Celje Cathedral: A Gothic Cathedral and Parish Church in Slovenia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Slovenia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page13 sections
History
Celje Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral and parish church in Celje, Slovenia, dedicated to the prophet Daniel. The present Gothic church replaced a small Romanesque basilica around 1306 and initially served as an abbey church. It became the cathedral of the Diocese of Celje in 2006 while continuing as the parish church of Celje-Saint Daniel.
From Romanesque Basilica to Gothic Church
The earlier church on the site was a small basilica dating from the twelfth century. Around 1306, it was replaced by a three-aisled church that retained the function of an abbey church. After 1379, the building underwent major Gothic alterations, and work continued in successive phases until the sixteenth century.
The Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows was added on the north side in the early fifteenth century. It was originally dedicated to the Three Kings and was dedicated in 1420 by Hermann von Cilli, the thirty-ninth Bishop of Freising. Hermann died in Celje on 13 December 1421 after an operation and was buried in the church. His monument is now kept in the rectory on the Gospel side.
Later Rebuilding and Decoration
By the middle of the sixteenth century, the church had acquired its general present form. The side aisles were raised to the height of the central aisle, altering the building’s original basilican appearance. Two additional side chapels were added during the Baroque period.
The Venetian high altar dates from 1743. The Baroque altar of Saint Francis Xavier was added in the same year and made by the Baroque master Ferdinand Gallo in 1769. The presbytery was arranged according to plans by the architect Zazula. Around 1743, Frančišek Jelovšek painted parts of the decoration, including a fresco of Daniel in the lions’ den, but these paintings were destroyed during the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival restoration.
The church was Gothicized after 1858. Its pulpit had already been made by Mihael Rosenberger in 1851. The cemetery enclosure around the church was demolished in 1794, while medieval and Renaissance tombstones from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were incorporated into the interior and exterior walls.
Modern Cathedral
During a renovation in autumn 1963, colored windows designed by Stane Kregar were installed in the church and the Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows. The chapel’s windows are also described as modern replacements made after the liturgical reforms. A monument to Blessed Bishop Anton Martin Slomšek, made by the sculptor Karla Bulovec and cast by Momo Vuković, was unveiled in front of the main entrance in 1996.
Since the establishment of the Diocese of Celje in 2006, the church has served as that diocese’s cathedral and as the parish church of Celje-Saint Daniel. It belongs administratively to the Celje-Nova Cerkev Deanery, the Archdiocese of Celje, and the Maribor ecclesiastical province. The active church is protected in Slovenia as a registered cultural-heritage site and a monument of local importance.
Remains
Celje Cathedral is a Gothic building approximately 36 metres long, 14.52 metres wide, and 12.64 metres high. It has three aisles, a bell tower, and one bell. The church began as a three-aisled pier basilica with a flat ceiling and a separate nuns’ gallery. Later vaulting and the raising of the side aisles transformed both its interior structure and its exterior profile.
Main Church
Nave and Presbytery
The main nave and the long choir retain fifteenth-century frescoes. A fragment showing Christ in the choir probably dates from the middle of the fourteenth century and is the oldest surviving fresco fragment in the church. Other frescoes in the presbytery show the procession and Adoration of the Three Kings. They are attributed to artists associated with Selo in Prekmurje and date to around 1410.
A later fifteenth-century fresco covers part of the earlier decoration and depicts the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. It is attributed to the Painted Master of Istria, an unidentified painter or workshop associated with Istrian fresco painting, together with other fresco painters. The presbytery has a rib-vaulted ceiling, a system of intersecting stone ribs that carries the vault’s structural loads. Its keystones include the coat of arms of the Counts of Celje, a powerful medieval noble dynasty.
Baroque Chapels and Furnishings
Two Baroque side chapels survive within the church, including the brightly decorated Chapel of Saint Francis Xavier. The church also contains the Venetian high altar from 1743, the Baroque Saint Francis Xavier altar, and Rosenberger’s pulpit. These furnishings belong to the later phases that shaped the building after its medieval construction.
Tombstones and Windows
Numerous medieval and Renaissance tombstones dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century are built into the church’s interior and exterior walls. The colored windows in the church were designed by Stane Kregar, a Slovenian painter and designer.
Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows
Gothic Structure
The Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows is a high-quality example of Classical Gothic architecture associated with the Counts of Celje. It forms a unified longitudinal space with a three-sided termination, three pointed-arch windows, and four bays of rib vaulting. Its elaborate stone carving includes wall shafts, richly carved consoles, stone canopies, crockets, and finials. Four wall niches are framed by carved ornament, while carved sedilia, fixed stone seats usually intended for clergy, stand behind them. Prayer desks and benches are placed near the entrance, and the former altar area had two altar tables with frescoes above them.
Sculpture and Carved Consoles
About three metres above the floor, a row of seventeenth-century figural consoles supports sculptures of apostles, Mary Salome, and Mary Cleopas. Carved finials rise above the saints. The consoles carry motifs drawn from a medieval bestiary, including a winged mermaid, fantastic winged figures, a pelican with its young, an angel’s bust, a woman’s head covered with vine, geometric forms, human faces, kneeling figures, angels, an ostrich with its young, and a woman with a bird’s body. The iconography is complex and cannot be interpreted unambiguously.
Frescoes and Pieta
The chapel was originally painted from ceiling to floor. Surviving ceiling frescoes include the Throne of Mercy, God the Father enthroned with the Holy Spirit shown as a white dove, symbols of the Evangelists, Church Fathers, and the Arma Christi, the symbolic instruments associated with Christ’s Passion.
A Gothic wooden Pieta dating from around 1415 stands on the chapel’s altar. Attributed to masters from Salzburg, it depicts the Virgin Mary mourning over the dead Christ and is regarded as one of the church’s principal artistic treasures. Modern replacement windows in the chapel were designed by Stane Kregar.
