George, Đurađ and Teodor organized the Goražde printing house, which produced, beside the hieratikon, two more books in Church Slavonic of the Serbian recension: a psalter in 1521, and a small euchologion in 1523.Books were printed by Božidar's grandson Dimitrije after being edited by hieromonk Teodor, his uncle.

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