Paulines Monastery and Church of St. Peter and Paul

The Splendor of the Pauline Church

 

When interest in the Benedictine order died and the monastery was abandoned, Emperor Frederick III. in 1459, he handed it over to the Paulines - white friars who rebuilt the monastery. It is interesting that they arranged the cloister in such a way that they installed new Renaissance columns at the base, and moved the old Romanesque ones to the floor above.

 

The monastery church of St. Peter and St. Paul the Apostle was then rebuilt in the Gothic style. In the Uskok War in 1616, the monastery was burned and partially demolished, and the reconstruction began in the middle of the 17th century. century. In his work „Slava Vojvodina Kranjska“ (1689), Valvasor does not pay too much attention to the monastery, he only mentions the curiosity that a spider has never been seen in the monastery church. The church was re-consecrated in 1755, after it received the baroque facade visible today, and the interior of the church is richly furnished in the same style, which is very rare in Istria.

 

All the altars were made by the Pauline Pavao Riedl, and the pulpit, the organ case and the statues on the front of the church were also his work. His associate, and then manager of the monastery economy, Leopold Keckheisen, is the author of all the altar paintings in the church. Their skills were recognized in a wider circle, and they furnished and painted other churches and monasteries (Pazin, Senj, Punat, Crikvenica).

 

The two side chapels (the first on the left and the first on the right) are still partially covered with painted leather wallpaper installed at that time, which is a real rarity. High windows and a system of cross barrel vaults create special light effects, and such a baroque atmosphere of the church was enhanced around 1770 by the sounds of the organ of the Ljubljana organist Johan Georg Eisl.

 

The miraculous image of Our Lady of Czestochowa

 

In addition to all this wealth, which is unmatched in Istria, the main motive of the pilgrimage to the church in Supetar is still the miraculous painting of the Mother of God of Czestochowa, which you can still see displayed on the main altar. This painting was made by an unknown Pauline painter based on the one kept in the largest Polish Marian shrine Jasna Gora (Czestochovi). According to the statements and official notes of numerous witnesses, the image of Supetar wept on Christmas Eve 1721, and in the years that followed, numerous miraculous healings were documented in the bishop's archive and in the monastery records, which made St. Peter in the Forest a destination for pilgrims.

 

When Emperor Josip II. in the Austrian lands in 1783, he abolished numerous church orders, the monastery became state property, and the books from the monastery library were sold at a public auction. From that library comes the famous Pavlin collection from 1644, a manuscript with many notes of recorded unison church and spiritual chants in the Croatian language. The Pauline church of St. Peter then became a parish church and thus preserved its beauty to this day, and the former parish church of St. Rok, which is still adorned with the largest roof covered with stone slabs in Istria, became a cemetery church.

 

After many years, the Paulines took over the parish again in 1993, and even today they take care of the spiritual life of the inhabitants of St. Peter in the Forest.