NEREZISCA Island of Brac
Introduction. For eight centuries Nerezisca was the centre and the pulse of the island. It is set on the boundary of the upper (eastern) and lower (western) Brac on the ridge of the Brac plateau and along the edge of the largest field on the island. The cattle-breeding, agricultural and administration centre. Brac’s oldest metropolis from the year 1000 up to Napoleanic times. The permanent seat od Brac’s Prince and the smithy of Brac’s nobility. The main traffic cross-roads on the island. Although situated deep in the interior, Nerezisca has kept almost the largest portion of the coast with the most attractive coves. In the Middle Ages, the region of Nerezisca occupied almost all of the total Brac surface. Today, Nerezisca is by far the most extensive commune on the island. The former administration and cultural range of the settlement is confirmed by the valuable cultural monuments is which influences from outside the island are also traceable. The long, continuous mark of material and spiritual power is present in Nerezisca even today.
Description. Nerezisca is 382 m above sea level. It is situated on the stone hillside of Grizica (the bluff) at the foot of the former Croatian fort of Gradac. Although hidden from sight from the sea, it was not exempt from the pirates attacks. In spite of this, the main center on the island was never fortified like other settlements of Supetar, Sutivan, Splitska, Skrip, Pucisca and Povlja. Nerezisca is one of the rare settlements with the three village squares. In the highest and most eastern square was the Prince’s palace an the logia up to the parish church. It was the nucles round which the settlement became the middle square, in front of the chapel of St. Margarita, the place where, between the two wars, were the shops, inns, the parish hall and, at a little distance, the post-office and the cross-roads. After the second World War the centre was transferred to the third, the most western square, around the church of St. Peter where a co-operative society building was raised and after the war, the sweet factory, Favorit, the management building of the factory etc. There we find now the settlement’s offices, the post-office, shops, the inn, the cinema, etc. Each period impressed upon the settlement its mark, sought expession and room, while Nerezisca almost imperceptibly descended from the hill into the field. As regards the architectural heritage, the contrasts of Nerezisca are seen in the period noble houses and the folk cottages in which we can see the genuine Mediterranean architectural forms. these are small, walled yards with field-cottages and cattle-enclosures, with small, ground-floor houses for dwelling. These houses are set on the fringes of the settlement on the eastern and the southerns sides of the hill. They usually had one room with the hearth in the centre, without a chimney and real windows. On the southern slopes there were somepartitioned caves with damped walls that were adapted for dwelling. The foundations of the houses are usually laid in the dry lime crevices. The houses of Nerezisca harmoniously and unobtrusively correspond to the landscape. As if they were part of it. The houses of Brac’s poor gentry were not much different in the beginning but in times of prosperity in the 18th and 19th century, they rose to one or two stories. Under the influence of the period architecture in Dalmatia, the one-eaved or two-eaved mansarde roofs are raised, inside which the kitchen with the roofed-over fire-placeis set. The roofs are interesting for their fanciful chimney-endings. Until recent times the roofs were covered with slabs that were whitened with lime before the winter in order to stop the rain and at the same time to serve as a purifying chanel for the healthy rain-water into the gutter-pipes under the short eaves. On many houses the gutter-pipes are made of stone consoles and look like a decorative girdle the wreathes the walls. the fronts of the houses are decorated with balconies and windows on which the characteristics of the period of their origin are evident. Above the cellar-door are the porches, sometimes set on vaults and sometimes on pillars. They are reached by stone staircases, usually decorated like the porch with a balustrade. The yards of the noblemen were not large but were walled with high walls as if to suggest the forts that are missing in the old capital of Brac. The yards are generally paved with the well in the middle and with a ground plan of a wooden winepress, In the cellars are the wine barrels and the stone oil-vessels. Of such a kind are these houses in Nerezisca, Blatacka kuca (The Blaca’s house) with the engraved year of 1555, the house of Nigojevic-Smrtic, the house of Defilipis with the family chapel of St. Joseph and the house of Harasic with the large baroque balcony. Near the parish hall stands a smaller house with the Latin incription “ Parvula sed mea”. The majority of the beautiful stone houses( of I. Harasic, Franulic, Avancanic, Dujsin, Forensa), are set along the steep footway Kopila, which goes from the square in front of the church of St. Margarita up to the parish church and the former Prince’s palace. This main thoroughfare in the old settlement was covered with kogole(stone pieces) which now remain near the end of Kopila.
