300 YEARS OF URSULINES IN CROATIA

The stamp has been issued in a 20-stamp sheet, and the Croatian Post has also issued the First Day Cover (FDC). Motif: Mother of Mercy, detail of the sculpture, wood, 15th century, and the facade of the Nativity Church, Varaľdin, 18th century The Ursuline sisters in Croatia celebrate the 300th anniversary of their arrival here. It is a fact that monastic communities are an essential factor in the preservation of the civilizational and cultural continuity and identity of Europe. Having renounced worldly advantages, groups of people would place themselves at the disposal of general goals; in due course, various communities formulated their specific interests, from pure concentration on spiritual energy to the promotion of various sciences, education of young people, to exerting immense influence on the development of all branches of artistic creativity. Monasteries were often felt to be souls of cities and peoples, and in those regions where misfortune is being hallowed, this still remains present. Numerous libraries and monuments witness the times immemorial and the power of their presence - in places where history has swept them away, their names have endured even in complete desolation. The Ursuline order, with its 468 year-long history of continuity, is one of the more recent great European orders. It is the product of the Counter Reformation, and was founded by St.Angela Merici at Brescia. Her first intention was to establish an informally structured association, a number of groups of nuns spread all over the world. This idea contains something paradoxical: the relationship between the world as absolute temptation and the fragile individuals in it as absolute resistance to it. Stylistically expressed, one could say that it is a manneristically highly-strung structure, restoring the Middle Ages in the way mannerism in its structure generally does. The idea of St.Angela Merici is, as a matter of fact, the one of St.Francis, who likewise did not want an order but individuals all over the world, brothers to people. Both initial ideas, the Franciscan and the Ursuline ones, have been overcome by the functionality of communal living. The Ursuline sisters came to Croatia at the beginning of the 18th century, in 1703. Countess Magdalena Draąković, member of an ancient Croatian aristocratic family, invited them to come to Varaľdin from their Slovakian domicile. Though they found themselves in conditions of utter poverty, it took them only a few weeks after their arrival to open a public school for girls. The inscription on their Nativity Church reminds us of this poverty. Numerous powerful families and individuals helped the development of the convent and church (canon Juraj Cubarić:”I can’t bear the thought that my home should be finer than the home of my Lord!”). Empress Maria Theresa herself kept inspecting the pedagogical level of the Ursuline institution. In 1777 she raised the school to the rank of a Girls’ High School. As early as 1714 Croatian was the language used in teaching, and in 1778 this fact was authorized by the Royal Council of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. The education of young girls remained the chief activity of the Order. This meant the preparation of women schoolteachers for the whole of Croatia. All Ursuline schools were accredited schools. All of them have been closed in a body after the Second World War. Along their chief pedagogical function, the Ursuline sisters stimulated artistic creativity which resulted in their convent and church in Varaľdin to have become a treasury of our Baroque art. Appertaining to the Institute of the Roman union, the Croatian Ursuline province has convents in Zagreb, Varaľdin, Slavonski Brod, Rovinj and Zenica. The Ursuline sisters have again started teaching in schools, and they also participate in numerous school activities. Their role in the raising of the educational level and spiritual power of the Croatian people is invaluable. One should not forget the special, emblematic picture from the life of the founder of the order, St.Angela Merici. According to the legend, when as a child she experienced the vision of a very beautiful angel, she uttered the following sentence: “Go to hell! I know well enough that I am not worthy to see an angel!” It turned out that her intuition was correct: the apparition vanished. One of the purposes of life of Ursulines is, as a matter of fact, their personal path towards holiness. Their mission, so very important nowadays, is to unmask the market of illusions. The testament and message sent by St.Angela Merici is to be able to see and distinguish, to courageously withstand shallow icons of the contemporary mass bidding. This is at the same time the pledge that the Ursuline order will have plenty to do in the contemporary world. The 300th anniversary of the Order in Croatia has been marked with honour and with this postage stamp. Reljka Čorak