Category:Serbian people stubs

This category is maintained by WikiProject Stub sorting. Please propose new stub templates and categories here before creation.

This category is for stub articles relating to Serbian people. You can help by expanding them. To add an article to this category, use {{Serbia-bio-stub}} instead of {{stub}}.

Pavle Kengelac (Velika Kikinda, 29 June 1763-St. Durad monastery, Banat, 7 March 1834) was a Serbian writer and one of the few proponents of Slaveno-Serbian instead of the Serbian that was being reformed at the time. He was one of leaders of the Serbian revival in the 18th century, begun by Dositej Obradović.

Pavle Kengelac traces his family roots to the legendary founder of Kikinda -- military frontier captain Risto Kengelac. Pavle's father Hristofor and mother Jevrosima were all born in the Pomorisje region, better known as krajina. Pavle Kengelac studied at the Evangelical lyceum in Kezmarok where his professors were philosopher and scholar Jan Juraj Strecko, mathematician and physicist Stefan Sabel and historian Stefan Fabri. That Protestant school nurtured religious tolerance and offered a broad cameralist education as well the study of Latin, German, Hungarian and Slaveno-Serbian (Russian Slavonic) languages, grammar, rethorics, mathemathics, physics, natural science, geography, history and philosophy. In 1790 Kengelac enrolled at the St. Petersburg 's Theological Seminary and from there went to the University of Halle where his teachers included August Hermann Niemeyer, Johann Salomo Semler, Friedrich Albrecht Cark Gren and Johann August Nosselt. He was awarded doctor of laws at the inauguration ceremonies in 1794, together with a sword as a gift from Freidrich William III of Prussia. He returned to his homeland and opened a law practice.

It was a time when there were a few vociferous folk on both sides such as Vuk Karadžić advocating a purely popular language and Pavle Kengelac favoring a complete acceptance of Slavonic-Serbian, then in literary use, and those in the middle who sought to "reform", though in a compromising manner. Kengelac was a composite of Hungarian Serbian merchant, intellectual with an international education (Germany and Russia) in natural science, law, theology and astronomy. He became an Archimandrite.

After Kengelac wrote about Astronomy in "Estestvoslovie" (Natural History; Buda, 1811), poet Evstahija Arsic (1776-1843) dedicated to Astronomy part of her "Poleznaya Razmislyenye o cetirih Godisnih Vremeneh" (Useful Reflections on the Four Seasons).

Geographical investigations in the territory of Vojvodina had a rather early start. Among the first concerned with her geography may be noticed Pavle Kengelac, a natural scientist and historian, who studied abroad. His main work Estestvoslovie contains many valuable elements of interest for the scientifical geographical field.

One of the few intellectuals of his day, Archimandrite of the Sendjurdj (St. George) Monastery (Romania), Pavle Kengelac, adhered to the ideology of enlightenment and deism as the prevailing philosophy of the 18th century. It is known that the aim of this philosophy was to reconcile contemporary scientific achievements with the official theology. This movement resulted from the intensive study of nature and its phenomena, so it included a broad circle of scientists of that time and acquired a very broad range of followers. Archimandrite Kengelac expressed his adherence to this movement in his work 'Jestestvoslovije' (Natural History) published in Buda in 1811. Kengelac's work faced resistance in the top circles of the Karlovci Metropolitanate, including the Metropolitan himself, Stefan Stratimirović. One of the many reasons for that was invidiousness and personal animosity of the mentioned Metropolitan towards the man who wanted 'to be recognized'; even more important reasons were the activities of the conservative top circles of the Austrian state administration and of the Vienna Court itself, as well as the Metropolitan Stratimirović's fear to arouse anger in these circles and fall into disgrace himself.

Kengelac is best known for his "Estestvoslovie" (Buda, 1811) and "Vsemirnago sbytijaslovija: cast' pervija" (Buda, 1821). He also wrote many pamphlets and articles in newspapers.

Translated and adapted from Serbian "Zivot i Rad: Pavle Kangelac" : http://servo.aob.rs/eeditions/CDS/Razvoj%20astronomije%20kod%20Srba/6/pdfs-s/18.pdf His best work: https://books.google.ca/books/about/Estestvoslovie.html?id=unY5AAAAcAAJ&redir_esc=y