As early as the 5th century AD, there was a three-nave basilica with a semicircular apse on the site of the Church of St. John the Evangelist, built on the site of a significant old public building.
The early Romanesque church, which today only partially exists, was probably built in the 10th and 11th centuries when the Benedictines came to Rab.[1] The present apse with five buttresses was built over the destroyed early Christian church. The church is mentioned in writing by Benedictines at the end of the 12th century. They gave this up in the second half of the 13th century. In 1278 the bishop of Rab and the chronicler Gregory Hermolais handed it over to the Franciscans. When the order was divided in the middle of the 15th century, the order remained in the hands of the Franciscans of the Minorites. They finally left the monastery in 1783, which meant that the order was no longer present on Rab. The diocese of Rab was abandoned in the 1820s and since then the church has fallen into disrepair. The inventory was transferred to other Rab churches.
The western part of the monastery building was completely demolished. In this place the Ban of Posavina built a mansion using the building materials of the rest of the monastery and the church. At the end of the 19th century the roof of the church collapsed.
From 1991 to 1995 restoration work took place on the bell tower and the nave. The early Christian mosaics, capitals, stone relics and other works of art were removed and secured.