Žička kartuzija was a monastery, established in 11th century by father and son, Ottokar III and Ottokar IV of Traungau house, for Carthusian monastic order. Located near villages Žiče and Špitalič pri Slovenskich konjicah, it was dedicated to the St. John the Baptist and represented itself as the first Carthusian monastery outside of its order’s native lands, which were France and Italy. It was settled with monks from the Grande Chartreuse in France with prior Beremund of Cornwall in lead.
Not in a long time after its founding, Žička kartuzija became a cultural and political center of the whole region and even beyond it. Not only it was a residence of the Pope Urban VI during the Western Schism in 14th-15th centuries, but it also used to possess an enormous by its times collection of books and manuscripts, comparable by contemporaries with the one in Vatican. Although, it did not last for too long: because of the increasingly growing Ottoman threat, the monastery had to be abandoned and it was not possible to rescue the whole famous manuscript collection during temporary moving to the Austrian Graz. Despite this, Carthusians have returned to Žička kartuzija in the end of the same century and successfully rebuilt their old resort.
Carthusian monks used to spend a lot of time in their monastic solitude, adhering to ascetic lifestyle and dedicating themselves to hard intellectual work, which reflected their religious ideals and dogmas. While their colleagues, so-called “lay brothers” from lower monastery were busy by doing all sorts of manual labor to keep the monastery economically on its feet, the “cloister monks” themselves kept on practicing their isolation from the outer world in their upper monastery, constantly reading, scribing and organizing all written knowledge in monastery’s possession. By the time of its biggest volume, Žička kartuzija’s library contained over two thousand books, manuscripts, and scrolls, therefore easily creating an impression of the place of knowledge, fitting all possible sciences in it. Unfortunately, only a tenth part of it is knows to us today; yet they still were very helpful in proving the volume of an original library by the markings, preserved on the book covers.
While thinking about such impressive collection of writing sources, it is hard to not think about the monastery itself, specifically about the looks and forms of the place that contained such knowledge. The whole area is currently undergoing reconstruction, funded, and arranged by both government of Slovenian Republic and European Union. It was arranged in a modernistic way, allowing the architecture styles of old (Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque) and the reconstructed elements to lace in a unique mixture that brings to our sight all sorts of information from the perspective of history and design. The first thing that visitor can see while approaching the Charterhouse are remaining fragments of an old defense wall, some part of which was replaced with a basic wooden fence. There are guarding towers in the corners of the wall perimeter, behind which the monastery itself stands.
Right after entering the front gates, one can see the monastic church of St. John the Baptist; a simple, yet impressive rectangular-layered building with a single nave, constructed in the end of 11th century by Patriarch Godfrey. Its modern representation is the most distinguished example of mixture of the archaic design with modern architectural solutions: a whole northern wall was completely reworked, just as the rooftop and the staircases leading up there. A big panoramic window was installed on the upper side of the northern wall, revealing a detailed view on almost whole monastery and what is left of it.
Back in the day the church was surrounded by numerous dormitories with lots of space for every monk there to have his own resting cell, a kitchen, a workshop, and other kinds of working areas. Some of them, mostly the ones on the western part of the areal, are still standing, being well-preserved through the time and still used as a museum, or for household purposes. Other dormitories, mostly the ones on the northern side, did not survived and only their crumbling foundations are visible by this day. Lack of proper archeological research – which, without doubts, will be compensated in future – for now prevents us from presuming more or less accurate layout of these dormitories.
Near the center of the monastery the chapel of All Saints stands, which is the most preserved structure in the whole area. Originally, a simple wooden cross amidst of a grass field stood on that place, but in 15th century a late-Gothic chapel was erected there. Back in the past it was used for liturgies, although today an impressive model stands in the center of it, representing the whole monastery areal.
Text: Nikita Tarassenko / Photo: Matija Lukić
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