For simplicity’s sake, I have titled this post “relics of St Blaise”, but it actually includes several different things related to him, all from our long-time Ambrosian contributor Nicola de’ Grandi. Two summers ago, Nicola visited a number of cities in Croatia, among them Dubrovnik, which honors St Blaise as its patron. The cathedral, which is dedicated to the Assumption, has these relics of his leg, arm and head,
and several others in this very elaborate piece of furniture, which also houses a considerable number of other Saints,
while the local Franciscan church has this relic of his other leg, in a reliquary of the 15th century.
Formerly known as Ragusa (a name which it shared with a small city in Sicily), Dubrovnik was part of the Venetian Republic from 1205 to 1358, when it became an independent state of its own right, while maintaining close cultural ties with its former ruler, which was very much the dominant maritime power in the Adriatic; the Republic of Ragusa remained independent until 1808. Unfortunately, the city was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1667. In 1715, an architect from Venice named Marino Gropelli rebuilt the principal church of St Blaise in Ragusa in a typically Venetian Baroque style.
Over the high altar is preserved a 15th century gold statue of the Saint, a work of local manufacture which was the only object to survive the destruction of the previous building in the earthquake of 1667.
The façade is very similar to those of several contemporary churches in Venice.
Our thanks to Mr Igor Jurić for sharing with us some very good news from his home town of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, and to Mr Hrvoje Miličević for these photographs - nice use of the filters! A video of the ceremony is included below.Let us remember in this New Year to prayer for the continued growth of burgeoning traditional Mass apostolates throughout the world.
On the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, a traditional Solemn High Mass was celebrated in one of the churches of Zagreb, Croatia for the first time since the introduction of the post-Conciliar reform in 1969. The Mass was celebrated in the church of St Catherine of Alexandria, filled mostly with young people and families with children; the average age of the members of the schola was around 20. Since the origin of this feast is connected to the Franciscan Order, it was quite fitting to have a Franciscan friar as the celebrant. (In God’s providence, this was a last minute substitute due to the illness of the regular diocesan priest who celebrates Mass there). The Mass was celebrated according to the Missale Romano-Seraphicum, which includes a Sequence for this feast (see picture below).
Most of the beautiful vestments used for the occasion were from the church treasury; fortunately, they hae been preserved in very good condition. A few weeks earlier, the Society for the Promotion of Traditional Mass “Benedictus” (the Una Voce chapter in Croatia) successfully completed a fundraiser for the purchase of a new Solemn High Mass vestment set, which will be tailored in Rome, so we can hope that this will enable more such Masses in the future.
Here is another one of the beautiful churches which Nicola visited this summer during his trip to Croatia, the cathedral of St Lawrence in Trogir, on the Dalmatian coast. The church was built to replace a very ancient one which was destroyed by the Saracens when they sacked the city in 1123, but not begun until almost a century later, in 1213, and only fully completed in 17th century. The bell-tower was constructed over the course of 200 years, from the end of the 14th century to the end of the 16th; hence the difference in style between the various stages.
The church is especially known for this Romanesque portal, made by a local master sculptor named Radovan, who completed and signed it in 1240.
The doorposts are decorated with statues of Eve on the left side, Adam on the right, the Apostles and other Saints, images of the labors of man, the months of the year, and a variety of fantastic creatures typical of Romanesque sculpture.
The cathedral of St Domnius in the Croatian city of Split is the oldest Catholic cathedral in the world still being used in its original structure. About half of the historical center of Split sits within the walls of an enormous palace which the Emperor Diocletian constructed at the end of the third century as the place of his eventual retirement; the octagonal structure seen below in the first photo was originally built as his mausoleum. It was consecrated as a church at the beginning of the seventh century, and has had numerous additions made to it since. The Romanesque bell-tower was added in the 12th century, and a large choir was built behind the very small main sanctuary in the 17th. Our thanks once again to Nicola for sharing these photos with us; there are too many beautiful pictures to fit them all into one post, so we will do a second part tomorrow.
The peristyle of Diocletian’s palace, an internal colonade, still encloses the cathedral, and runs through other parts of the city as well. On the lower right is seen a granite sphinx brought by the Romans from Egypt for the decoration of the palace.
A relief image of St Domnius on the bell-tower, with a local Saint named Anastasius on the left, St Peter on the right, and an acolyte between them. Domnius was bishop of the nearby city of Salona at the end of the third century, martyred in the persecution of Diocletian. Local tradition has made him one of the Seventy Disciples mentioned in the Luke 10, and states that he came to Rome with Peter, and from there was sent to evangelize the Dalmatian coast. Salona was destroyed by the invasion of the Avars and Slavs in the 7th century, and Split was founded by refugees from it settling within the walls of the palace. (Technically, the cathedral is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and the bell-tower to Domnius.)
