Catrin Bach: Zwei Pilger und (k)ein Esel

Catrin enjoyed spending the winter in Villa Trlika and in this peaceful setting she wrote the book “Zwei Pilger & (k)ein Esel”. She also left the little red library in apartment Ruza for you to enjoy as well as many other books in English and German language which are now on disposal to all guests.
Now you can read her eBook.
Please click here. Catrin Bach – Payhip


Catrin hat den Inselwinter in der Villa Trlika genossen. An diesem friedlichen Ort hat sie das Buch “Zwei Pilger & (k)ein Esel” geschrieben. Sie liebt “little librarys” und von ihr ist die kleine rote Bücherei im Apartment Ruza.
Hier geht es zu ihrem deutschen ebook. Catrin Bach – Payhip

Das neue Inselbuch von Catrin Bach: Blaubeer Pudding und Eisberg Bier

Die Insel Neufundland (NL) ist mein neues Zuhause.
Ich  bin vor drei Jahren auf die fast menschenleere Insel mitten im Atlantik gezogen.
Dies ist die Geschichte von meinen ersten Jahren auf der Insel NL, ein Ort, welchen ich schon lange aus Büchern kannte und nun lebe ich selbst hier. Zwischen Leuchttürmen, Eisbergen und Blaubeeren. Ein Inselbuch für alle Menschen die Inseln lieben. Mit dem Kauf von Blaubeer Pudding & Eisberg Bier unterstützen wir gemeinsam “The Gathering Place” in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Ein Ort voll Wärme und Würde.
1 Buch = 1 warme kostenlose Mahlzeit für einen Menschen in Not.

Mehr dazu in meinem Inselbuch

Catrin Bach: Blaubeer Pudding und Eisberg Bier

Kris Alexander – Almost Blonde 

Kris spent a long and productive winter in Villa Trlika, the perfect place for writing his book “Almost Blonde”. Far from the madding crowd yet just around the corner from the café, the harbor and the little store that has all you need , this location is a writer’s paradise. When writer’s block struck, Kris went on long walks along the shore, through the Dundo forest and along the beach picking up beach plastic.

Now you can read Almost Blonde by Kris Alexander.
Please click here. Kris Alexander – Payhip

Almost Blonde by Kris Alexander


Four bell towers

Awarded many times as the best tourist destination in the Adriatic, the town of Rab sits on a narrow sliver of land protruding towards the mainland, bounded by ancient city walls and recognizable by four church towers that form the familiar outline, depicting Rab as a ship with four masts: bell tower of the church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary – the cathedral, the bell tower of the church of St. John the Evangelist (located near the ruins of the Church), the belfry of the church of St. Andrew the Apostle and the bell tower of the church of St. Justine. Further inland from the old town is a beautiful park called Komrčar, whose numerous paths wind around wooded hills all the way down to the beaches of Rab.

Saint Patron of Rab, St. Cristophor supposedly saved the island from attackers, earning the right to have his skull preserved in a reliquiary within the Rab Cathedral.

If you like, you could visit a large collection of sacral art at the Franciscan Monastery of St. Bernardin with two churches (St. Euphemia and St. Bernardin) where you can find pictures, valuable old books, ecclesiastical art, ethnographic collection, coin collection and a lot of other things.

The bell tower of St. Mary, close to the church of St. Mary’s ascension, ex-Cathedral. It is the largest of the four towers, and open to the public but not at all times. It is possible to get by stairs and levels to the very top, and even above the tower bells.

The most beautiful building of its kind on the Croatian coast, this bell tower was built in the Romanesque style sometime in the 13th century. 26 meters high original four-dome was destroyed by a lightning and later reconstructed as a six-sided pyramid.  Tower had it’s top changed due to being struck by lightning and destroyed in 15th century. The new top has eight sides instead of four, and many inscriptions with the names of saints, like St. Barbara, protector from storms. Close to the tower is the Romanesque church of St. Mary’s, the most elaborate and beautiful of the churches on Rab, having a status of cathedral until 1828. Church was canonized in 1175 by pope Alexander III, while on his path from Zadar to Venice. Croatian typical elements like braiding are found on the church as well.

Tower of the church of St. John the Evangelist (Crkva Sv. Ivana Evanđelista). It has been built in Pre-Christian period and renovated but later in 19th century turned to ruins. At the place of the old church you will also find large stone plates with Roman inscriptions beside the original church columns.


Tower by the Church of St. Justina. This church has been closed in 1808 but has very recently been renovated and now has a museum that exhibits sacral art. Ornaments such as the skull of St. Christopher -saint protector of island Rab.

The tower by the Monastery of St. Andreas (Samostan Sv. Andrije). It is the oldest of the four bell towers, being built back in the early 11th century.

Marco Antonio de Dominis

Marco Antonio de Dominis (Croatian: Markantun de Dominis) (1560 – September 1624) was a Dalmatian ecclesiastic, Catholic archbishop, adjudged heretic of the Catholic Faith, and man of science.

The high school on Rab is called by his name.

He was born on the island of Rab,  Croatia, off the coast of Dalmatia, in a noble family of Dalmatian origin. Educated at the Illyrian College at Loreto and at the University of Padua, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1579 and taught mathematics, logic, and rhetoric at Padua and Brescia, Italy.

