Byzantinist Ljubomir Maksimovic, SANU Academician, Dies
Ljubomir Maksimovic, historian of Byzantium and longtime director of the Institute for Byzantine Studies, has died in Belgrade. He was a SANU vice president.
Academician Ljubomir Maksimovic, one of Serbia’s leading historians of Byzantium and a longtime vice president of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU), died on Friday, November 6, 2026, in Belgrade, in his 88th year. SANU announced his death, and its statement notes that he was also a professor emeritus at the University of Belgrade.
Maksimovic worked in Byzantine studies, the field that examines the Byzantine Empire, its administration, society and political ideas. His main research areas were Serbian-Byzantine relations, the social and state structures of Byzantium, rulers’ ideology and the political theory of medieval Serbia.
The school of Georgije Ostrogorski
He was born on November 27, 1938, in Skopje. He graduated from the history department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade in 1961. He defended his master’s thesis, “The Political Role of John Kantakouzenos after His Abdication (1354 to 1383),” in 1965, and his doctoral dissertation, “Byzantine Provincial Administration in the Palaiologan Era,” in 1971. His mentor was Academician Georgije Ostrogorski.
At his home faculty he held every academic rank: assistant in the Chair of Byzantine Studies in 1962, assistant professor in 1971, associate professor in 1978 and full professor in 1986. He served as vice dean from 1983 to 1985, head of the History Department in 1988/89 and dean from 1994 to 1996. He headed the Chair and Seminar of Byzantine Studies from 1994. He retired in 2006, and in 2007 became the first professor emeritus of the University of Belgrade. He also taught as a visiting professor in Paris, Frankfurt, Cologne, on Crete and at the University of East Sarajevo.
Roles at the Academy
He was elected a corresponding member of SANU in 2003 and a full member in 2009. He became SANU vice president for social sciences and humanities in 2015, was reelected in 2019 and sat on the Executive Board until 2023. He directed the SANU Institute for Byzantine Studies from 1998 to 2022. He was also president of the Serbian National Committee for Byzantine Studies, serving as its honorary president from 2018, and a vice president of the International Association of Byzantine Studies.
His foreign memberships came with their own dates: he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Athens in 2001, a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts in Paris in 2005, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg in 2015. From 2016 he sat on the Governing Board of Matica srpska.
Works and honors
He published more than 200 articles and numerous studies in Yugoslavia, Serbia, Greece, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia and the United Kingdom. His books include “Byzantine Provincial Administration in the Palaiologan Era,” “The City in Byzantium: Essays on Society in the Late Byzantine Period,” “The Byzantine World and the Serbs” and “Essays on Political Power in Byzantium: Agents and Foundations.”
His awards and honors include:
- the October Prize of the City of Belgrade (1973)
- the Scientific Order with Blue Ribbon of the University of Sofia (1989)
- an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens (1999)
- the “Vladimir Corovic” lifetime achievement award
- the Gold Medal of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of the Republic of Srpska
- honorary membership in the Christian Archaeological Society in Athens, from 2020
The date of the commemoration and funeral had not been announced at the time of publication.
