Status of monument -> National monument
Published in the “Official Gazette of BiH” no. 12/09.
Pursuant to Article V para. 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Article 39 para. 1 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, at a session held from 6 to 9 March 2007 the Commission adopted a
D E C I S I O N
I
The archaeological site with the remains of a mediaeval church and a necropolis with stećak tombstones at Crkvina in Kolunić, Municipality Bosanski Petrovac, is hereby designated as a National Monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the National Monument).
The National Monument consists of a mediaeval church and necropolis with about 50 stećak tombstones. The exact number of stećak tombstones will be determined following a detailed investigation of the site.
The National Monument is located on a site designated as cadastral plot no. 2867 (new survey), corresponding to c.p. 454 (old survey), Land Register entry no. 398; cadastral municipality Kolunić, Municipality Bosanski Petrovac, Federation of BiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The provisions relating to protection measures set forth by the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of the Federation of BiH nos. 2/02, 27/02 and 6/04) shall apply to the National Monument.
II
The Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the Government of the Federation) shall be responsible for ensuring and providing the legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures necessary for the protection, conservation and presentation of the National Monument.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments (hereinafter: the Commission) shall determine the technical requirements and secure the funds for preparing and setting up signboards with basic details of the monument and the Decision to proclaim the property a National Monument.
III
To ensure the on-going protection of the National Monument, the following protection measures are hereby stipulated:
Protection level 1 shall apply to the part of the area defined in Clause 1 para. 3 of this Decision on which the church stands. The following protection measures shall apply to this area:
- research and conservation and restoration works, routine maintenance works, and works designed to display the monument shall be permitted, subject to the approval of the Federal Ministry responsible for regional planning (hereinafter: the relevant ministry) and under the expert supervision of the heritage protection authority of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: the heritage protection authority),
- the site of the National Monument shall be open and accessible to the public, and may be used for educational and cultural purposes.
Protection level 2 shall apply to the remainder of the area defined in Clause 1 para. 3 of this Decision. The following protection measures shall apply to this area:
- works on the infrastructure are prohibited unless with the approval of the relevant ministry and subject to the expert opinion of the heritage protection authority,
- the construction of any buildings or facilities the operation or appearance of which could be detrimental to the National Monument, or which exceed the height of the National Monument, is prohibited,
- the construction of full-profile roads the laying or use of which could be detrimental to the National Monument is prohibited,
- the dumping of waste is prohibited.
The Government of the Federation shall be responsible in particular for implementing the following measures:
- detailed archaeological and historical investigations,
- drafting and implementing a management programme to include the presentation of the National Monument.
IV
All executive and area development planning acts not in accordance with the provisions of this Decision are hereby revoked.
V
Everyone, and in particular the competent authorities of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Canton, and urban and municipal authorities, shall refrain from any action that might damage the National Monument or jeopardize the preservation and rehabilitation thereof.
VI
The Government of the Federation, the relevant ministry, the Federation heritage protection authority, and the Municipal Authorities in charge of urban planning and land registry affairs, shall be notified of this Decision in order to carry out the measures stipulated in Articles II to V of this Decision, and the Authorized Municipal Court shall be notified for the purposes of registration in the Land Register.
VII
The elucidation and accompanying documentation form an integral part of this Decision, which may be viewed by interested parties on the premises or by accessing the website of the Commission (http://www.aneks8komisija.com.ba)
VIII
Pursuant to Art. V para 4 Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, decisions of the Commission are final.
IX
On the date of adoption of this Decision, the National Monument shall be deleted from the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of BiH no. 33/02, Official Gazette of Republika Srpska no. 79/02, Official Gazette of the Federation of BiH no. 59/02, and Official Gazette of Brčko District BiH no. 4/03), where it featured under serial no.123.
X
This Decision shall enter into force on the date of its adoption and shall be published in the Official Gazette of BiH.
This Decision has been adopted by the following members of the Commission: Zeynep Ahunbay, Amra Hadžimuhamedović, Dubravko Lovrenović, Ljiljana Ševo and Tina Wik.
No: 05.2-2-34/07-3
7 March 2007
Sarajevo
Chair of the Commission
Ljiljana Ševo
E l u c i d a t i o n
I – INTRODUCTION
Pursuant to Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Law on the Implementation of the Decisions of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, established pursuant to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a “National Monument” is an item of public property proclaimed by the Commission to Preserve National Monuments to be a National Monument pursuant to Articles V and VI of Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and property entered on the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Official Gazette of BiH no. 33/02) until the Commission reaches a final decision on its status, as to which there is no time limit and regardless of whether a petition for the property in question has been submitted or not.
