In order to get education, he went to school of the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Dečani in the region of Metohija.
He joined the Monastery and later went with his archimandrite on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1794 (hence he was called hadži-Zaharije, from Turkish hacı, "pilgrim").
After Mahmud-pasha Rotulović of Prizren, a local plenipotentiary, agreed to it and Zaharija was sent to Constantinople to be consecrated.
During the Greek Uprising (1821) several monks of Visoki Dečani were hanged while Zaharija was imprisoned for almost a year.
In some recent historical works, Zaharija was wrongly attributed with consecrating future metropolitan Petar II Petrović Njegoš of Montenegro into lower orders in 1831, but that was done by his successor Ananije, since in that time Zaharija was already dead.