Goražde printing house

Goražde printing house

A page of the Goražde Psalter (1521)
Status	Defunct (1523)
Founder	Božidar Goraždanin
Country of origin	Ottoman Empire
Headquarters location	Church of St. George in the village of Sopotnica (today in Novo Goražde, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Key people	Đurađ and Teodor Ljubavić
Publication types	srbulje
Owner(s)	Božidar Goraždanin

The Goražde printing house (Serbian: Горажданска штампарија or Goraždanska štamparija) was one of the earliest printing houses among the Serbs, and the first in the territory of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina (then part of the Ottoman Empire). Established in 1519 in Venice, it was soon relocated to the Serbian Orthodox Church of Saint George in the village of Sopotnica near Goražde, in the Ottoman Sanjak of Herzegovina. It was founded and run by Božidar Ljubavić, also known as Božidar Goraždanin, who was a prominent merchant from Goražde. His son Teodor Ljubavić, a hieromonk of the Mileševa Monastery, managed the work of the printing house. It worked until 1523, producing three books, which are counted among the better accomplishments of early Serb printers.

After the printing press was invented around 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, the art of book printing was soon introduced in other parts of Europe. By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become a major centre of printing. In 1493, Đurađ Crnojević, the ruler of the Principality of Zeta (in present-day Montenegro), sent Hieromonk Makarije to Venice to buy a press and learn the art of printing. At Cetinje, the capital of Zeta, Makarije printed in 1494 the Cetinje Octoechos, the first incunable written in the Serbian recension of Church Slavonic. The Crnojević printing house worked until 1496, when Zeta fell to the Ottomans. In 1518, Božidar Ljubavić resided at the Mileševa Monastery, the see of a Serbian Orthodox diocese which had been part of the Kingdom of Bosnia since 1373. Mileševa and other parts of its diocese, including the town of Goražde, were located in the region of Herzegovina, which was gradually conquered by the Ottomans between 1465 and 1481.