Croatia - Hermitage Blaca

Under the Karst caves of Vidova gora on the southern shores of the island of Brač a number of hermitic monasteries were founded in the Renaissance period but in continuity with earlier traditions: the convent Stipančić (1416), hermitage Silvio (Dubravčić 1497) and below them, only little closer to the sea - Dračeva luka that was inhabited in 1512 by priests from Poljica, and Dutić where "picokara", tertiary nuns came to in the same year. In the cave called Ljubitovica on the steep cove on the southern tip of the island two Glagolitic monks who came to Brač in 1551 from the nearby continental Poljice found shelter which soon developed in a hermitic monastery. It was maintained and renewed by generations of monks up the last one, father Niko Miličević who died in 1963 and was well known as an astronomer. The telescope from Blaca has remained to this day the third most powerful one in Croatia. The journey traversed from cave to observatory, transforming the meaning of reclusion from cavelike introversion to businesslike extroversion (the Hermitage traded its own products on sailing ships along the route MilnaBolMakarskaTriesteBlaca) has condensed and repeated in the course of four centuries universal human history.