Vasa Pelagić

Vasa Pelagić
Born	1833 Gornji Žabar
Died	1899 Požarevac

Vasilije "Vasa" Pelagić (Gornji Žabar, now Pelagićevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1833 – Požarevac, Serbia, 1899) was a Bosnian Serb writer, physician, educator, clergyman, nationalist and a proponent of utopian socialism among the Serbs in the second half of the nineteenth century. Today he is considered one of the first theoreticians of physical education in the Balkans. He is also remembered as a revolutionary democrat and one of the leaders of the national liberation and socialist movement in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The son of a Serbian middle-class family, Pelagić was educated at a high school (gymnasium) in Sarajevo and went on to pursue further studies at the Grandes écoles in Belgrade, graduating from the Faculty of Theology in 1857. In 1860 he served as teacher in Brčko where he founded a Serbian reading room, one of the first in Bosnia. From there, via Belgrade, he went to Russia for his post-graduate studies. At the Moscow State University, he attended lectures in political issues facing medicine and history of medicine, from 1863 to 1865. He returned to Bosnia where he served in Banja Luka as an archimandrite and rector of a newly founded Serbian Orthodox Seminary. There he preached progressive ideas and taught gymnastics. His world view was greatly influenced not only by the Russian Revolutionary Democrats but by the decline of the vassal and tributary states of the Ottoman Empire.

Brooding upon what he saw as the humiliation of his native land by Turkish sultans and later by Habsburg monarchs, Pelagić conceived the idea of restoring the spirits of his countrymen by the development of their physical and moral powers through the practice of gymnastics. He wrote pamphlets and books which brought together his study of the attitudes of the ancients toward diet, exercise and hygiene, and the use of natural methods for the cure of diseases. He also explained the principles of physical therapy and his Narodni lekar (People's Physician) is considered the first Serbian book on sports medicine. Young gymnasts would regard themselves as members of a kind of guild for the emancipation of their homeland.

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