History. The region of Nerezisca preserves a large number of prehistoric cairns among which of special interest is the still unexamined fort on the Velo brdo(The High Hill), to the southwest of Nerezisca. Remains from Roman times were found around this place: a larger quantity of coins(solidi aurei) from the 7th century, in the field of J. Bakovic-Namoront, kostirne(Lat. cisterna) dug out in stone near the the destroyed church of St. Andrew on the left side of the road of Supetar. There the remains of the Roman built were found, the relief of the muses and the part of Silvan’s shrine. Behind Velo brdo(The High Hill) are the ruins of the Early Christian church of St. Tudor with the remains or urns, sarcophagi and money in the surroundings. In the neighborhood, in the locality of Polacina(Lat. palatium-the estate house, palace), a bracelet and a gauntlet from Roman times were found. The items discovered are now in Nerezisca. One the basis of numismatic discoveries from Nerezisca the experts think that the Croatians were already here in the 7th century. They came over from the region of Neretva via the eastern part of the island. They remained on the fringes of the plateau, in the biggest valley of Brac(which from the stretches to the foot of Donji Humac, ST. Elias, Triscenik up to the Bunje near Dracevica and further via Veli dolac to the sea) where the Romans had lived. The Croats settled on Gradac, above Nerezisca, on the Knjezeravan(The Prince’s Clearing). The petrified adjectival form of this place-name points to great linguistic antiquity. Here was possibly the seat of the Croatian Prince. It is generally held that the Venetian duke Peter II Orseolo promoted Nerezisca into the main administrative centre on the island, round the year 1000. Brac’s chronicler A. Ciccarelli records that the old lodge in Nerezisca had just that year engraved in the Roman number M. The year 1277 is known in Nerezisca for the Omis pirates attack: they set the Brac office building on fire and destroyed the Brac archives so that in 1305 the order came that eveything must be restored, among which the burnt bracki statut(The statute of Brac), on the basis of which, from then onwards, the island was governed. In 1294 it was decided to fortify Nerezisca with walls, but this decision of the Venetians was never carried out. The people lived in colonial independence, either as shepherds of the gentry’s herds or as farmers in their fields. The landlords. scattered through the interior of Brac, in the beginning did not differ in their belongings and garments from the rest of their inhabitants. Knezev dvor (The Prince’s palace) was one of the most modest ones in the Venetian Republic. Gradually the differences between the privileged gentry and the oppressed people grew more and more. The noblemen usurped the bigger estates from which they gained bigger incomes based on heavy taxes imposed upon the farmers. With this money they erected luxurious buildings with the main characteristics of the relevant style. Later on there were a few houses in the village that had luxurious period furniture. The special character was given to Nerezisca by the municipal palace, the Prince’s office, the lodge, the prison, a large number of clerks, gentry and the soldiers-all until 1830. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Nerezisca had about 700 inhabitants. In the 18th century, all the villages of the Brac interior came to be more and more depopulated and derelict. The well known Italian travel writer , A. Fortis, in his book Travels through Dalmatia in 1774, writes about how Nerezisca, the main centre on the island, lost many inhabitants and how the deserted houses were exposed to a more severe decline. In 1874 the People’s Society of Nerezisca was founded with the intention of inspiring the awakening of the national consciousness and strengthening the basis of Croatian unity. In 1941 Nerezisca was a place of very strong resistance. The hamlet of Obrsje was the main partisan centre on the island.
Name. Nerezisca is a Slav name derived from the stem nerez which means uncultivable soil to distinguish it from neighbouring hill called Rezisce. The Venetian administration always called it Nerezi because it was held that the name was of Roman origin. The plural form Nerezisca was perforce lost because it was created when the place consisted of a few separate parts that were scattered as to suggest plurality. It was only in the coming centuries that Nerezisca became expressly a Mediterranean settlement of the irregularly built type.
Monuments. One should climb up to the church in Nerezisca to see its beautiful baroque facade. From that spot the view opens to the long valley to the west, a very important locality for the cultural and economical history of the island. Try to count from there the stones piled upon the Jurjevo brdo. Remember then that those stones were sorted out by the diligent hands of the Brac farmers in order to snatch from it a patch of land for their vineyards. And so it is on the whole of the island. On this spot we should recall an important monument that was unreasonably pulled down in 1903.
