The Prologue & St. Nikolai
What Is the Prologue
from Ohrid?
January 29, 2026
The Prologue from Ohrid is a collection of saints' lives, original hymns, reflections, contemplations, and homilies arranged for every day of the calendar year. Written by St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Bishop of Ochrid and Zica, it spans over a thousand pages and covers more than 365 entries — several saints commemorated each day.
“The only two books one needs to digest and put into practice in order to obtain salvation are the Bible and The Prologue from Ochrid.”
— Metropolitan Amphilochije of Montenegro
A Daily Reading for the People and the Clergy
St. Nikolai composed the Prologue in the 1920s at the Monastery of St. Naum, on the southern shore of Lake Ohrid in Macedonia. He had been assigned to the ancient Diocese of Ohrid in 1920 — a region still recovering from centuries of Ottoman rule. Parish priests, monks, and laypeople asked him for a handbook of daily spiritual reading. Hieromonk Justin Popovic, later glorified as St. Justin of Celije, was among those who urged him to write it.
St. Nikolai states his purpose in the preface: "The purpose of the Prologue of Ohrid is to be a daily religious reading for the people and the clergy."
What Each Day Contains
Each daily entry has five sections. Together they form a complete spiritual framework — not a reference book, but a companion to read day by day.
The Five Sections
Lives of the Saints
Hagiography
Biographical accounts of the holy men and women commemorated that day. Facts, dates, the manner of their struggle.
Hymn of Praise
Original poetry
Liturgical poems by St. Nikolai himself, honoring the saint or feast. Written in Serbian, capable of being sung.
Reflection
Patristic wisdom
Meditative passages from the Church Fathers, from Scripture, and from the lives of the saints.
Contemplation
Inner attention
Two or three numbered points directing the reader toward a mystery of Christ or a virtue of the saint.
Homily
Pastoral teaching
A short sermon rooted in the Gospel or Epistle reading of the day. St. Nikolai addresses the reader as "brethren."
Hear for Yourself
Here is what these sections sound like in practice, drawn from the January 1 entry for St. Basil the Great and the January 7 entry for St. John the Baptist.
From the Lives
While still unbaptized he spent fifteen years in Athens studying philosophy, rhetoric, astronomy and all the other worldly sciences of that time. His school companions were Gregory the Theologian and Julian, the later apostate emperor.
From the Hymn of Praise
Thirty years of fasting and silence! Even the mountain beasts cannot endure this. The lion soothes his hunger with the music of his roaring, and the tree rustles when the wind blows upon it.
From the Reflection
The Church is your hope, the Church is salvation. It is higher than the heavens, harder than stone, wider than the earth; it never grows old, it is always renewed.
From the Homily
Hate evil, but do not hate the person who does evil, for he is sick. If you can, heal the sick person, but do not kill him with your hatred.
In its contents, the Prologue is nothing more than an expanded and explained Calendar, and the Calendar represents but one part of the mystical Book of Life.
Who Wrote the Prologue from Ohrid
St. Nikolai Velimirovic (1880–1956) earned the title "Serbia's New Chrysostom" for his eloquence in English during a diplomatic mission to England and America in 1915. He held doctorates in theology (Berne) and philosophy (Geneva). Consecrated Bishop of Zica in 1919, he was transferred to the ancient see of Ohrid in 1920, where he served until 1929.
At Ohrid he composed two of his most celebrated works: the Prologue and Prayers by the Lake (1922), a collection of devotional prayers written at the shore of Lake Ohrid. His complete works fill twenty-three volumes.
Arrested by Nazi forces in 1941, he was imprisoned at the Monastery of Vojlovica and later deported to the Dachau concentration camp. After liberation he emigrated to America, where he taught at three Orthodox seminaries until his repose in 1956. The Serbian Orthodox Church glorified him as a saint in 2003.
His full biography is available here.
The Synaxarion Tradition
The Prologue belongs to the tradition of the Synaxarion — abridged collections of saints' lives arranged by feast day and read during the services of the Church. The Synaxarion entry for the day is read at Matins, after the sixth ode of the Canon.
Among the Slavic peoples, the Greek Synaxarion was translated into Church Slavonic at the end of the eleventh century — likely at the Archbishopric of Ohrid itself. In Slavonic usage, these collections came to be called "Prologues," because the Lives of the Saints form a preface to the deeper knowledge of the Christian faith.
“This Prologue is called 'of Ohrid' solely to distinguish it from the ancient Slavonic Prologue which — regrettably, because of its language — has become inaccessible to the Slavic people of our time.”
— St. Nikolai Velimirovic
What sets his work apart is threefold. First, modern language rather than Church Slavonic. Second, saints canonized during the preceding two hundred years. Third — and most distinctively — four original sections added to each day: Hymn of Praise, Reflection, Contemplation, and Homily.
Why the Church Reads the Lives of the Saints
The Orthodox tradition of reading saints' lives runs through the entire life of the Church. In monasteries, saints' lives are read aloud during meals. At Matins, the Synaxarion entry is read during the canon. Orthodox spiritual fathers prescribe daily reading from the lives of the saints as part of a layperson's prayer rule. The Prologue brings the monastic practice into the hands of any reader.
St. Basil the Great grounds this practice in his second letter to St. Gregory the Theologian:
As painters, when they are painting from other pictures, constantly look at the model, and do their best to transfer its lineaments to their own work, so too must he who is desirous of rendering himself perfect in all branches of excellency, keep his eyes turned to the lives of the saints as though to living and moving statues, and make their virtue his own by imitation.
St. John Chrysostom, in his Homily on St. Ignatius, describes the saints' memory as "a kind of haven, and a secure consolation for the evils which are ever overtaking us."
The English Translations
Original Serbian Publication
The Prologue was written in Serbian and first published in the late 1920s at the Monastery of St. Naum on Lake Ohrid.
Mother Maria's English Edition
Mother Maria published a four-volume English translation through Lazarica Press — the first complete English edition of the Prologue.
Tepsic & Trbovic Edition
The Tepsic/Trbovic two-volume edition appeared between 1999 and 2002, offering an alternative English rendering.
Sebastian Press Edition
Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic's revised and amplified edition from Sebastian Press (1,624 pages) adds saints canonized over the past ninety years.
ochrid.com
The translation on ochrid.com is new — faithful to the original Serbian, uncensored, and free under a Creative Commons license.
“The saints are cleansed mirrors in which the beauty and might of the majestic person of Christ is seen. They are the fruit on the Tree of Life; the Tree is Christ and the fruit are the saints.”
— St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Preface to the Prologue
Sources
- St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Preface to the Prologue from Ohrid (Ohrid, 1928).
- St. Basil the Great, Letter 2 (To Gregory), section 3. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Vol. 8.
- St. John Chrysostom, Homily on St. Ignatius (CPG 4351).
- Sebastian Press, The Prologue of Ohrid (2017), ed. Bishop Maxim Vasiljevic.
Glory to God for all things.