Original scientific paper
Remains of the ruined romanesque church of St. Jacob in Zemunik
Nikola Jakšić
; Odjel za povijest umjetnosti Sveučilište u Zadru Obala kralja Petra Krešimira IV. 2, HR - 23 000 Zadar
Abstract
A Romanesque portal with an inscription in the lunette was built into the church of St. Catherine in Zemunik Donji in the hinterland of Zadar. The named inscription testifies that a lady from Zadar named Kaća was responsible for building a church dedicated to St. Jacob. The inscription is dated to the year 1194, i.e. the period of the rule of the Hungarian king Bela III and the Zadar Duke Damjan. As the mentioned church
of St. Catherine is a relatively new structure from the 18th or beginning of the 19th century, it was believed that the Romanesque portal came to Zemunik from a different historical structure dedicated to St. Jacob, most probably from Zadar. That interpretation was further enforced by the mention of the Zadar Duke Damjan in the inscription, which means that the portal was mounted on a church built on the territory of the mediaeval Zadar municipality. According to older authors (Mate Suić), the continental territory of the Zadar municipality (astarea) did not include Zemunik, because it is relatively far from Zadar (cca 12km). It was believed that the Zadar territory stretched to the first villages in the hinterland of the city, to the Diklo – Bokanjac - Babin dub – Bibinje line respectively, an area which was inherited from the Roman era. It is actually the ager centuriatus of the Roman colony which is well documented in aerial documentation. However, it was overlooked that the area under the governance of the magistrate of the Roman colony was much larger, because it included the lands used for pasture and as forest space, which were indispensable for the city. This area stretched out to the Grusi – Murvica – Zemunik line, which is clearly proven in recent discussions. As the medieval Zadar municipality inherited the land of the Roman municipality, Zemunik was thus included, so the mention of the Duke of Zadar on an inscription in Zemunik is not at all peculiar. It is only peculiar that the inscription mentions the church of St. Jacob (which is unknown in Zemunik) and not the church of St. Catherine.
In this article, the author relays the archived news, which he first published in 1997, about the information that the church in mediaeval Zemunik was dedicated to St. Jacob. From this, it is evident that the portal from 1194 was always in Zemunik, mounted on the previous church of St. Jacob.
In the past several years a reconstruction was completed on the church of St. Catherine according to the plans of J. Buble – Brkić from 2008. For that event, the plaster was chiselled off of the entire church as well
as off the lengthwise western wall into which the previously mentioned portal was built. The structure of an older building with a width of about 5m and a preserved height of about 2m, recognized as the previous
façade of the mediaeval church of St. Jacob, was discovered in the building structure of the western wall (the lateral wall of the church of St. Catherine which is unusually oriented in the direction North-South).
We can make out the original place where the mentioned Romanesque portal was located, which was moved further south along the same wall in the 18th / 19th centuries. The author presents a notional reconstruction
of the Romanesque façade of the church from 1194. For that notional reconstruction, the author used building elements which are preserved from a different Romanesque church in Zadar, the church of St.
Martin in Diklo. It was proven that the facades of both buildings were equally wide, and that the Romanesque portals of both churches were almost exactly the same in their proportions and plans. Both portals have the same dimensions and in both of their lunettes there is a votive inscription in which the names of the donors and saints to which the church is dedicated are specifically noted. Thus, the author suggests that
in terms of its size the church of St. Jacob can be perceived to be the same as the one of St. Martin in Diklo. Both are without a doubt built in the second half of the 12th century, although the church of St. Martin in
Diklo is older. It is mentioned in archived sources for the first time in 1194 in a document of Pope Celeste III (...ecclesiam S. Martini Yculi cum pertinenriis suis), which is the exact same year in which the church of St. Jacob in Zemunik was just built.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
165930
URI
Publication date:
20.4.2015.
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