The Franciscan monastery Plehan, located on a 315 m high hill Plehan near Dervetna, has been for a century and a half the cultural and spiritual centre of the Croats living on the Bosnian territory of the Sava river basin (Bosanska Posavina).
The Plehan region covers a surface of 40 km in a length and 25 km in width on the territory which belongs to the communes of Derventa, Bosanski Brod and Doboj, The former Derventa district was divided into three communes after the World War II. Not only is the region geographically a logical continuation of Croatia’s territory, but its economy and culture are also oriented towards Croatia. According the 1931 census in Derventa district 50,6% of the population were Croats and 35,5, Serbs. The1991.census showed that the percentage of the Croats dropped to 39% and the percentage of the Serbs grew to 40,8%.
In the period from 1941 do 1947 3,903 Croats perished in the Plehan region: 1631 of them were killed as prisoners and 788 were killed by OZNA’s partisans.
In 1853 the Administration in Constantinople issued an edict approving the construction of the monastery on Plehan, on the site which had been purchased by the Franciscan Martin Nedić. The works were begun in 1870. by the Franciscan Lovro Grlić. Thought the extensions to the monastery were soon built, the Plehan Franciscans were considering the possibility of construction a new building.
Despite a period of hardship construction works were begun in the summer 1931.under the supervision of the guardian Dominik Ćosić. The plan was designed by architect Karlo Parik, author of several other buildings in Sarajevo from the Austro-Hungarian period. He very skillfully connected the old monastery to the new building and to the church, giving to the whole complex a mension-like appearance with a view on the valley.
The construction of the new representative church on Plehan began in 1886.to the design of the architect Ivan Holtz. It was designed in the European style of the fin siecle with some basic Romanesque elements that were incorporated into it. The first decoration of the church was the Way of the Cross by Benedetto Giove from Rome. The frescoes were painted by Marko Antonini and his son Oton. The interior decoration of the church was later supervised by prof. Zdenko Grgić, sculptor from Sarajevo. On several altras were reliefs, sculptures and mosaics by prominent Croatian artists Seder, Šiško, Marinović Grgić and Kršinič.
Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Boži Jarak, professor at the Franciscan Theology in Sarajevo, an impressive collection of more then a thousands works of modern Croatian art, from Meštrović and Medović to Dulčić and Keser was acquired.
The monastery on Plehan has been famous for its rich archive with old matrices, scriptures and writings and for its library with the works by Franciscan writers from the 18th and 19th centuries. Unfortunately, Derventa was captured by tge Serbian barbarians in 1992. The monastery on Plehan was destroyed and only a few items from the rich treasury were saved, among them the plan for the future monastery on Plehan by prof. Zlatko Ugljen an architect from Sarajevo.