The Commission to Preserve National Monuments issued a Decision to add the historic ensemble of Kolunić – mediaeval church to the Provisional List of National Monuments of Bosnia and Herzegovina, numbered as 123.
Pursuant to the provisions of the law, the Commission proceeded to carry out the procedure for reaching a final decision to designate the Property as a National Monument, pursuant to Article V para. 4 of Annex 8 and Article 35 of the Rules of Procedure of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments.
II – PROCEDURE PRIOR TO DECISION
In the procedure preceding the adoption of a final decision to proclaim the property a national monument, the following documentation was inspected:
- Documentation on the location and current owner and user of the property (copy of cadastral plan and copy of land register entry);
- Data on the current condition and use of the property, including a description and photographs, data of war damage, data on restoration or other works on the property, etc.;
- Historical, architectural and other documentary material on the property, as set out in the bibliography forming part of this Decision.
The findings based on the review of the above documentation and the condition of the site are as follows:
1. Details of the property
Location
Kolunić is about 3.2 km from the intersection of the Bosanski Petrovac-Bihać road and the road to Drvar, on the southern edge of the Petrovac plain. A number of plots separate Crkvina from the Bosanski Petrovac-Drvar road to the west of the site. To the east of the site is the local road through the village. The church and necropolis with stećak tombstones are on slightly higher ground than the surrounding area.
The National Monument is located on a site designated as cadastral plot no. 2867 (new survey), corresponding to c.p. 454 (old survey), Land Register entry no. 398; cadastral municipality Kolunić, Municipality Bosanski Petrovac, Federation of BiH, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Historical information
The high karst plain where the Petrovac, Medeno and Bjelaj plains are located was the central part of the mediaeval župa (county) of Pset. The county also included the Bravo plain to the east, and Mt. Osječenicato the west. It marched with the Sana county to the east, its western boundary was somewhere between the Una and Unac rivers, and to the south it extended to near Drvar. This county was among the fourteen in Dalmatian Croatia referred to by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the mid 10th century, under the name of Pesenta. According to a record of the church synod in Split in 1185, in ecclesiastical terms the county of Pset belonged to the Knin bishopric.
The first known župan (lord of the county) to run the county of Pset in the name of the king was one Dionizije, who is referred to in a record datingfrom 1266. From 1276 to 1280 the county was held by the Babonić’s, and then by the princes of Blagaj. At that time the large county was divided into two smaller comitatus, Greater and Lesser Pset, each with its headquarters in a royal town. It is not known where these two royal towns were in the county of Pset. At the end of the 13th century the regions beyond the Vrbas river were ruled by the Šubić princes of Bribir.
A number of noble families from the Kolunić tribe with holdings in the county of Pset are known from a variety of mainly judicial documents dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. It is not known whether this was the only tribe in Pset, or whether there were others. The Kolunić tribe had several households or extended families, known as hiža. The best known extended family in the 15th century, in addition to 11 known households, was the Mišljenović hiža of Kolunić, whose forebear is known from a charter of 1325. They had holdings in Veliko and Malo (Greater and Lesser) Očijevo, nowadays villages close to Martin Brod by the Drvar road. Another well known noble family (hiža) in 15th century Pset county were the Perušić’s of the village of Bilića. In 1495 King Vladislav II’s treasurer recorded that he had paid a certain sum of money to Gašpar Perušić to guard his fort of Bjelaj (Belay, in the original). A third well known family were the Oršić’s of Drinići (in the south of Pset county). These prominent families from the Kolunić tribe, as well as others who were less well known, began to move away from their holdings in Pset further to the west and north when Bosnia came under Ottoman rule in 1463, and more and more of them moved after the battle of Krbava in 495. Some families retained their family names, but in their new homeland others called themselves by their tribal name of Kolunić (Klaić, 1928, 1-12; Vego, 1957, 57).
Old names of villages in this former mediaeval county that still exist, in addition to Očijevi and Kolunići, are Cvijetnići (between the Krka and Unac rivers), Smoljana (in the Brava plain), Bjelaj and Drinići (Vasić, 1962, 239).
Đuro Basler dates the church in Kolunić as “probably 14th century,” basing his view on historical sources relating to the village of Kolunić and the eponymous clan (Basler, 1964, 209). I. Nikolajević dates the church to the 12th century, or 1300 at the latest, on the basis of formal analogies between the church in Kolunić and a number of churches in Slovenia (Nikolajević, 1964, 249-251). N. Miletić concurs with Nikolajević, and gives the same dating for the church (Miletić, 1984, 405).
