• CATHEDRAL CHURCH

    CHURCH HISTORY
    • 1822.

      The church was given a new iconostasis
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    • 1863-1864

      The façade was repaired and the interior walls painted
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    • 1903-1907

      A historicist style of restoration
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    • 1942

      After bombing
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    • 2017

      The present condition with the reconstructed bell tower

Еpiscopal complex

Chronology of Church History

Important events in the history of the church

The year of 1720 is considered as the first important year when Plaški became the centre of the eparchy. Bishop Danilo Ljubotina built the first wooden church in Plaški in the 1730s.

His namesake, Danilo Jukšić, replaced the wooden structure with the stone-built cathedral between 1735 and 1763, which still stands today.
The hybrid style of building is the result of two groups of builders - those from Sarajevo and and unknown civil engineer form the province of Kranj, Slovenia. The large building of a linear plan with massive baroque vaults and elegant choir is given a traditional triple-apse ending and an unusual element, an ambulatory, the corridor around the main apse.
The construction of the new church marked the financial and political affirmation of the bishop of Upper Karlovac. However, it would not have been possible to achieve all that without a lot of support from abroad, especially from Russia.

The Napoleonic wars at the end of the 19th century prevented any kind of major construction on the episcopal complex from being done. During the 1820s considerable adaptations were undertaken on the complex.
In 1822, during the episcopy of bishop Mioković, the church was given a new, lavish iconostasis in mixed neo-classical and baroque style.

Mioković’ s successor, bishop Lukijan Mušicki was the first intellectual at the head of the eparchy of Upper Karlovac. As a writer and translator, Mušicki could not stand the isolation of Plaški so he moved to Karlovac, hence realising the wish of his predecessors, though only temporarily, since the eparchy’ s financial circumstances did not allow the construction of a new residence in the town.
During the episcopy of bishop Mušicki, owing to the diligent dean of Plaški, Rafael Bunčić, minor restoration work was carried out on the cathedral in 1834.

In the first half of the 1860s, Dean Samuil Popović initiated the repair of the church. The old iconostasis was gilded and Mathias Stampfer, a carpenter from Zagreb, made new seats, a pulpit, choir stalls and chairs for the church. The façade was repaired and the interior walls painted, possibly with decorative motifs.
The following major construction on the building took place in 1880 during the episcopy of bishop Teofan Živković when a clock was placed on the bell tower of the church.

The church owes its present-day appearance to a historicist style of restoration carried out from 1903 - 1907 during the episcopy of bishop Mihajlo Grujić. As a result of the loyalty to Khuen Hedervary’ s government Grujić assumed the leading position in the eparchy. Connections with the government in Zagreb brought the eparchy of Upper Karlovac substantial financial support, which resulted in restoration works, and the construction of new church buildings.
The restoration of the cathedral in Plaški should be placed in the context of other big restoration undertakings in Croatia at the time: the cathedral in Zagreb, orthodox cathedrals in Križevci and Pakrac or the parochial church in Bjelovar.
Plans for the architectural reshaping of the buildings were made by architect Janko Holjac, a student of the leading architect of the neo-gothic style in Vienna, Friedrich Schmidt. The style he used for buildings in the eparchy was quite unusual – an admixture of a Russian style and elements which were used in the restoration of orthodox churches by the main architect of the Croatian revival of historical styles, Herman Bolle. The style used by the architect Janko Holjac the restoration of the Eastern Orthodox cathedral in Plaški is an interpretation of Russian architecture between the 12th and 16/17th centuries. The interior was of completely different stylistic features than the exterior – old baroque openings in walls had been preserved and they had a layer of wall paintings of a later date, a project of Marko Peroš, the painter and teacher at the Trade School in Zagreb.
The end of renovation works was marked by the installation of a new and lavish iconostasis and other wooden church furniture. The design of the furniture were made by architect Vinko Raucher from Zagreb, another Schmidt follower, who was at the time employed at the Civil Engineering Department of the Croatian National Government. One of the most notable painters of the period, Ivan Tišov, painted the icons on the back of the seats and iconostasis but it was bishop Grujić who provided the iconographic programme.

In the period between the two world wars Plaški was overtaken by stagnation and the plans to move to Karlovac had to be abandoned again due to the lack of means.
The only somewhat important architectural construction undertaken in this time on the complex was the expansion of the residence.

The beginning of the Second World War on the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the newly established Independent State of Croatia (NDH) brought death to the complex in Plaški and to Bishop Sava Trlajić and his priests.
The eparchy temporarily seized to exist. The works of art and the archival documents from the church and the residence were transported to Zagreb where they were stored during the war.

In 1942, bombing destroyed the church leaving the roof of the sanctuary and the nave in ruins. Water, which has been leaking through the roof, has destroyed a large part of the wall paintings.

The sanctuary and the roof of the church were renovated at the end of the 1950s and at the end of the 1980s large scale renovation completely destroyed the old historicist wall paintings.
Some of the icons from the iconostasis have disappeared in the last war.

