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It began, as the best ideas often do, with two men and a problem.

June 2024. Belgrade.

E Comp Jason Pearson and E Comp Nemanja Nikolić are deep in conversation; the kind that starts with pleasantries over refreshments and gradually becomes something rather more important. The subject? The Royal Arch ritual. Specifically, the seemingly impossible challenge of translating it from English into Serbian.

For those newer to the Royal Arch, the completion of pure, antient Masonry, and one of Freemasonry’s most profound and moving ceremonies, the ritual is written in a form of elevated, archaic English. Every carefully chosen word carries weight. The cadence, the solemnity, the almost biblical dignity of the language is not incidental to the experience; it is the experience.

Strip that away, and something essential is lost. So when you ask how to translate not just the words but the feeling of that language into Serbian – a language with its own proud literary heritage and very different grammatical structure – you begin to understand why this was keeping two Excellent Companions talking long into the evening.

Jason had a thought. What if the answer wasn’t to find a translator, but to find the right translators? What if the University of Belgrade, with its wealth of academic expertise in linguistics, classical literature, and the precise, disciplined work of scholarly translation, could provide the key?

For Nemanja, it was a lightbulb moment.

Fast forward twelve months, and the results speak for themselves.

What began as an after-dinner idea became a reality of no small significance: the Royal Arch ritual, rendered into Serbian with both accuracy and the archaic beauty that makes it so distinctive, translated with academic rigour and, crucially, verified and approved by the Supreme Grand Chapter in the United Kingdom.

This was not simply a translation project but an institutionally endorsed act of preservation: ensuring that the tradition could live and breathe in a new language without losing a syllable of its soul.

The scale of that achievement deserves a moment’s appreciation. The Supreme Grand Chapter does not grant its approval lightly. For a translated ritual to receive that endorsement is a mark of true quality, and testament to the dedication of everyone involved, from the academics of Belgrade to the Companions who championed the project from its very first conversation.

Delivering in Temple

20th December 2025 brought the first fruits of that long labour. In Belgrade, six Royal Arch Masons were Exalted in a ceremony that carried with it the weight of everything that had gone before.

The members of William Preston Chapter No 766, a successful Chapter operating under Metropolitan Grand Chapter and now based in Belgrade, were joined by members of Old Olavians Chapter No 5758, also from Metropolitan Grand Chapter; the whole occasion arranged through the partnership of Jason and Nemanja. Six men took their places in the great story of the Royal Arch that evening, and if the ritual they experienced felt ancient and resonant, it was because two Companions had refused to let the perfect be the enemy of the possible.

That ceremony was reported in Arena in April 2026, and rightly so. But even as readers were digesting that news, a further chapter, in every sense, was already being written.

13th January 2026: Henry of Auxerre and Sanctuary

On that evening, E Comp Zoran Milosevic, E Comp Igor Krstić and Comp Igor Jovivić were installed into the principal offices of MEZ, H and J respectively of Henry of Auxerre and Sanctuary Chapter No 3051. For brothers and companions unfamiliar with the principal offices of a Royal Arch Chapter, these three roles are at the very heart of the Chapter’s ceremonial life, guiding the work and embodying its traditions. The installation of new Principals is always a significant occasion. This one was historic.

With those installations, Henry of Auxerre and Sanctuary Chapter made a journey of its own: relocating to Serbia, and setting up in Novi Sad, thereby becoming the second Chapter under Metropolitan Grand Chapter to establish itself on Serbian soil. More than that, it became the first Chapter to conduct its ceremonies in Serbian, the direct fruit of that conversation in Belgrade eighteen months before.

Thus, a Chapter whose roots lie in the traditions of English Freemasonry is now meeting in a Serbian city, conducting its ritual in the Serbian language, with the full blessing of the Supreme Grand Chapter. The brotherhood of the Royal Arch has always transcended borders. Here, it transcended language itself.

The proof of the pudding

9th April 2026 saw the first meeting of Henry of Auxerre and Sanctuary Chapter in its new home of Novi Sad, reported by E Comp Mladen Vratonjić. By all accounts, it was an evening of warmth, laughter, and genuine joy. The meeting was no gentle introduction, the Chapter rose to the full occasion, delivering a complete demonstration of the exaltation ceremony, with the historical, symbolical and mystical lectures each given in a manner that drew admiration from all present.

For newer companions reading this, the exaltation and its three lectures represent the heart of the Royal Arch working: together they unfold the profound meaning of the ceremony across history, allegory and spiritual truth. To deliver all three with such accomplishment, in a new city, in a newly approved language, at a first meeting, speaks volumes about the dedication and calibre of the Chapter’s membership.

The ceremony was met with delight. As E Comp Vratonjić noted, to the modern Serbian ear, the translated ritual sounds archaic, just as it does to modern English ears, but beautifully so. There is something quite wonderful about discovering that the dignified, antique quality of the Royal Arch ritual survives the crossing of linguistic borders intact. Language changes; the meaning endures.

The conviviality of that first meeting in Novi Sad, the laughter, the fellowship, the sense of a new community finding its feet, is exactly what Freemasonry looks like when it is working as it should. New Principals. New city. New language. Same brotherhood.

This article is part of Arena Magazine Issue 61 – Summer 2026.
Arena Magazine is the official online magazine of the London Freemasons – Metropolitan Grand Lodge and Metropolitan Grand Chapter of London.

Read more articles in Arena Issue 61 here.

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