The Cathedral of St James in Šibenik, Croatia, was built between 1431 and 1536, to replace an earlier Romanesque structure. The project was begun shortly after the city, which is on the Dalmatian coast, had come under the rule of the Venetian Republic, and the artistic influence of the Italian Renaissance was very strong on the building, with several Italians working on it along side the locals. The church has an interesting frieze with carvings of people’s heads sticking out of it, with a wide variety of facial types; it also boasts some major relics of St Christopher, who according to one tradition came from the area. Thanks to Nicola for sharing these pictures with us.
Statues of Adam and Eve stand to either side of the northern portal, known as the Lion Gate from the two large lions on either side of the door.
As some of our readers may remember from previous articles, there was a long-standing custom in parts of Croatia that the Roman Rite be celebrated in the Croatian recension of Old Church Slavonic, rather than in Latin. Shawn Tribe published an article about the Glagolitic Missal, as it was called, from the ancient script originally created for the Slavic languages, back in 2011. Recently, a Mass was celebrated according to this Missal for the first time in 50 years in Zagreb; we are grateful to one of the faithful who were present for providing us with this account of it.
Let me start with a brief introduction. The current situation concerning the Extraordinary Form in Croatia is that there is not a single diocesan Mass available anywhere in the country. The only regular Sunday Mass was available from February 2011 to October 2014 , when the priest assigned by the Archdiocese of Zagreb suddenly died. So now, we, the Coetus fidelium of Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia, have been without a priest for almost two years, so we have to rely on the generosity and availability of the visiting priests to at least have occasional Masses. Such was the recent case when a priest from the Institute of the Good Shepherd, Fr. Mateusz Markiewicz, currently stationed in Bordeaux, was on a three day long visit in Zagreb.
During those three days, Father Markiewicz celebrated the Traditional Mass in the church of St. Martin. For the first two days, these were Latin Masses, but on the third day, we had a Low Glagolitic Mass, a first public Mass of its kind in Croatia after approximately 50 years. It was a votive Mass of St. Joseph, the patron of Croatia, and also of our local ordinary, Cardinal Josip Bozanić. The Mass was celebrated from the so-called “Vajs Missal” (Missale Romanum Slavonico Idiomate), the last printed Glagolitic Missal from 1927, written in the Croatian recension of Church Slavonic. This Missal was transliterated to Latin script, unlike the previous Glagolitic missals, see other examples here: http://www.croatianhistory.net/etf/parcic_misal.html.
As a side note, the first printed Croatian book was a Missale Romanum Glagolitice dating from 1483. You can find the digitized version here: http://dk.nsk.hr/stara_knjiga/NSK_SK_ID01/.
The copy of the “Vajs Missal” we used was purchased recently from the United States by the society “Benedictus”, the Croatian chapter of the Una Voce Federation. As the celebrating priest is a Slav, he had no problem in reading the Church Slavonic or Croatian. Here is a short clip of the prayers at the foot of the altar.
As a gift from a local priest, we also had the Church Slavonic altar cards. A small curiosity - it was not unusual in southern parts of Croatia along the coast of Dalmatia, to have two-sided altar cards, one side containing the Latin text and the opposite side the Church Slavonic – here is an example of the Church Slavonic side from a church in Split.
Unlike the southern parts of Croatia, the Glagolitic Mass was not something usual in northern Croatia, Zagreb included. However, it was regularly celebrated in the 20th century by the Zagreb Third Order Franciscans (TOR). A common name for them in Croatia was “Popi glagoljaši”, or Glagolitic friars/fathers). The Blessed Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac celebrated a Glagolitic Mass in 1942, during the opening of a new TOR parish in Zagreb.
Sadly the TOR friars completely abandoned the Glagolitic Mass, a tradition that lasted over thousand years, after the Second Vatican Council. Nevertheless, a big part of our Glagolitic legacy, for instance praying the old Breviary, was preserved on some islands in Dalmatia, especially in the Zadar Archdiocese. You can hear the examples of the ancient Glagolitic chant still used today on the island of Iž here:
or here (singing of Vespers):
There are plans for celebrating a sung Mass with the Glagolitic chant in Croatia for the next year, so we will keep you informed. We sincerely hope that this Mass in Zagreb will serve as an encouragement for priests in Croatia, especially the younger ones, to learn the old rite, and to embrace the ancient Glagolitic legacy passed to us from the “Apostles of Slavs”, the saintly brothers Cyril and Methodius. A fun fact to end with – one of the oldest monuments of the Croatian language is the “Baška tablet,” dating from around 1100, who has an inscription in the Croatian recension of the Church Slavonic language. The tablet itself is part of a pluteum, or a partition that separated the sanctuary from the nave, so this remains one of the few communion rails that actually survived the numerous “renovations” following the Second Vatican Council.
