Some Monuments of the Srem

[...] A church in the Srem enjoying great renown is Our Lady of the Snowfall, half an hour away from the fortress of Petrovaradin on the road to Karlovac. This church is also famous for its origin and the roadside elm tree beside the church. Where the extant church stands there used to exist a cave with a fountain. The place was frequented by the Turks from the fortress of Petrovaradin who had taken hold of the whole Syrmia as early as in 1521, under Emperor Suleiman, and they used to spend their pleasure time near the two springs, one of which still being ample with healthy water from a fountain. Two Turkish dervishes lived there and took care of the fountains, and also served the cool water to their guests from the fort, for which each guest left them some coins as charity.
It was greed for money that inspired the dervishes to turn the said cave into a mosque (minbar, little Turkish church), in order to lure their fellow-Turks into visiting them more often and to get more money.
As the Turks were driven away in the year 1688, that mosque was left deserted, and in 1693 two missionaries of the Jesuit order came upon an order of Emperor Leopold who showed interest in the said mosque; since no church existed in Petrovaradin in that time, Cardinal Count Kolonić, Primate of Esztergom, granted them the mosque to be converted into a chapel, so the mosque was turned into and consecrated as a Chapel of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady. [...]
 [...] This same chapel, that is, the extant sacristy built in the Turkish custom, the former Turkish mosque, was enlarged in 1752 and extended considerably, and that is how the extant Church of Our Lady of the Snowfall came into being, situated in an appealing landscape at a foothill of Fruška Gora on the very Karlovci road between Petrovaradin and Karlovac. Beside the church there still stands the elm tree whereto Vice-Marshal Count Breuner had been fettered in iron chains and shot dead when the Turks had caught him during the battle of 1716.
The elm tree has been enclosed in bars and under its crown a picture of the Seven Sorrows of the Mother of God is suspended from its trunk. The elm has grown extremely old, but in spite of that it spreads its strong branches as high as the church roof and, although it has been worn down and damaged, bearing cavities, it would still not surrender but each spring leaves grow out of it and it turns green at this old age just like it used to a hundred odd years ago. [...]
Mijat Stojanović