He was educated by the Jesuits in their colleges at Loreto and Padua, and is supposed by some to have joined the Society; the more usual opinion, however, is that he was dissuaded from doing so by Cardinal Aldobrandini. For some time he was employed as a teacher at Verona, a professor of mathematics at Padua, and a professor of rhetoric and philosophy at Brescia.[3]

Scientific work

In 1611 he published, at Venice, a scientific work entitled: Tractatus de radiis visus et lucis in vitris, perspectivis et iride, in which, according to Isaac Newton, he was the first to develop the theory of the rainbow by drawing attention to the fact that in each raindrop the light undergoes two refractions and an intermediate reflection. His claim to that distinction is, however, disputed in favor of Descartes.

In 1625 his work “Euripus, seu de fluxu et refluxu maris sententia” was published posthumously in Rome. It is an important source for the strange story of the theory of tides. It contains an exact but qualitative, luni-solar explanation of the phaenomena. This explanation is directly connected with the later developments.[6]

Religious politics

In 1596 he was, through imperial influence, appointed Bishop of Senj (Segna, Seng) and Modruš in Kroatien in August 1600, and transferred in November 1602 to the archiepiscopal see of Split. His endeavors to reform the church soon brought him into conflict with his suffragans; and the interference of the papal court with his rights as metropolitan, an attitude intensified by the quarrel between the Papacy and Venice, made his position intolerable. This, at any rate, is the account given in his own apology, the Consilium profectionis in which he also states that it was these troubles that led him to those researches into ecclesiastical lawchurch history, and dogmatic theology, which, while confirming him in his love for the ideal of the true Catholic Church, convinced him that the papal system was far from approximating to it.[3]

He sided with Venice, in whose territory his diocese was situated, during the quarrel between Pope Paul V and the Republic (1606–7). That fact, combined with a correspondence with Paolo Sarpi and conflicts with his clergy and fellow bishops, which culminated in the loss of an important financial case in the Roman Curia, led to the resignation of his office in favor of a relative and his retirement to Venice.

To England

Threatened by the Inquisition, he prepared to apostatize, entered into communication with the English ambassador to Venice, Sir Henry Wotton, and having been assured of a welcome, left for England in 1616.

On his way there, he published at Heidelberg a violent attack on Rome: Scogli del Christiano naufragio, afterwards reprinted in England. He was received with open arms by James I, who quartered him upon Archbishop Abbot of Canterbury, called on the other bishops to pay him a pension, and granted him precedence after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York. De Dominis wrote a number of anti-Roman sermons, published his often reprinted chief work, De Republicâ Ecclesiasticâ contra Primatum Papæ (Vol. 1, 1617; vol. II, 1620, London; Vol. III, 1622, Hanau), and took part, as an assistant, in the consecration of George Montaigne as Bishop of Lincoln, and Nicolas Felton as Bishop of Bristol on 14 December 1617. In that same year, James I made him Dean of Windsor and granted him the Mastership of the Savoy.

Contemporary writers give no pleasant account of him, describing him as fat, irascible, pretentious and very avaricious; but his ability was undoubted, and in the theological controversies of the time he soon took a foremost place. His published attacks on the papacy succeeded each other in rapid succession: the Papatus Romanus, issued anonymously (London, 1617; Frankfort, 1618); the Scogli del naufragio Christiano, written in Switzerland (London, (?) 1618), of which English, French and German translations also appeared; and a Sermon preached in Italian before the king.[3]

But his principal work was the De republica ecclesiastica, of which the first part after revision by Anglican theologians was published under royal patronage in London (1617), in which he set forth with a great display of erudition his theory of the church. In the main it is an elaborate treatise on the historic organization of the church, its principal note being its insistence on the divine prerogatives of the Catholic episcopate as against the encroachments of the papal monarchy. In 1619 Dominis published in London from a manuscript Paolo Sarpi‘s Historia del Concilio Tridentino.[3] This history of the Council of Trent appeared in Italian, with an anti-Roman title page and letter dedicatory to James I. The manuscript had been obtained from Sarpi for George Abbot by his agent Nathaniel Brent.[4]

His vanity, avarice, and irascibility soon lost him his English friends; the projected Spanish marriage of Prince Charles made him anxious about the security of his position in England, and the election of Pope Gregory XV (9 February 1621) furnished him with an occasion of intimating, through Catholic diplomatists in England, his wish to return to Rome.

The king’s anger was aroused when De Dominis announced his intention (16 January 1622), and Star-Chamber proceedings for illegal correspondence with Rome were threatened. Eventually he was allowed to depart, but his chests of hoarded money were seized by the king’s men, and only restored in response to a piteous personal appeal to the king.

Return to Rome

Once out of England, his attacks upon the English Church were as violent as had been those on the Papacy, and in Sui Reditus ex Anglia Consilium (Paris, 1623) he recanted all he had written in his Consilium Profectionis (London, 1616), declaring that he had deliberately lied in all that he had said against Rome. After a stay of six months in Brussels, he proceeded to Rome, where he lived on a pension assigned him by the Pope. On the death of Pope Gregory XV on 8 July 1623, the pension ceased, and irritation loosened his tongue.

Coming into conflict with the Inquisition he was declared a relapsed heretic and was confined to the Castel Sant’Angelo. He there died in September 1624.

Even his death did not end his trial. His case was continued after his death, and on 20 December 1624 judgment was pronounced over his corpse in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva. His heresy was declared manifest, and by order of the Inquisition his body was taken from the coffin, dragged through the streets of Rome, and publicly burned in the Campo di Fiore together with his works, on 21 December 1624.[5]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Antonio_de_Dominis
tarocchi-dominis.com/marco-antonio-de-dominis.html
De Dominis’s (1611) De radiis visus et lucis in vitris perspectivis et iride – digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library