The Year of the Great Croatian Vow and Croatian Christian Jubilees

Godine 1976. proslavljena su dva naša povijesna jubileja: Tisućita obljetnica Gospina svetišta koje je u 10. stoljeću dala sagraditi kraljica Jelena na Gospinu otoku u Solinu, te veliki povijesni jubilej Trinaest stoljeća kršćanstva u Hrvata koji je svojom tematskom širinom obuhvaćao opće značenje i cjelovitu ulogu kršćanske civilizacije i kulture u hrvatskomu narodu. Stoga je naša Crkva 1976. godinu proglasila Hrvatskom marijanskom godinom i Godinu velikoga zavjeta, jer je u sebi sadržavala sve jubilarne spomene i njihova temeljna značenja.In 1976, in commemoration of the tenth centennial of the death of Queen Jelena, our Church, in connection with the anniversary of Jelena’s Church of Saint Mary, proclaimed the year from September 1975 to September 1976 the Croatian Marian Year, in which two historical jubilees would be celebrated: the thousandth anniversary of the Shrine of Our Lady that in the 10th century Queen Jelena had built on the Island of Our Lady in Solin, and the great historical jubilee of the thirteen centuries of Christianity among the Croats, which had a theme of such breadth as to take in the general importance and complete role of Christian civilisation and culture in the Croatian people, and accordingly spontaneously highlighted the early beginnings of our Christianity. And so together with the Croatian Marian Year, the Year of the Great Vow was also celebrated, inherent in which were all the jubilee remembrances and their fundamental meanings. In this option, combined celebrations, prompted by the anniversary of the death of Queen Jelena and the founding of her church, were solemnly commenced on the Island of Our Lady (Gospin otok) in Solin on September 8, 1975. On that occasion the Archbishop of Split and Makarska, Franje Franić, before a large congregation of 20,000, officially announced, from a jubilee altar sub divo on the foundation of Jelena’s churches, the beginning of the Marian year and the anniversary celebrations. The Croatian Marian Year was an introduction into the Year of the Great Vow, and so the promptings and programmes of thirteen centuries, following on from ecclesiastical and national spiritual and social events and memories, were important inspirers of historical and current themes and motifs from Solin, 1975/1976, to the National Eucharistic Congress in Marija Bistrica in 1984. Jelena’s church was not celebrated only as church, but as the first Croatian Marian church. Similarly, the relations of Branimir and Zvonimir with the Holy See –with popes John VIII and Gregory VII – were valued not solely for the sake of their religious aspects, but for their universal, popular value and substance. On the final holy day of the Year of the Great Vow, on September 12, 1976, about a hundred thousand pilgrims with the Papal envoy and dignitaries of provincial churches and official institutions, indeed of different beliefs and ethnicities, gathered around the votive altar on which were the familiar jubilee signs and central symbols