Nikodim Milaš

Nikodim Milaš (1845–1915) was a Serbian Orthodox Church bishop in Dalmatia (nowaday Croatia). He was a writer and perhaps the greatest Serbian expert on church law and the Slavic world.. As a canon lawyer in Dalmatia, he defended the Serbian Orthodox Church against the State. He was a polyglot, fluent in German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Old Slavonic, and an author of numerous books.

Bishop Nikodim Milaš was born at Šibenik in Dalmatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) on 4 April 1845 to Trifun and Maria Milaš (Serbian father and Italian mother). He was baptized Nikola. After attending the Jesuit Gymnasium in Zadar and graduating from the Serbian Orthodox Theological School at Sremski Karlovci, he studied at the oldest college of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Kievan Theological Academy and Seminary (then part of Imperial Russia), and in 1871 took a master's degree in Canon Law and Church History, the fruit of which, his remarkable dissertation, Nomocanon of Patriarch Photius, brought him the golden cross of the Russian Orthodox Church. Upon his return home, Serbian Orthodox Bishop Stefan (Knežević) of Dalmatia appointed him professor of canon law at Zadar's Theological Orthodox Institute. In 1872, he published a study in which he criticized the Austro-Hungarian government for interfering in the life of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its faithful.

...
Wikipedia