He was brought up to farm work, but he cultivated all his leisure in reading, and when he was seventeen entered the University of Vienna Law School where he picked up Latin and German.
[3] During his tenure as Austrian Royal censor of state publishing houses, he was responsible for printing and reprinting hundreds of textbooks, primers, catechisms, scholarly manuals, and popular literature for nationals who professed the Eastern Orthodox faith.
[4] He began his career as a censor in 1772 at the prestigious Publishing House of Josef von Kurzböck and a year later he got the lofty Latin title of Excelsae Deputationis Caesareo-Regiae in Illyris Athanasius Demetrovich Szekeres revisor.
He was also active as a Serbian school reformer, translating most of the German textbooks, particularly those written by Johann Ignaz von Felbiger.
This miscellany of emblems, first printed in Kyiv in 1712, and for the express use of Serbian reading public, was reprinted, thanks to his efforts to leave a literary legacy for his fellow Slavs and others.