Templar monastery in Remetinec

Templar monastery in Remetinec

 

The Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary- Queen of the Most Holy Rosary in the village of Remetinec near Novi Marof has got a long and intriguing past.

The late Gothic church dominating above Remetinec was built in the late 15 and the early 16th century. However, there are indications that there was a templar monastery in its place before the church was built.

In their book „Stari gradovi, dvorci i crkve sjeverozapadne Hrvatske“, Tomislav Đurić and Dragutin Feletar bring out a story told to them by Tomo Kovačević, who wrote in the early 18th century that the monastery used to belong to the Templars and that, after they stopped existing, the convent was taken over by the Conventual Franciscans.

In 1850 the Remetinec priest wrote in his Testimorial that the „old church men“ had lived in Remetinec before the arrival of the Franciscans in the 17th century- the Templars who had left the monastery because of the dangerous Turks. There are also „fratres rubri- the red brothers“ mentioned in the 19th century , so it is possible that the Templars, who came to this area in the 12th century and owned the town of Bela in 1163, had their monastery here.
Were the hermits, who Remetinec was obviously named after, really Templars, or were they Paulines, who built a monastery in Lepoglava in the early 15th century? This is hard to say, but one thing is sure- the original complex in Remetinec is more than 500 years old.

It was well fortified in the 16th century and they believed that the Turks cannot break into it, so it was the home for the treasures of 7 Franciscan monasteries. When the Franciscans left Remetinec in 1790, the church had already given Baroque characteristics and St. Antun Chapel was built next to it. The chapel is the final resting place of the Baron Baltazar Patačić, our prominent Latinist and the founder of the Wine doctors' Society in Krkanec.

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