School Buildings in Slovenia before 1918

Abstract

There was always some teaching organised in modern civilization, be it of religious or craft-like character. Even the Freising Manuscripts, the oldest preserved Slovene written monument, were actually intended for education. Regretfully, not many documents have been preserved. Those that exist prove that there were diocese schools in Koper as early as 1186, in St. Peter’s (Sentpeter) Parish in Ljubljana in 1250, just outside St. Peter’s Parish in 1262 and in St. Nicholas (Sv. Nikolaj) in 1345. A document from 1418 has been preserved in connection with the latter, in which Duke Ernest grants permission for its renovation. The oldest illustration of a school building in Slovenia dates back to the sixteenth century: the altar painting at St. Donato’s Church in Turnisce shows a church, a presbytery and a wooden school building with a thatched roof. However, in those times schools used to be in buildings that had not been specifically built for an educational purpose. Furthermore, the architecture of higher schools in towns was richer than that of the smaller schools in the countryside, and is thus of greater interest for us today.