ПРАВОСЛАВНА ЗАЈЕДНИЦА И ПАРОХИЈА У РИЈЕЦИ У 18. ВЕКУ
THE ORTHODOX COMMUNITY AND PARISH IN RIJEKA IN THE 18TH CENTURY

Summary/Abstract: The Orthodox community and parish in Rijeka were created in the 18th century and survived despite the numerous problems they faced. They were founded by Greek merchants who moved from the Ottoman Empire to the Habsburg Monarchy in the second decade of the 18th century. They settled in the environs of the city of Rijeka, with the permission of Carl VI, who, with the Privilege of 2 June 1717, guaranteed to them business freedom and the freedom of public profession of Orthodox faith. In the beginning, the community had around thirty merchant families, but soon began to dissipate. Roman Catholic merchants disrupted the Orthodox citizens in their activities and the city authorities restricted their guaranteed freedom of religion. An indisputably great success of the Orthodox community was the construction of a small wooden church, devoted to St George and consecrated in 1720 by bishop Danilo Ljubotina. The bishop then ordained a priest and the Orthodox parish came to life. Until the mid-18th century, only six or seven Greek merchant families remained in Rijeka, as the majority moved to Trieste or Venice, looking for a milieu where they could freely work and profess their faith. In the 1760s, Serbian merchants began to settle in Rijeka, coming first from Bosnia and later from other areas as well. As of the following decade, the Serbs made up the majority of Orthodox merchants in Rijeka. During the ’80s, the Orthodox community was becoming stronger both in terms of numbers and economically. At the time, wholesale merchants lived and worked in Rijeka, doing business with Hungarian lands, Italy, Dubrovnik, Trieste and Karlovac. Despite the good business climate, they faced enormous problems on the religious front. Among other things, the city authorities and the Rijeka Capitol hindered, and thus postponed, the construction of a temple of solid material. It was only in 1788 that the construction of the Orthodox temple of St Nicholas began. The sources from the last decades of the 18th century elucidate some issues relating to the Orthodox parish that has been largely unexplored so far. Priests Dragić Pavić from Perjasica in Kordun (before 1781 – 1789), Nikolaj Danilović, a hieromonk of the Krušedol monastery (1789–1796) and Sava Popović, a hieromonk of the Lepavina monastery in the Pakrac Eparchy (1897–1800) served in the Rijeka parish at the time. They did not live only on the religious services they performed as such income in small communities such as Rijeka could not ensure a decent livelihood. The priests received from the municipality their salaries amounting to 150 and 200 forints a year. The municipality elected a priest on its own, with the knowledge and permission of the competent bishop. He allowed such practice because the merchants of Rijeka set high and, for that time, unrealistic requests, which very few priests could meet, and were dissatisfied with the priests sent by the bishop. The sources from this period clarified the merchants’ attitude towards the priests, and the attitude of the competent bishop of Gornji Karlovac towards the Rijeka Orthodox municipality and parish. The annex to this paper contains an outline of the Orthodox parish in Rijeka according to the list made in 1792 by parish priest Nikolaj Danilović. Within thirty families, he recorded 124 inhabitants of Rijeka by name, gender and age.

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