Introduction
p. 7-10
Texte intégral
1Monastic studies have been marked over the last twenty years by a renewed interest in the insular foundations of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. If the “holy island” of Lérins occupies a special place, because of its longevity and exemplary nature from the early Middle Ages onwards1, recent research in Ireland and Scotland, on the Balearic Islands, on the hermitages of the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas or the ascetics of the Aegean Sea, has contributed to a better understanding of the various forms of island ascetic life and its influence on the development of monasticism in the Mediterranean and Christian Europe.2 The islands of the eastern Adriatic, where, according to St Jerome, a “large number of saints”3 lived in Late Antiquity, are no exception, suggesting that “Dalmatia – in the historical and maritime sense – did not remain on the sidelines of the development of early monasticism in the Mediterranean basin –”4, even if archaeology still struggles to prove the materiality of these settlements. More broadly, the Dalmatian and Istrian monasteries now appear to be essential relays for exchanges between the two shores of the Adriatic, for the understanding of maritime routes and the construction of the spheres of influence of the Papacy and the Byzantine East.5 The study of Dalmatian-Croatian monasticism, which was marked in 1963 by Ivan Ostojić’s monumental synthesis of the “Benedictines in Croatia”,6 has been profoundly renewed since the beginning of the 2000s thanks to various archaeological researches.7
2The present book follows up on this work and focuses on one of the medieval island foundations of historical Dalmatia to which historiography attaches certain importance for its role – real or supposed – in the various trans-Adriatic exchanges: the monastery of St Peter of Osor on the island of Cres, in the Croatian archipelago of Kvarner.
3Therefore, these proceedings gather all the papers presented during the International Study Days Saint Peter of Osor and Benedictine Monasticism in the Adriatic Space, which was held from the 1st to the 3rd of June 2018 in Osor. The scientific event marked the culmination of twelve archaeological research campaigns (2006-2017) carried out on the monastery of St Peter within the framework of the Franco-Croatian mission of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs8, the Croatian Ministry of Culture and the research programme of the École française de Rome.9 And the choice of the date of the meeting was not accidental, since 1er June is the day of Saint Gaudentius, Bishop of Osor, to whom the foundation of the monastery of Saint Peter in his episcopal city10 is traditionally attributed around 1018.
4Organised on the occasion of the traditional parish festivities, these days were intended to present, compare and contextualise on a wider geographical and chronological scale the knowledge acquired on the monastery of St Peter by crossing multidisciplinary research on Benedictine monasticism in the Adriatic area. The questions we are faced with concerning St Peter’s of Osor are numerous; they are of an archaeological nature, but above all of a historical nature, since they are supported by an often questionable and redundant historiographical tradition promoted by the Camaldolese annals of the 18th century. This volume regroups and confronts the renewed studies focused on the question of the origins of the monastery (in the first quarter of the 11th century?), its foundation by Gaudentius – the first abbot of St Peter’s (?), bishop of Osor in 1020, then a Benedictine monk at the monastery of Saint Mary of Porto Novo in Ancona –, on the figure of Gaudentius and his legacy, on the place and role of the Osorese monastery in the diffusion of reformist ideas and the implementation of the Church Reforms in the 11th century, as well as its links with the network improperly and too often still called Camaldolese for the 11th-12th c. More broadly, through the “prism” of St Peter’s of Osor, we wanted to address the question of the diffusion of Benedictine monasticism in Croatia and in the Adriatic space, the question of exchanges of artistic models and the circulation of people, ideas and representations.