2. Description of the property
The church consists of a nave and a rectangular altar area, above which is a bell tower. The church lies west-east.
The nave of the church measures 11 m x 7.79 m on the outside, and the apse 5.1 m x 3.5 m. The walls of the nave are about 0.7 m thick. The south and north side walls of the apse slope on the interior as they thicken from west to east. The entrance to the apse is 3.6 m wide, andthe east apse wall is 3.4 m wide. The entrance to the apse is 4.35m high, or 4.65 m including the surrounding arch. The apse is 4.2 m deep, and is barrel-vaulted. There is a small window set rather high in the east apse wall, 2.15 m above the present-day ground level. On the inside, this window is 0.45 m wide, but on the outside it is only 0.2 m wide. There is a low, framed niche on the inside of the south wall. On the south wall of the bell tower, at a relative height of about 9 m, is a small opening framed like the window in the east facade. The tower with the apse has a relative overall height, measured to the west, of about 10 to 11 m, of which 4.65 consists of the apse and about 6 m of the tower.
There are 0.7 m thick projections, the remains of a structure of some kind, on the outer south and north edges of the east apse wall, at a relative height of 3.15 m. It is not yet known what this was for. The south and north walls of the nave have a relative height by the west apse wall of 4.9 m, stepping down to a height of some tens of centimetres. The same is true of the west end wall with the entrance to the church; this wall is a mere 30 cm high. The entrance is about 1 m wide. All the vertical angles of the church are framed with alternating large and small well-cut blocks. The walls are made of blocks that have been only very roughly cut.
The church as described and as it now looks was partly rebuilt in the mid 1960s. In 1894 P. Mirković wrote that, according to the locals, the "altar had been vaulted," but when Mirković was there it had already been destroyed (1889, 13). He also stated that the tower was 13.5 m high, and that its corners, and the altar wall, were of cut stone. The illustration in I. Nikolajević's article (1964, 251), and the architectectural drawings of the tower by architects of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments (an integral part of this Decision) reveal that at that time the west and east sides of the tower were in a ruinous state, but that the other angles had dressed cut stone blocks. The vault of the apse was rebuilt according to the details given by Mirković. When the building was partly renovated in this way, the question of how to access the part of the tower above the apse vault remained unresolved. Further investigations of this church, which is unique in Bosnia and Herzegovina, are required if it is to be dated and its stylistic affiliations identified with greater certainty.
The church is surrounded on all four sides by a necropolis with stećak tombstones, mainly in the shape of large slabs. These are so poorly finished as to be of irregular rectangular shape. The shorter ends are often rounded. They have long since sunk into the ground, and some of the slabs are broken. They lie west-east, but in no discernible order (Bešlagić, 1971, 102). On one of the two slabs “close to the altar,” Mirković found a carved fleur de lis, but there are no slabs in the church now (Mirković, 1889, 14).
The slab close to the south side of the church wall, outside the church, had a cross at one corner with OSTOÉ+ OSTOÉ inscribed on each side in 14th-15th century upright Glagolitic, with the inscription on the left of the cross appearing as the mirror image of that on the right (Fučić, 1982, 215). The epitaph has long since disappeared, but Mirković found it in 1889 (Truhelka, 1894, 773-775).
3. Legal status to date
The property is listed on the Provisional List of National Monuments of the Commission to Preserve National Monuments as Kolunić – mediaeval church, under serial no. 123.
4. Research and conservation and restoration works
Conservation works were carried out in the mid 1960s in line with plans drawn up by the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of BiH.
5. Current condition of the property
During an on site inspection conducted in February 2007 it was found that the tops of the walls of the tower and the tops of the higher parts of the long walls of the church are crumbling. The threshold at the entrance to the church at the west end has largely sunk into the ground. In some places shrubs are growing by the building. The tombstones around the church are sunken into the ground. About 10 m from the south wall of the church is a boundary line with a row of pines, behind which a small house (a weekend cottage?) has been built.
6. Specific risks
Unchecked building near the National Monument.
III – CONCLUSION
Applying the Criteria for the adoption of a decision on proclaiming an item of property a national monument (Official Gazette of BiH nos. 33/02 and 15/03), the Commission has enacted the Decision cited above.