Today, the church in Plaški is in very poor condition and demands thorough renovation in order to bring the old splendour back.
(Source: History of Episcopal Complex by Dragan Damjanović)

Serbian Ortodox Episcopal Church in Plaški Repairs Appeal

Episcopal Palace in Plaški

idvorPlaški acquired a more prominent position in the mountainous part of Croatia in the first half of the 18th century as the seat of the Orthodox church.
Initially the palace and church were quite modest provisionary timber structures built at the time of permanent conflicts between the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic clergy over the issue of union with Rome.
In the second half of the 1750’s the construction of the large masonry episcopal church was undertaken whereas the palace was built in the early 1780’s.
The Episcopal palace of the Upper Karlovac diocese in Plaški has hardly ever been of any interest to Croatian art historians. It has been primarily known as the work of the famous architect Josip Stiller from Karlovac, designer of the Orthodox church of St. Nicholas in Karlovac from the period of the emperor Joseph II. Stiller’s church is a simple single-storey late Baroque and Classicist structure with its simple facades completely integrated into the architecture of public buildings of that time.
The Upper Karlovac episcopes soon found it inadequate to their position and authority and tried to render it more splendid by various additions. An attempt was also made to move the episcopal centre to Karlovac as an important political and economic center. This idea was encouraged by the episcope Lukijan Mušicki in the 1830’s and then by Eugen Jovanović in the next decade. However, it was not finally put into effect due to the fact that the palace in Karlovac was inherited by their relatives after their deaths.
During the episcopy of bishop Mušicki a richly decorated balcony made in mixed neo-classical baroque style was added above the entrance of the residence and the interior disposition of the rooms was altered.
In the 1850s, during the episcopy of bishop Sergij Kaćanski, the bishops of the Upper Karlovac eparchy permanently returned from Karlovac to Plaški . As a result, the residence was renovated. In the process of the renovation architect Janko Grahor made plans in the spirit of romanticist revival for the reshaping of the façade.However, the plans were never executed.
(Source: History of Episcopal Complex by Dragan Damjanović)
The residence was pulled down in 1980's.

Hieromartyr Sava (Trlajić) of Upper Karlovac

Sv Sava Gornjokarovački

Life

Svetozar Trlajić was the son of Stevan and Jelisaveta (maiden name Karakašević). He was born in Mol on July 18, 1884. His education included primary school in his hometown, grammar school in Novi Sad, and seminary in Sremski Karlovci. Svetozar graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade and passed the qualifying examination for judges at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb.

In 1909, he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Timisoara and then presbyter ten days later. As a parish priest he served at parishes in Peška and Bašaid. Early in 1927, he was appointed to an administrative position, and later principal secretary, of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Church of Serbia.

A widower, he took monastic vows on October 27, 1929 in the Krušedol Monastery, being tonsured with the name Sava. Soon afterwards he became rector and archimandrite of the Krušedol Monastery.
On September 30, 1930, Sava was elected Auxiliary Bishop of Sremski.
He was appointed Bishop of Gornji Karlovac on June 22, 1938, with his residence in Plaški. After the death of Bishop Miron of Pakrac in 1941, he was also named administrator of the Diocese of Pakrac.

Martyrdom

After the invasion of Yugoslavia and the formation of an independent Croatian state in 1941, Plaški was turned over to the Ustashi (ustaša) Croatians.
On May 23, 1941 Ustashi occupied the bishop's residence in Plaši and expelled Bp. Sava.
On June 8, the notorious executioner Braco Tomljenović ordered all diocesan money and records to be handed over to the Ustashi. Bp. Sava refused the Ustashi order to leave his diocese and go to Belgrade.
Not wanting to abandon his flock, Bp. Sava was arrested on June 17, 1941 and confined, together with three other Serbian priests and thirteen eminent Serbian laymen, in a stable of Josip Tomljenović in Plaški.
After experiencing intense torture Bp. Sava, the priests Bogoljub Gaković, Đuro Stojanović and Stanislav Nasadil, together with their imprisoned parichioners were chained and taken to Gospić concentration camp on July 19. There, they were tortured until mid August.
Somewhere on the Velebit Mountain he suffered a martyr’s death together with thousands of other Orthodox Serbs. The site where Bishop Sava died is still unknown.

Canonization

In 1998, at the regular session of the Holy Synod (Holy Assembly of Bishops) of the Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop Sava was glorified and entered on the list of names of the Serbian Church saints as hieromartyr (July 17).

Serbian priests from Plaški killed by Ustashas in 1941

A Brief Historical Background

BORN
1909
Mile Dokmanović - born in Lapat, Plaški - priest in Perjasica
1908
Radovan Kovačević - born in Latin, Plaški - priest in Primišlje
1864
Đuro Kosanović - born in Plaški - priest in Tržić
1881
Teofan Kosanović - born in Vera, Plaški - priest in Gomirje
1886
Dušan Malobabić - born in Plaški- priest in Kolarić
1909
Petar Ninković - born in Plaški- priest in Vojnić
...
Ilija Pavlica - born in Podhum near Plaški- priest in Munjava
1911
Dmitar Skorupan - born in Lapat,Plaški- priest in Cvijanović Brdo