CROATIAN MARIAN SHRINES, shrine of Our Lady of the Islet (Solin)

The shrine of Our Lady of the Islet in Solin The church of Our Lady of the Isle in Solin is the largest shrine in southern Croatia. This is also the oldest Marian shrine in Croatia. In 1998, it was even visited by the Pope John Paul II. An islet surrounded by the delta of the river Jadro, on which the church is located, is a neat little continent: its surface area is disproportionately tiny compared to the depths of its time. Some hypotheses say this islet is the first place that was settled by the Croats when they first arrived in this region: the existing Roman walls could provide their settlement with protection. Beneath and around the present-day church, one can find layers and layers submerged in centuries. In the 10th century, the Croatian Queen Helena the Glorious (+976), the wife of King Michael Krešimir and the mother of King Stephen Držislav, decided to erect two churches on the Roman ruins: the church of St. Mary and St. Stephen. Thomas the Archdeacon (1200–1268), an annalist from Split, also mentions Helena’s construction projects. St. Mary’s Church was the church for the coronation of Croatian kings while St. Stephen’s Church was their final resting place. It was a three-nave basilica with rectangular pillars, twenty-three meters long, ten meters wide, including a narthex and a porch, in which, according to legend, seven kings were buried. Sources also say that the Benedictines maintained the church in the 13th century. It was likely abandoned and razed during the Ottoman wars in the 16th and the early 17th century. A new church was built before 1670, which was destroyed in a fire in 1875. The construction of a new church in its stead commenced in 1878. The remains of the old Croatian basilica were found during the construction of the belfry. Thus, the belfry was shifted from the northern side of the church to the southwestern side. Archaeologist don Frane Bulić (1846–1934) recognized the sarcophagus of Queen Helena which was at that time shattered into ninety pieces within the narthex and then read an invaluable Latin inscription on it, which reads in English: “Here lies Helena the Glorious, wife of King Michael, mother to King Stephen. She forswore the kingly brilliance on the eighth day of the month of October. And was laid to rest here 976 years after the embodiment of the Lord, on the fourth indiction of the fifth Moon cycle, on the seventeenth epact and the fifth Sun circle with the sixth. Look, this is her, whom for life was the mother of the kingdom and then became the mother of orphans and the protector of widows. If you look here, thou say: ‘God have mercy on thy soul!’” There is a replica of the inscription on the inner wall of the shrine of Our Lady of the Islet, which denotes the ancient role of it being a mausoleum for Croatian kings. The church of Our Lady of the Islet is a simple and balanced one-nave Neo-Renaissance structure with a polygonal shrine. It was designed by Emil Vecchietti, an architect and a painter from Split (1830–1901). He got a degree in mathematics, philosophy and architecture in Padova and he privately studied painting as well. He managed a painting school in Split for a time. His students, among others, were Emanuel Vidović, Ivan Meštrović and Toma Rosandić. Vecchietti is the author of several significant historicist edifices of which the most famous are the Municipal Palace and the Theater in Dubrovnik as well as the Croatian National Theater in Split. Vecchietti’s son-in-law, sculptor and stonemason, Pavao Bilinić, carved the main, and now the only, altar in the shrine in Solin according to Vecchietti’s design. The altar holds the painting of Our Lady of the Islet – made by the Italian painter Giuliano Zasso (1833–1889) in 1881. He developed within the Venetian Academia di Belle Arti, under the influence of the Neoclassical painter Girolamo Michelangelo Grigoletti, and he honed his skills in Rome. The crowned dark-haired Our Lady, with a fair and collected face, sits upon a throne, dressed in a red dress and a blue cloak. Little Jesus, with dark and curly hair in a white robe, crowned as well, is sitting in her lap. Our Lady’s gaze is immersed within herself more than into anything around her while little Jesus is completely directed toward the viewer. Both faces are individualized and, one could say, akin to portraits. The background of the painting consists of a landscape with thin trees, almost fully comprised of an evening sky which is already getting darker in the front, while you can still see the rosy clouds in its depths. Only in a few places in the world does the sacral function of structure sacralizes the history of the entire people. A people not brought up to treasure the rays of its past, even if they shine through the clouds of myth: as it is, after all, ubiquitous without fail. In ancient Greece, the word “narthex” denoted a little wooden box for keeping medicine, but, in time, it became an architectural term — now denoting a rectangular entry porch of a basilica. Today, the invisible narthex of Our Lady of the Islet and of Queen Helena, the one who consecrated it, would be salutary for the illness called the culture oblivion which haunts our people. Maybe it is not a coincidence that Our Lady of the Islet looks within herself. Those who come to her await a message: “to remember means to pray.”