A copy of the booklet, Modo di assistere alla Divina Liturgia celebrata in rito greco (Grottaferrata: Scuola tipografica Italo-Orientale “S. Nilo,” 1939), was donated in May to the Hilandar Research Library by Allen M. Johnson.

Photo of the front cover of the booklet on the Divine Liturgy, Greek Rite, published in Italy 1939Dr. Johnson studied Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard College under Samuel Hazzard Cross, when the “Slavic Department there was just the carrel Professor Cross had in Widener Library.” On the faculty were Tsarist Count Leonid Strakhovsky, Waclaw Lednicki, S. Znamenski and Francis J. Whitfield.

The book was  purchased in Rome during 1946-48 when Dr. Johnson was working as a reporter/sports editor for the Rome Daily American.

A longtime friend of the HRL and a supporter of the Kenneth E. Naylor Professorship, Dr. Johnson first met Professor Mateja Matejic in the 1970s at a Slavic conference, when he was a graduate student at Tulane University.

Photo of the back cover of the booklet on the Divine Liturgy, Greek Rite, published in Italy, 1939Dr. Johnson received his doctorate in Russian History (Tulane University) with a dissertation entitled Moscow Dispatches, 1921-1934: the Writings of Walter Duranty, William Henry Chamberlin and Louis Fischer in Soviet Russia.