Celje 77 Km 113 Al Cilia, Cilj, Cilye F3 Celje Is the Youngest Mediaeval Savinja and Hudinja
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Celje 77 km 113 Al Cilia, Cilj, Cilye F3 Celje is the youngest mediaeval Savinja and Hudinja. Roman war town in Slovenia. It was granted riors, tradesmen, artisans and forma! civic deeds as !ate as 1452 coloni were brought over by the with the deed of Count Friedrich arterial route connecting the Ro II of Celje, yet it was evident that ma·n Empire with its eastern prov the settlement possessed an an inces as early as two millennia ago. cient urban layout. Mediaeval Celje that grew at the location of Roman Celeia was at first very modest in size. Accord ing to written sources it was first recorded as a borough in 1323 under the control of the castle of the Counts of Heunberg, subse quently the Counts of Celje, and built in the !ate twelfth or early thirteenth century. The appear ance of the settlement at that time can only be surmised, since there are no material or other sources on it. The central building of Celje, the parish church of St. Daniel, could not have emerged before the beginning of the fourteenth cen tury, although undoubtedly it had a predecessor. The parish priest of Celje, Rubpertus plebanus de Cilie, was recorded in a document from 1229. The question of the contem porary autonomy of the parish of Celje is of secondary importance The emergence of the town, or with regard to it. rather the classical predecessor of The position of the settlement Celeia, was conditioned primarily within the contemporary ecclesi by its exceptional strategic location astical organization was only one on the meander of the rivers of the indicators of its form er char- 145 possibly, the settlement of one of the mendicant monastic orders. Celje had them all at that time; the only thing lacking was the most significant sign of a town, namely the town walls, the symbol of se curity and protection, and of the actual capability of defence of the inhabitants of the town and, if nec essary, provincial population as well, against all kinds of threat. ln the !ate mediaeval Celje the heart of the settlement was form ed in the fourteenth century around the funnel-shaped main market street, the present Main Square. The houses along this street had always been distinguished as mod est town dwellings along the south ern side that were spatially limited by narrow paths or passages, on the one hand, and mansions on the northern side reserved for the ar istocracy on the other hand. The town dwellings of this street were bi- or tri-axial, single-storey houses· with workshops on the ground floor, living quarters on the first floor and outhouses at the end of enclosed backyards. The man sions, on the other hand, were acter and importance. Despite eve much broader. They included the rything, it seems that Celje had town hall and the armoury of the experienced one of the first pinna Counts of Celje. There were also eles of its development as !ate as some residential buildings of the between 1350 and 1450. During aristocracy in the form of towers, that period it obtained a number and a special street reserved for of institutions which constituted Jews within the town perimeter in the urban agglomeration and ex the fourteenth century. Outside ternally emphasized the impor the serried construction of houses tance of the town in comparison the monastery of Friars Min or ap with more modest borough settle peared as early as 131 O, when the ments. Such external signs of the monastery church was conse town were the network of streets, crated. In the fourteenth century the town hall, town spital, and, if the spital, established by Friedrich 146 I Count of Celje, was recorded in astery in Žiče, the frescoes in the written sources. Originally it was chapel of the princely court and located adjacent to the church of the painted ceiling in the chapel of the Holy Spirit outside the settle St. Mary of the Abbey Church of ment, yet it was moved into the Celje. In the first half of the fif town at the end of the fifteenth cen teenth century Celje was also tury, first to the present Lord marked by the contemporary hu Street, and a few years later to the manist endeavours of the Counts location opposite the parish church of Celje. The architecture of their near Water Gate, where it had re castle was stili deeply rooted in the mained throughout its existence. mediaeval architectural tradition, Until the second half of the fif yet, on the other hand, the spirit teenth century the settlement was of a new, Renaissance period ema protected only by a moat and a na ted from the sculpture of a stockade. In the !ate Middle Ages woman or goddess originating the appearance of the town was from Antiquity, probably from an marked by belfries and towers, i.e. cient Celeia, and placed in an al courts, which did not exceed the cove near the castle gate. height of two storeys, and particu The image of mediaeval Celje larly by the silhouette of the would not be complete without the princely castle. The magnificent town walls, which were con castle, which was built in its origi structed immediately after 1452 nal form in the second half of the when the place was granted civic fourteenth century and subse deeds. The walls were mighty, fur quently expanded on a large scale, nished with stone-built passages was not only a new spatial domi and towers in the corners. The nant feature of the town, but si traveller Santonino wrote about multaneously also the most pres them in his diary in 1487: 'The tigious secular building in the east gro und plan of the town is rectan ern Alpine region. The Counts of gular, the town walls are new, the Celje invited renowned masons, moat is broad and deep, and sculptors and painters of their time strengthened by a rampart and a to participate in its construction, dike.' The walls were additionally and their contribution was not lim fortified in the sixteenth century ited only to the adornments of the and furnished with new towers castle. Traces of their workman which limited the outward appear ship are discernible in other build ance of the town until the end of ings in Celje as well, particularly the eighteenth century. At that those that were supported by the time they were mostly pulled Counts as donators. A holy bishop down, and Celje began to expand was painted on the facade of house outwards beyond the former No. 9 in Main Square, and the art moats. ist of the fresco was probably the same as that of the fresco of the Ivan Stopar crucifixion in the Carthusian mon- 147 .