Velika Kopanica

Velika Kopanica lies on the Slavonian plain, 36 kilometres east of Slavonski Brod, seven kilometres south of Vrpolje and 19 kilometres south of Đakovo. The settlement stands at 91 metres above sea level beside the Đakovo–Slavonski Šamac road and railway, while the A3 motorway is about three kilometres away. Its principal historic landmark is the parish church of St Elijah the Prophet, built in 1773 and restored in 1964; the church, parish residence and surrounding grounds are listed as protected cultural property. Velika Kopanica was also the birthplace of educator and writer Ivan Filipović, and the former village school associated with his birth forms part of the local architectural heritage. Education has an unusually deep history here: the village school traces its foundation to between 1761 and 1765 and marked 250 years of continuous work in 2014. This makes Velika Kopanica a rewarding short stop for Slavonian church architecture, the history of schooling and the legacy of Ivan Filipović, with straightforward onward travel towards Đakovo or Slavonski Brod.

Velika Kopanica has the profile of an agricultural settlement in eastern Brodska Posavina, surrounded by arable land and historically associated with grain production, livestock, a silo and a mill. Kopanica first appears in a 1579 Ottoman tax register for the Brod district, while its parish was recorded in 1600. After Ottoman rule ended, Franciscans arriving from the Modriča area settled here, but left once a new monastery was built in Đakovo in 1714. The village’s present identity is anchored by the 1773 church of St Elijah and by Ivan Filipović, the 19th-century educator and writer born in Velika Kopanica, whose name is carried by the local primary school.