Jesuit House in Jurkloster

In Jurkloster, Slovenia there are some remains of the Carthusian monastery, which was founded around 1170, by Henrik, the Bishop of Krsko. With a gap of about 10 years, the monastery was active until 1595, when it was closed and the Jesuits took over the church and the monastery for 178 years. When the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773, the monastery and church were pulled down and the present parish church of St. Maurice built.

St. James Church and the Jesuit College, Ljubljana

  
YUGOSLAVIA, 1954, showing 17th century Ljubljana, now the capital of Slovenia, Scott 410
SLOVENIA, 1994, the 75th anniversary of the University of Ljubljana, Scott 221 and its FDI cancel

The image on the above Yugoslav stamp is based on an etching by J. V. Valvasor in his Die Ehre dess Hertzogthums Crain (Nürnberg 1689): a large townscape of Ljubljana from the 17th century. In the center foreground is the spire of the Church of St. James, built by the Jesuits in 1613-1616, to the church's left by a quarter of the stamp is the octagonal chapel of St. Francis Xavier, built between 1667 and 1670, and about them are the buildings of the Jesuit college. Jesuits arrived in Ljubljana in 1597 and began offering secondary education at once. In 1704 philosophical studies (including mathematics) were added and then theology and canon law. But the college was not authorized to issue degrees, a university prerogative. After the Suppression in 1773, the state took over the Jesuit school. After various incarnations it was replaced in 1919 by the University of Ljubljana, which might be regarded as the successor to the original Jesuit institution of higher education. The National and University Library in Ljubljana (Narodna in Univerzitetna knjiznica) was established by the Empress Maria Theresa in 1774, as 637 books, spared from a fire in the dissolved Jesuit college, were transferred to the newly established library of the Ljubljana Lyceum which eventually grew to its present status.

YUGOSLAVIA, 1974, the bicentenary of the National and University Library in Ljubljana, Scott 1225

In the center of the 1689 etching and the stamp is the old Cathedral of St. Nicholas with its towering twin spires. The cathedral was pulled down in 1701, and a new cathedral to replace it was built in 1701-1706 by the Jesuit architect Br. Andrea Pozzo, SJ.

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