StiÄna Abbey is the oldest monastery in the territory of today's Slovenia. It is the only Cistercian one in the country that still operates. The abbey foundation charter was issued in 1136 by Pellegrinus I., Patriarch of Aquileia, although monastic conventual life had begun a year earlier, in 1135. The monastery at StiÄna quickly became important religious, cultural and economic centre.
As well as an ordinary school, the monastery had a music school as well, at which the Renaissance composer Jacobus Gallus is believed to have received his earliest musical education. The successful life of the monastery was hampered by the raids of the Ottoman Turks, and it twice fell victim to burning and looting. In 1784 Emperor Joseph II abolished the monastery, dissolved under the Josephine Reforms, but resettled again in 1898 by monks from Mehrerau Abbey on the shore of lake Constance. StiÄna abbey works undisturbed since.
Its scriptorium was already producing beautiful illuminated Latin manuscripts in the 12th century, and it was here that the famous StiÄna manuscript, written in Slovene, was produced in the 15th century.
In terms of architecture, abbey changed its image, so we can observe traces and shapes of romanic, gothic in baroque buildings, the eldest core of the abbey stayed preserved. Abbey has a Basilica, named after the Sad Mother of God, which serves as a parish church. Abbey and Romanesque basilica are now declared as cultural monuments of national significance.
References:The first written record of church in Danmark locality date back to the year 1291. Close to the church are several stones with a Christian text and cross inscribed. The oldest parts of the present red-brick church are from the 1300s. In the late 1400s the church was enlarged to the appearance it has today. The church has been modified both internally and externally several times, among other things after the fires in 1699 and 1889. There are lot of well-preserved mural paintings in the walls.