CROATIAN MARIAN SHRINES, Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat

Shrine of Our Lady of Trsat The shrine of Our Lady of Trsat, on a hill above Sušak and Rijeka, is known as the oldest Marian shrine in Croatia. The history of the shrine begins at dawn on 10 May 1291, when some lumberjacks spotted three unusual stone walls set without a foundation in a place where there had never been houses. That night, the sick parish priest, Aleksandar Jurjević, dreamed of the Mother of God telling him that that was her house in Nazareth, and he woke up healthy. People started coming to the place of grace, and so did the lord of the land, the Krk prince Nikola IV Frankopan, who came to inform himself of the facts. Prompted by respectful critical awareness, he sent a mission to Palestine to check the situation with the Nazarene house. It was established that the house mysteriously disappeared from there. The dimensions of the remaining foundations and the type of stone corresponded perfectly to the Trsat wall - the fourth, missing wall was a natural rock. All subsequent checks confirmed the same. Rational interpretations of this migration indicated a crusader, especially Templar, entry of relics from the Holy Land. Three and a half years later, on 10 December 1294, the house disappeared from Trsat. It appeared across the Adriatic, in Loreto, and was transported by angels. Its transfer was the subject of much debate, but a belief in the unlimited possibilities of the supernatural prevailed. A monumental basilica was built around the house and so it was "captured" and never moved again. Thanks to this, Loreto became a famous place of pilgrimage. The same happened with Trsat that filled its absence with a vivid memory. On the site of the house, the Frankopan princes built first a chapel and then a church (1453 - 1468). They invited the Franciscans of the Bosnian vicariate to lead it and built them a monastery. In 1644, the famous Franciscan Franjo Glavinić restored and expanded it. In 1824 it was extended and received a bell tower. The Gothic, Mannerism, Baroque and Biedermeier styles collaborate on this monument, and with the enormous efforts of Friar Serafin Sobol, a masterpiece of the twentieth century, the Aula of Pope John Paul II (which mentions the Pope's visit to Trsat in 2005) by architects Idis Turat and Saša Randić Many great names of monks, artists and rulers are associated with the Trsat shrine, its monastery, treasury, votive collection, library and museum. We will mention, though, Petar Kružić, the heroic captain of Klis and Senj, the liberator of Solin, who in 1531 built the first one hundred and twenty-eight votive staircase of today's five hundred and sixty-one towards Our Lady's Church, and with him the Zagreb judge, Ivan Uzolin, who in 1695 donated the main marble altar for the beautiful historical theme of Croatian consistency. The centre of the church and of our Lady's worship is a miraculous painting that Pope Urban V gave to the Croatian faithful in 1367 as compensation for the lost Nazareth house. According to tradition, it was painted by St. Luke on a cedar board. It is a Byzantine painting that shows Mary nursing the baby Jesus in the centre surrounded by four fields representing the Annunciation, Death on the Cross, apostles and saints. Early on, due to numerous miracles, it acquired the title "Mother of Mercy". On 8 September 1715, under the auspices of the Croatian Parliament, it was crowned with a golden crown. There are houses made of stone, and there are also those made of thoughts, anxieties, prayers, desires, promises and gratitude. The Mother of Mercy of both Trsat and Loreto is there to turn the house into a settlement, and the settlement into a world. Academician Željka Čorak