Venerable Nikola Tavelić

Nicholas Tavelic, O.F.M. (Croatian: Nikola Tavelić), was a Croatian Friar Minor, priest and missionary who was the leader of a group of friars who died a martyr's death in Jerusalem on November 14, 1391. He was beatified along with his companions, who included friars from Italy and France. All four members of his group have since been declared saints by the Catholic Church, making Tavelic the first canonized Croatian saint. Most sources mention Šibenik as Tavelic's birthplace, but another possible location is Velim near Stankovci. He is considered to originate from a noble family. In 1365, Tavelic became a friar in Bribir, the seat of the Šubić, a powerful Croatian noble family. Tavelic was among 60 friars from various Franciscan provinces who answered an appeal by the Bosnian guardian, motivated by a papal bull, Prae cunctis, issued in 1291 by Pope Nicholas IV, himself a Friar Minor, to work as missionaries in Bosnia, combating the perceived heresies of the Bosnian Church. Tavelic spread Catholicism around Bosnia for 12 years. In his report to the pope, the Bosnian guardian later said that the missionaries converted around 50,000 members of that Church. In 1383, Tavelic went to serve in the Custody of the Holy Land where he met the friars Deodatus Aribert of Rodez, Peter of Narbonne and Stephen of Cuneo. The four lived at the Monastery of Mount Zion, the ancient friary maintained by the Friars Minor in the city, where they spent several years learning Arabic and serving at the holy sites connected to Jesus' life, which had been entrusted to the care of the Order of Friars Minor and which still drew pilgrims from Christian Europe.