Church of the Cremation of the Relics of St. Sava (Celje)

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The Church of the burning of the relics of St. Sava. ( Serbian : Црква спаљивања моштију светог Саве, Crkva spaljivanja moštiju svetog Save, Slovene : Cerkev Gorenja relikvij Svetega Save) was a Serbian Orthodox Church in the third largest Slovenian city of Celje .

It was built from 1929 to 1931. The church building was dedicated to the event when the Ottomans under Sinan Pasha demonstratively burned the relics of the Serbian national saint , the first archbishop and the illuminator of the Serbian people, Sava of Serbia on the Vračar hill in Belgrade in 1594 . The church was destroyed by the Germans in 1941 during World War II.

It was the parish church of the parish of Celje and the parish of the same name in the dean's office in Ljubljana , the metropolis of Zagreb- Ljubljana of the Serbian Orthodox Church .

location

The church stood on Ljubljanska cesta street , directly on what was then Vrazov trg (now Gledališki trg) in the center of Celje.

The park at the site of the church

history

In the inter-war period , the first Orthodox chapels and churches were built in what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the area around Celje . Orthodox chapels were already standing in the health resorts of Golnik , Rogaška Slatina and Topolšica . In 1922, on the initiative of Cvijo Zečević, the Serbian Orthodox parish in Celje was founded. It included the area of ​​what was then Srez Celje with the places Celje, Šmarje pri Jelšah , the right half of Dravograd , Gornji Grad , Slovenj Gradec , Slovenske Konjice , Laško , Krško and Brežice .

The first president of the parish was Colonel Tošić and in 1925 Colonel Jovan Naumović followed. Initially, the Serbian Orthodox believers had a small chapel in the barracks of King Petar I Karađorđević , which was too small for larger ceremonies. In 1924, donations began to be collected for the construction of a church.

The leaders of the parish asked the city authorities of Celje for a building site on which they could build the church. In May 1929 the parish bought building land on Vrazov trg (Vrazov Square) in the city center. The parish began fundraising across the kingdom.

Colonel Dragutin Purić, commander of the Celje Military District, made the greatest contribution to the construction of the church. Since his arrival in Celje in 1928, the framework conditions for the construction have been created. Parish priest at that time was priest Čudić.

The foundation stone was laid on September 1, 1929, as reported by newspapers in the capital Ljubljana. The building of the church was completed in two years by the construction company of the Slovenian Karl Jazernik from Celje . On the first day of Pentecost , June 19, 1932, the completed Church of the Burning of the Relics of St. Sava was inaugurated by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Varnava (Rosić) . Hundreds of people came to the church consecration. One day later, Patriarch Varnava consecrated the foundations of the church of St. Cyril and Methodius Brothers in Ljubljana. Priest Ilija Bulovan kept the church records .

During the German occupation in World War II in April 1941, the church was mined by the Germans on Hitler's personal orders . The Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Tsar Lazar in Maribor experienced the same fate . The Germans had installed a gallows on the site of the destroyed church .

After the war, a nuclear shelter was built from the ruins of the church on the now renamed Gledališki trg (Theater Square). Today there is a park on the site of the church , the park na Gledališkem trgu .

Few remains of the church inventory and documents have survived. The icons and a church bell were found and are now in the Celje Regional Museum.

architecture

The church was built in the Serbian-Byzantine style , in the style of the Serbian medieval sacral architecture. The architect Momir Korunović (1883–1969) from Belgrade designed the building plan for the church . The church was massive, with one meter thick walls and three entrances on the west, south and north sides. The roof was made of galvanized sheet metal. It had three reinforced concrete domes with steel crosses made in Lepoglava prison .

The plan of the church was a Greek cross , with a semicircular altar - apse in the east and a central round dome over the center of the nave . In the west stood two church towers, each with a dome, and the imposing main entrance portal.

The interior was decorated with a magnificent iconostasis . On the iconostasis were copies of icons painted by the well-known Belgrade painter Uroš Predić (1857–1953) , which the painter Stefanović from Sremski Karlovci had painted. At the time of its destruction, the church was not frescoed .

The following icons were located on the iconostasis: in the lower part of the tsar's door the Annunciation , next to it the icons of the Mother of God Mary with the Child Jesus , the Archangel Michael , Saint Sava and Jesus Christ . The upper part consisted of two parts: First, the Last Supper , as well as the four Holy Evangelists and the Holy Apostle Paul were depicted. And in the second row who were Christ's Resurrection , the Christ-Transfiguration , Ascension and St. apostle same brothers. Cyril and Methodius shown.

The royal and episcopal thrones were made of Slavonian oak , with icons of St. Stephen the First Married and St. Hierarch John Chrysostom , works of the academic painter Miroslav Modic from Celje.

The parish of Celje after the Second World War

With the destruction of the church, the parish of Celje also died out. After the war, the church grounds and the land were confiscated and generalized by the communist authorities of socialist Yugoslavia . In 1979 the parish of Celje was re-established. Four years later, the parish of Celje applied to the Religious Commission to return the land, but the answer was no. In 1986 she turned to the socialist authorities at the time, but received no answer.

The next approach was to the Commission for Relations with Religious Communities of the Executive Council of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia and, at the end of June 1988, to the Celje Municipality, without success.

The municipality's efforts to get its property back were completely stopped at the beginning of the Yugoslav Wars, while in Zagreb the seat of the Zagreb-Ljubljana Metropolitan Region was destroyed during the Croatian War. Slovenia passed a law on denationalization from 1992–1993, but since the documents were in the destroyed metropolitan building, the then Metropolitan Jovan (Pavlović) could not request the return of the church property. Negotiations for the return of church property have continued since 2003. The last request was made in 2016, so far without a response.

The parish has a document stating that 2190 m² of land at what was then Vrazov trg are registered in the land register of the city of Celje in the name of the Serbian Orthodox parish. The valuable icons have not yet been returned to the parish. Until 1994 the parish was given a 30 m² room. And since 1994 Orthodox services have been held in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Maximilian. From 2010 to 2017, the parish tried to acquire a building plot to build a new church, unsuccessfully.

Around 3500 Orthodox believers live in and around Celje.

supporting documents