1. Knezev dvor (The Prince’s Palace). In the sqaure in front of the present school therewas the Prince’s Palace, the then called opcinska palaca ( The Municipal palace). It consisted of a Prince’s office with a separate writing-office and a town-hall. In 1431 the new Prince’s palace was erected and from that time on both are mentioned. There was a clock-tower and a high stone stand for the flag- pole, with an engraved, winged Venetian dragon. This stand is preserved and kept in the north western corner of the square. In the vestibule of the lodge the stone console was built in the wall which served for the hanging of prisoners. It is said that the gallows were never used. The relief of the Venetian lion, with the insciption dedicated to those that go to law, was formerly on the front of the lodge. Today it is walled in near the church at the end of Kopila. In front of the lodge were the scooped stone measures for cereals and other crops. Beneath the square, in the house of Garafulic which until about ten years ago still had gothic windows, gates and embrosures, was, according to tradition, the barracks of the Prince’s guards.
2. The church. The parish church of St. Mary, which was mentioned in sources from the 13th century as the place in front of which the important decisions were announced, is the most monumental church on the island and the best harmonised with the surroundings. Some additonal parts were built in the 15th and 16th century. The old church from Gothic and Renaissance times follows the growth and the prosperity of the palace but it reaches its full extent in the second half of the 18th century as a baroque building. Only the central part of the front with the rosette and the steles in the central nave are preserved from the old building. Its facade with restless lines with the curved volutes at their ends is mostly the work of the master I. Macanovic and his assistants. the baroque features are traced in the arrangement of the three profiled portals and two decorative rossettes on the sides, which reveal restlesness and movement. The interior of the church recordsthe Renaisance harmony and symmetry interrupted by the position of the main altar and the lightening of the interior, the wooden pulpit from 1762 and the altar at the sides, built after a baroque pattern. The belfry with the closed stem, lodges and a pyramid does not correspond to the baroque pattern, it is the offspring of the traditional common to many Dalmatian belfries. The most interesting thing is the altar painting Our Lady of the Rosary by C. Ridolfi (1594-1658), the pupil of Palma the Younger. The best moments in the painting are the little sacraments of the rosary encircling the picture in which the restraint and the painter’s sensation have reached an undisputed high artistic quaility.
3. The old Croatian chapels. In Nerezisca and its surroundings there are a few interesting little churches with remarkable stone reliefs.
St. Peter. This little church on whose semicircular apse a small pine-tree is growing, was raised at the end of the 14th century out of the Romanesque substratum and some Gothic additions. The Gothic presence is traced in the pointed, blind lunette above the gate, in the pointed valut of the little church, while the Dalmatian belfry in its oval edges bears the greater part of the Romanesque layer. In the chapel we find the interesting relief of Lazanic from 1578 which in its gable part presents God the Father with outstretched arms and in the central part the Madonna and Child on an elevated piedestal and at the sides St. Peterand St. Paul. The Lazanic altar although linked to the provincial tradition, reveals the individuality of the Master who skillfully chiselled stone, freely folded the veils, softly treated the incarnadine with a sense of the plastic volume and the stone substance. (K. Prijatelj).
St. Margarita. This chapel is also set in the central square and has the same marks of style as the former one, which has Gothic characteristics even more stressed. These are the blind Gothic lunette above the gates with two expressive heads at the end of the arch, the Gothic belfry with the oval wreath as the Romanesque substratum. The similar two-oval wreath is also found on the inner walls of the church, on the edges of the Gothic vault. The big rosette above the lunette on the front is also the remains of an older style. The little church is most probably from the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century.
St. Nicholas in the cemetary. Although similiar to the others it has smooth walls of dressed stone. Gothic characteristics are found in the pointed arch of the Dalmatian belfry and in the Gothic vault.
The Holy Trinity. Situated on the right side of the road to Supetar. The chapel is much simpler than the others and was probably erected in the 12th century.
St. George. It stands on a prominent peak of the Jurjevo brdo (George’s Hill). It is interesting for its lesens (the small, walled in semi-columns) on the outer and inner sides of the walls. It is built out of small, irregularly cut stone which can be found in piles in the surroundings. The little church is remarkable for its transitional features, ranging from free-style to Romanesque. It houses one of the most beautiful Renaissance reliefs presenting a young knight George, seated on a horse, killing with his spear a dragon coming out of a cave. The master responsible for the relief, generally held to be the Bracan Lazanic (16th century), grouped together in this scene all the known participants in this well known legend.
St Jacob. In this chapel set on the old path to Dracevica, there is a baroque relief in white stone set on a yellowish marble base. The relief shows the Madonna and child with the Saints Philip and Jacob. The entire relief apears somewhat emphatic, restless, disturbed but still harmonious. Some of the experts consider the Madonna from St. Jacob as the most beautiful portrayal of the Madonna on the island.