The Decision was based on the following criteria:
A. Time frame
B. Historical value
C. Artistic and aesthetic value
C.iv. composition
C.v. value of details
C.vi. value of construction
D. Clarity (documentary, scientific and educational value)
D.i. material evidence of a lesser known historical era
D.ii. evidence of historical change
D.iv. evidence of a particular type, style or regional manner
E. Symbolic value
E.ii. religious value
E.iii. traditional value
G. Authenticity
G.ii. material and content
G.v. location and setting
H. Rarity and representativity
H.i. unique or rare example of a certain type or style
The following documents form an integral part of this Decision:
- Copy of cadastral plan;
- Copy of land register entry;
- Photodocumentation of the Commission, consisting of 35 photographs taken on site on 22 February 2007;
- Photodocumentation of the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Una-Sana Canton, Bihać, 37 photographs;
- Field documentation of the Federal Institute for the Protection of Monuments of the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sport – 3 drawings of the condition of the property in the mid 1960s;
- Field documentation of the Institute for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Una-Sana Canton, Bihać – 3 drawings of the condition of the property in September 2006;
- Photographs from articles by I. Nikojajević 1; P. Mirković 1, M. Vego 1;
- Geographical location of the property – topographical map 1: 50000.
Bibliography
During the procedure to designate the monument as a national monument of Bosnia and Herzegovina the following works were consulted:
1889. Mirković, Petar, “Manastir Panađur (u petrovačkom kotaru)” (The Panađur Monastery [in the County of Petrovac]), Jnl of the National Museum I, vol. 1, Sarajevo, 1889, 12-15.
1894. Truhelka, Ćiro, “Starobosanski pismeni spomenici” (Old Bosnian Written Documents), Jnl of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina VI/1894, Sarajevo, 1894, 771-782.
1925. Šišić, Ferdo, Povijest Hrvata u vrijeme narodnih vladara (History of the Croats in the days of National Rulers), Zagreb, 1925.
1928. Klaić, Vjekoslav, “Županija Pset (Pesenta) i pleme Kolunić” (Pset [Pesenta] County and the Kolunić Tribe), Jnl of the Croatian Archaeological Society, n.s. vol. XV, Zagreb, 1928, 1-12.
1957. Vego, Marko, Naselja bosanske srednjevjekovne države (Settlements of the Mediaeval Bosnian State), Sarajevo, 1957.
1962. Vasić, Milan, “Etničke promjene u Bosanskoj krajini u XVI vijeku” (Ethnic Changes in the Bosnian Frontier Region in the 16th Century), Annual of the Society of Historians of Bosnia and Herzegovina, yr. III /1962. Sarajevo, 1963, 233-250
1964. Basler, Đuro, “Kolunić”, Enciklopedija likovnih umjetnosti (Encyclopaedia of Fine Art), vol. 3, publ. Yugoslav Lexicographic Institute, Zagreb, 1964, 209.
1969. Nikolajević, Ivanka, “Zvonici crkava u Koluniću i Jajcu” (Bell Towers of the Churches in Kolunić and Jajce), Starinar, n.serija, XX, Belgrade 1969, 249-254.
1970. Vego, Marko, Zbornik srednjovjekovnih natpisa Bosne i Hercegovine (Collected mediaeval inscriptions of BiH) IV, National Museum in Sarajevo, Sarajevo, 1970.
1971. Bešlagić, Šefik, Stećci, kataloško-topografski pregled (Stećak tombstones, a catalogue and topographical survey), Veselin Masleša, Sarajevo, 1971, 142-143.
1982. Šabanović, Hazim, Bosanski pašaluk, postanak i upravna podjela (Bosnian Pashaluk, origins and administrative division), Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1982
1982. Fučić, Branko, Glagoljski natpisi (Glagolitic Inscriptions), Yugoslav Academy of Science and Art, Proceedings, Dept.of Philology and Dept. of Fine Arts, bk. 57, Zagreb, 1982.
1984. Miletić, Nada, “Rani srednji vek” (Early Mediaeval Times) In: Kulturna istorija Bosne i Hercegovine od najstarijih vremena do poda ovih zemalja pod osmansku vlast (Cultural History of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Ancient Times to the Fall of the Country to Ottoman Rule), Veselin Masleša, Sarajevo 1984, 375-434.
1988. Miletić, Nada, “Crkvina (Panađur), Kolunić”, Arheološki leksikon Bosne i Hercegovine (Archaeological Lexicon of BiH), vol. 2, no. 11.17, 159. Publ. National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, 1988.
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