Presentation on Friar Cvekan at a Scientific Conference in Ilok

Veronika Novoselac, assistant and doctoral candidate at the University Department of History of the Catholic University of Croatia, participated in the Scientific Conference on the Ilok Legal Codex of 1525 and Medieval Ilok – on the Occasion of the 500th Anniversary of the Statute of the Town of Ilok, held on 12 December 2025 at the Ilok Town Museum. The conference was organised to mark the 500th anniversary of the Ilok Statute (1525), a unique legal document on the social and legal organisation of medieval Ilok, one of the most important urban centres of the lower Drava–Sava–Danube interfluve.

Drawing on the monograph Franciscans in Ilok (1986), Novoselac presented a paper entitled Friar Cvekan and the Vision of the Franciscan Presence in Ilok: Communication Aspects of a Historical Narrative. She explained that Friar Paškal Cvekan, the author of the monograph, does not write a detached legal-historical analysis, but rather constructs a narrative that intertwines personal testimony, spiritual interpretation and historiographical record. The presentation offered one possible reading of this approach: while Cvekan provides precise descriptions of the Ilok Statute and Nikola of Ilok, he interprets them as a context for the Franciscan presence, which for him constitutes the core of Ilok’s identity.

The conference was organised by the Ilok Town Museum and the Croatian Institute of History – Branch for the History of Slavonia, Syrmia and Baranja, and brought together around a dozen domestic and international researchers from several Croatian and Hungarian universities and scientific institutions. Presentations addressed the origins and content of the Ilok Statute, the city’s urban development, the activities of ecclesiastical and administrative institutions, and the broader Central European context of the late Middle Ages. In addition, the Lexicon of Fortresses of Croatia – the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period and the new edition of the Croatian Historical Atlas published by the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography were presented.