of the medieval state and criticizes compatriots who forget their national identity. Orfelin also wrote a manuscript Against Roman Papacy as a reaction to Austria and the Roman Catholic Church's proselytism towards Habsburg Serbs. Orfelin founded Slavenoserbski magazin in Venice in 1768, credited as the first South Slavic or Serbian journal/periodical though only one number came out. In 1768, Zaharije Orfelin proclaimed a mixture of Church-Slavonic and vernacular into the Serbian literary language, in which there was always room for specific Russian words, thus practically establishing the Slavic Serbian language. Literary historian Jovan Deretić considers him, along with Jovan Rajić, to be the most important writer of the Russo-Slavic era in Serbian literature. In 1776 Orfelin's name appears in a lexicon of Austrian artists, Des Gelehte Osterisch by de Luca, where he is listed as both an engraver and a writer, elected as an academician in the newly established Art Academy of Engraving in Vienna, and acknowledged by its director Jacob Matthias Schmutzer. Zaharije Orfelin is the author of the first modern Serbian spelling book from 1767, which was used by numerous generations of children. The second edition was published in 1797. He is also the author of the first textbooks of the Latin language. His most extensive work is "The Life of Peter the Great" (Venice, 1772), in whom he saw an enlightened monarch. Zaharije Orfelin also wrote the first Serbian "Perpetual Calendar" in 1780, printed in Vienna in 1783. Orfelin noted the great importance of medicinal plants and wrote the (unfinished) book "The Great Serbian Herbarium" in which he described about 500 plants, giving each a Latin and folk name. In addition, for each plant he listed "benefits and uses" with data on medicinal effects and therapies, i.e. how that plant can be usefully used, which was common at that time in Europe, and for the first time among the Serbs. His book Искусни подрумар (Experienced Cellarer, Vienna, 1783) has several hundred recipes for making herbal wines and many other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and medicines. The book also discusses the method and time of harvesting and drying medicinal plants and the usefulness and medicinal value of complex preparations made from more than 200 domestic and exotic medicinal and aromatic plants. Writing about recipes for wine production, Zaharije Orfelin also mentions the recipe for making bermet, which differed from house to house. Orfelin gave a recipe that became