Simeon Končarević

Simeon Končarević (Serbian Cyrillic: Симеон Кончаревић; Karin, Venetian Dalmatia, about 1690–Kiev, Imperial Russia, 26 August 1769) was a Serbian Orthodox bishop in Venetian Dalmatia, serving from 1751 to 1757, before emigrating from Dalmatia to Imperial Russia with Jovan Horvat, the leader of the migrating Serbs. Končarević is the author of the "Chronicle of the Dalmatian (Orthodox) Bishop Simeon Končarević" which is unfortunately lost but which is preserved in the works by Nikodim Milaš.

Simeon was born in Karin to a Serbian Orthodox couple, V. Rev. Jovan and Pavlina Končarević. Simeon was educated in Zadar and Venice, where he became fluent in Latin and Italian. He was appointed the parish priest of Benkovac in 1720 by Stevan Ljubibratić, the Serbian Orthodox bishop of Dalmatia (1716–20) who was expelled the same year by the Venetian government on the grounds that he had been invested by a foreign cleric. In Venetian Dalmatia the Serbian clergy were forced to recognize the local Catholic bishop as their superiors. Serbs had to allow the local Catholic diocesan bishop to visit and inspect, randomly, any Orthodox church and forced the erection of a Roman Catholic altar beside the already existing Orthodox altar (and iconostasis) so that the Catholic services could be conducted at will. Končarević stopped Andrea Balbi, an Italian Catholic bishop, from making such a canonical visitation to the Serbian church in Benkovac by standing at the entrance and brandishing a sabre, in 1728. Due to this, Končarević was imprisoned in a dungeon. After his release, he convoked an assembly of priests on 16 June 1731, the 22 participants deciding that the Serbian Orthodox priesthood did not recognize "no Latin bishops". The Orthodox clergy petitioned the state and wrote also to the Serbian Patriarch asking to appoint a bishop for Dalmatia. It took two more decades before a bishop was invested. In the meantime, the Dalmatian Serbs put up a valiant fight to preserve their national identity. Eventually Končarević decided to become a monk in the Krupa monastery on Christmas day in 1751. He was consecrated by Bishop Gavrilo Mihić Mihailović (1741-1752) of the Metropolitanate of Dabar–Bosnia and two other bishops, with the permission of Patriarch Atanasije II Gavrilović of Peć.

...
Wikipedia