Prokopije Čokorilo
Prokopije Čokorilo (Procopius Tchokorilo, 1802–1866) was a Serbian Orthodox priest who wrote several works in Serbian, Russian and Greek, his most well-known work being The Chronicles of Herzegovina.
Early life
Petar Čokorilo was born in 1802 in Plana, Bileća, then part of the Sanjak of Herzegovina, Ottoman Empire (now Bosnia and Herzegovina). After graduating from a seminary he chose to become a monk, thus changing his first name to Prokopije. His ancestral name, however, is Milićević, though in the eighteenth century it was fashionable to call people's last name from the area where they came from. Hence, the Milićević name changed in time to Čokorilo, named after a valley called Čokorilovom Dolu in Prodoli, Herzegovina, where the family once lived and worked.
He died in 1866.
Work
Father Procopius left many books that are written in Serbian, Russian and Greek. He is better-known for "The Chronicles of Herzegovina".,[1] and a dictionary of Turkish expressions in Serbian. He also contributed articles for the Srbsko-dalmatinski Magazin. There, he wrote how Christians were forced to pay disproportionately higher taxes than Muslims, including the intentionally degrading non-Muslim poll-tax. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Prokopije Čokorilo wrote that his contemporary, the vizier (and all but unlimited ruler) Ali-paša Rizvanbegović of Herzegovina "taxed the dead for six years after their demise" and that his tax collectors "ran their fingers over the bellies of pregnant women, saying 'you will probably have a boy, so you have to pay the poll tax right away'". A folk saying from Bosnia well revels how taxes were exacted: "He's as fat as if he'd been tax collecting in Bosnia."
References
- ↑ Isaković, Alija; Milosav Popadić (1982). Pisana riječ u Bosni i Hercegovini: od najstarijih vremena do 1918 godine [The Written word in Bosnia and Herzegovina from earliest times up to 1918]. Veselin Masleša. p. 30. OCLC 9730993.
External links
- Works by or about Prokopije Čokorilo in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
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