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With the exception of the female community in Koper mentioned in 908, by far the
oldest monastic institution in modern-day Slovenia, the first monasteries on the territory of
modern-day Slovenia date back to the twelfth century. The oldest was the Cistercian
monastery at Stična in Carniola. Its founding charter was issued by Patriarch Peregrine of
Aquileia in 1136. The Cistercian monks who settled in Stična during the lifetime of St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, principle founder of the Cistercian order, came from the monastery of
Rein in Styria, founded by Margrave Leopold
I in 1129. Stična is the most important
monastery in Slovenia. It became the economic, culture and religious centre of the wider area.
Construction of the Romanesque basilica, preserved to this day beneath a Baroque exterior,
was completed by the middle of the twelfth century. It was probably the largest building in
Carniola at the time, and had a visible impact on the agrarian and cultivated landscape – as it
does to this day. The largest collection of medieval codices in Slovenia was produced in the
Stična scriptorium, and its quality was equal to that of contemporary European production.
Gradually, as many as 37 parishes in Carniola and Styria were incorporated into the
monastery with the abbot of Stična presiding over them as parish priest. Part of their revenues
came to Stična. It was in relation to the assumption of the cura animarum duty that several
religious texts were written in Slovene at Stična in the first half of the fifteenth century:
prayers preceding the sermon, the Salve Regina, the start of an Easter hymn, Naš Gospod je
od smrti vstal (Our Lord from death arisen), and a formula of common confession (twice,
since one was written incorrectly).
The patriarch of Aquileia, Peregrine, also founded the only Slovene Benedictine
monastery, in Gornji Grad in Styria in 1140. It is not known where its first monks came from,
but the fact that they received books from the monastery in Melk in Lower Austria indicates a
link with the north. A hundred years later, the abbey’s central location within the territory
between the Drava and Soča (practically on the border between Carniola and Styria) led to it
being proposed as the see of a new diocese. Finally, in 1461, Gornji Grad – against the will of
the monks, who seemingly may have robbed their monastery and carried off the archive and
library – was incorporated into the new diocese of Ljubljana, which was also entitled to the
monastery’s income. In 1473, the monastery was finally abandoned.
The third monastery established in present-day Slovenia during the twelfth century
was founded by monks from the third great order of the day – the Carthusians. Given the
contemplative nature of their way of life, they tended to settle in remote, isolated locations. In
1164, Otakar III, the Styrian margrave, founded the
Žiče monastery right on the border of his
seigneury at Konjice, the first outside the Carthusian's original Franco-Italian sphere, and the
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first such monastery on the soil of the medieval German state. Otakar III was also buried
there, together with his wife and his son Otakar IV. The bodies of the last Otokars were
moved from Žiče in 1827 to the Cistercian monastery of Rein, near Graz, the origin – as
stated above –
of the first monks in Stična, lower Carniola, c. 1136. The gravestone at the
church of St. Areh in Pohorje which shows a recumbent medieval prince probably originated
from a Žiče grave. The figure depicted is probably Otakar IV (who ruled 1164 to 1192), the
last of the Otakar line and the first duke of Styria. The gravestone was probably transferred to
Pohorje in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Following the intervention of Pope
Alexander
III, monks came to Žiče from the mother monastery of Grande Chartreuse,
founded by St. Bruno near Grenoble in France in 1084, from which the Carthusians take their
name. Žiče reached its peak at the end of fourteenth and at the start of the fifteenth century,
during the time of the Great Schism, which not even the Carthusian order was able to avoid.
The Carthusians from French and Spanish provinces acknowledged the pope in Avignon,
while those from the Italian and German provinces acknowledged the pope in Rome. Grande
Chartreuse was the centre of Avignon obedience for some time, while the Prior General of
Roman obedience amongst the Carthusians selecte
d Žiče as its see in 1391. From 1398 until
the reunification of 1410, this office was held by the renowned prior Stefano Maconi, former
secretary to Catherine of Siena (d. 1380), whose own handwritten glosses are found in a large
manuscript from the community of Jurklošter on the legend of that saint.
It is a striking double that the first Carthusians outside the original Franco-Italian
sphere settled in southern Styria, and that four Carthusian monasteries were established in the
small area of modern-day Slovenia between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Henry, bishop
of Gurk, established the Carthusian monastery of Jurklošter near Laško just under a decade
after the founding of Žiče. This institution failed before the end of the twelfth century, but was
re-established in 1209 by the duke of Austria and Styria, Leopold VI of Babenberg. The third
Carthusian monastery on Slovene territory was at Bistra in Carniola around the middle of the
thirteenth century on the large Ljubljana seigneury of the duke of Carinthia and lord of
Carniola, Ulrich of Spanheim, who founded it together with his father, Bernhard. The fourth
Carthusian monastery was founded, at the start of the fifteenth century, in Pleterje in lower
Carniola by Herman II of Cilli, and the great count was also buried there.
Not far from Pleterje in Kostanjevica ob Krki is the Cistercian monastery founded by
Bernhard of Spanheim in 1234. The monks came to Kostanjevica from Viktring in Carinthia,
a monastery that had been founded in 1142 by the Spanheim Bernhard of Maribor. The
establishment of the Viktring abbey can largely be attributed to the efforts of Bernhard’s