Prota Mateja Nenadović | Origin of Street Names

Mateja Nenadović (1777 - 1854) was one of the most significant figures in Serbia in the first half of the 19th century. He was a leader of the First Serbian Uprising and an active participant in the Second Serbian Uprising. Nenadović was a voivode of Tamnava, the founder and first chairman of the Praviteljstvujušči Sovjet, a priest, diplomat, and writer.

He was born in Brankovina, a village near Valjevo, as the son of Alekse Nenadović, the prince of Tamnava and Posavina, who was executed in the tragic slaughter of princes in 1804.

At the age of only 16, he became a priest and was assigned to his rural parish in the Valjevo district. The slaughter of princes and the initiation of the First Serbian Uprising placed him, along with his uncle Jakov Nenadović, among the uprising leaders of the Valjevo region.

Inheriting his father's diplomatic skills, Prota Mateja Nenadović established the first diplomatic relations with Imperial Russia during the First Uprising (although it could not be called diplomacy at that time), seeking assistance for the insurgents and the Serbian people. He also embarked on several similar missions to Austria to procure food and weapons for the insurgents, as well as to gain Austria's support in the fight against the Ottoman Empire.

Prota Mateja was also one of the founders of the Praviteljstvujušči Sovjet, the central governing body in Serbia at that time, and he enacted numerous laws that laid the foundation for the restoration of the Serbian state in the following decades.

Despite his greater inclination towards Karađorđe than Miloš Obrenović, he actively participated in the Second Serbian Uprising and remained a highly respected and influential figure in the newly established Principality of Serbia.

Prota Mateja Nenadović had a total of fifteen children from two marriages, but unfortunately, most of them died in early childhood.

Finally, he captured his life filled with tumultuous and fateful historical events in words in his most significant work, "Memoirs." Besides its historical value, the book holds great literary significance as a literary testimony of a challenging era, written in the vernacular language.

The name of Prota Mateja Nenadović is now carried by streets in as many as 45 settlements throughout Serbia.