death_date death_place birth_place ethnicity birth_date image article_title name
26 march 1828 budapest , hungary Žegar , croatia -rrb- , bukovica , habsburg empire -lrb- modern obrovac serb 11 june 1752 gerasim zelic.jpg gerasim zelić
 gerasim zelić Герасим Зелић
gerasim zelić

gerasim zelić -lrb- ; 1752 -- 1828 -rrb- was a renowned serbian orthodox church archimandrite , traveller and writer -lrb- a contemporary and compatriot of dositej obradović -rrb- .
his chief work is '' Žitije '' -lrb- lives -rrb- , in three volumes .
they are memoirs of his travels throughout western europe , russia and asia minor from the latter half of the 18th century to the first decade of the 19th century and the famous personalities -lrb- napoleon , prince eugène , viceroy of naples , joseph ii , holy roman emperor , leopold ii , holy roman emperor , francis ii , holy roman emperor , semyon zorich , catherine the great , alexander i of russia , stanisław august poniatowski , dositej obradović -rrb- he met .
he had valuable original notes on people , religions , manners , customs , trade , etc. .
as much as dositej obradović is an emblematic figure of the 18th century habsburg serbian enlightenment so is gerasim zelić .
in may ways the east-west travel itineraries of the two men are similar , covering the levant , the german lands , france and russia , though zelić went first to russia -lrb- rather than to the levant -rrb- .
while both lament their people 's plight under ottoman rule and promote similar solutions , their perspectives are different , dositej 's cosmopolitanism contrasting with zelić 's clericalism , though their intentions are the same : the emancipation of their people from tyrannical rule of the two empires , the habsburg and the ottoman .
zelić was one of the earliest members of the serbian learned society , better known as `` matica srpska '' , founded at budapest in 1826 .
