Mateja Nenadović
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Prota Mateja Nenadović (Матеја Ненадовић) (1777-1854) was a Serbian archpriest and a notable leader of the First Serbian Uprising. He is generally called Prota Mateja, since as a boy of sixteen he was made a priest, and a few years later became archpriest (Prota) of Valjevo. His father, Aleksa Nenadovic, Knez (chief magistrate) of the district of Valjevo, was one of the most popular and respected public men among the Serbs at the beginning of the 19th century. When the four leaders of the Janissaries of the Belgrade Pasaluk (the so-called Dahias) thought that the only way to prevent a general rising of the Serbs was to intimidate them by murdering all their principal men, Aleksa Nenadovic was one of the first victims. The policy of the Dahias, instead of preventing, did actually and immediately provoke a general insurrection of the Serbs against the Turks. Prota Mateja became the deputy-commander of the insurgents of the Valjevo district (1804), but did not hold the post for long, as Karadjordje sent him in 1805 on a secret mission to St. Petersburg, and afterwards employed him almost constantly as Serbia's diplomatic envoy to Russia, Austria, Bucharest and Constantinople. After the fall of Karadjordje (1813), the new leader of the Serbs, Milos Obrenovic, sent Prota Mateja as representative of Serbia to the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), where he pleaded the Serbian cause indefatigably. During that mission he often saw Lord Castlereagh, and for the first time the Serbian national interests were brought to the knowledge of British statesmen. Prota Mateja's memoirs (Memoari Prote Mateje Nenadovića) are the most valuable authority for the history of the first and Second Serbian uprising against the Turks.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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