5Saint Peter’s is part of an ecclesiastical complex organised around the cathedral of Osor, which seems to have played an important role in the religious history of the region from the 11th century onwards: medieval chronicles (Historia Salonitana) and modern chronicles (Annales Camaldolese) present Osor as one of the centres of ecclesiastical reform in the eastern Adriatic and as a link between the papacy and the Dalmatian metropolises (Zadar, Trogir and above all Split). Finally, the remains of St Peter’s Monastery, which are the result of several centuries of architectural, functional and memorial stratification, make it possible to study the monument over a long period of time and to compare its representations with the archaeological analysis of the monastic establishment, which fell into commendation around 144011 and whose last commendatory abbot is mentioned in modern documentation in 1729.12
6However, the radiant memory of Osor and the evidence of the monastery’s remains contrast in a surprising way with the rare mentions of the monastery of Saint Peter, which is not mentioned before the beginning of the 13th century in medieval documentation. This paradox is rich in lessons: from a methodological point of view, it demonstrates the interest and the difficulties of the multidisciplinary approach and of the dialogue between material and textual sources; it also questions the conditions of production, conservation and transmission of the archives, which are very discreet for certain monasteries and very abundant for others which produced numerous documents themselves (Saint-Chrysogon of Zadar, Saints-Cosmas-and-Damian on the island of Pašman, etc.). This difference, which is not proper only of the Adriatic space, draws attention to the role of archives and monastic chronicles in the memory and monumentalisation of certain foundations, but also in the cult practices and the construction of modern identities. The example of Saint-Pierre of Osor is an excellent illustration of this: according to ecclesiastical tradition, this monastery was founded in the first quarter of the 11th century by Gaudentius, from a local noble family, the future bishop of Osor, who had met Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolese, at the abbey of Pomposa, and who was himself in contact with Abbot Odilon, the reformer of Cluny.13 This interpretation was maintained in modern times by a Vita sancti Gaudentii, found on the island of Cres, and by the Annales Camaldulenses.14 How can we then explain the scarcity of mentions of the monastery of St Peter of Osor in medieval documentation? Do the structures of the 11th century correspond to this famous eremus open to the Adriatic, a real centre of the reform of the Church in the service of the papacy? Was the development of the monastery of St Peter in Osor part of the growing influence of the ecclesiastical complex and the cathedral of Osor, with which it eventually merged?
7The contributions gathered in this volume provide new and concrete answers to these questions, which are essential for the understanding of the ecclesial complexes of the eastern Adriatic. The first part proposes a global approach to the religious, artistic and social context in the Adriatic, which situates the study of St Peter of Osor in a network of peripheral churches and monasteries, and more broadly in the long history of Italian and Dalmatian monasticism. It allows us to understand how the bishop of Osor managed to set up a powerful seigniorial Church, in contact with several popes, on which the family of Bishop Gaudentius, originally from Split (or Ravenna15), disciple of Romuald, and presumed founder of the monastery of St Peter, seems to have exercised a major influence. The second part of the study focuses more specifically on the monastery of St Peter, its presumed founder and their legacy. The results of archaeological research have made it possible to make decisive progress in our knowledge of the origin of the monastery, its topography and its community. This is followed by a critical re-examination of hagiographic accounts, correspondence, inscriptions, conciliar acts, medieval charters and modern inventories, which proposes an “archaeology” of the memory and representations of the Monastery of Saint Peter. The relationships of the monastery with the civic community of Osor and the neighbouring islands allow us to reconstruct the process of territorialization of the settlement in the social, economic, cultural and religious context of this region of the Adriatic which was strongly connected to medieval Italy, Croatia and the Mediterranean.
8Ultimately, this publication does not aim to offer an exhaustive history of the monastery of St Peter of Osor (a specific monography on the excavations is in preparation), but the scientific meeting of 2018 laid the foundations for the first global approach to the monastic establishment. The publication of these proceedings illustrates the interest in crossing material and textual sources in order to better understand the genesis of an ecclesiastical complex and, more specifically, of a monastic site that took original forms, while being part of the history of the Dalmatian territory and monasticism. The analysis of the monastery of St Peter of Osor, its origins, its remodeling and its successive crystallizations is also of interest to specialists of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, whose monumental constructions and social practices – transmitted or concealed by medieval stratifications – now appear to be one of the sources of Benedictine monasticism in the Eastern Adriatic.
Bibliographie
Primary sources
Jérôme = Jérôme (Saint). Correspondance. Tome V, Lettres XCVI-CIX, texte établi et traduit par Jérôme Labourt, Paris, CUF, 1955 (Collection des universités de France. Série latine. – Collection Budé, 148), dernière édition 2002.
Annales Camaldulenses = Annales Camaldulenses Ordinis Sancti Benedicti: Quibus plura interseruntur tum ceteras Italico-monasticas res, tum historiam Ecclesiasticam remque Diplomaticam illustrantia / D. Johanne-Benedicto Mittarelli & D. Anselmo Costadoni Presbyteris & monachis e Congregatione Camuldulensi Auctoribus, Venice, 1755-1773.
Secondary sources
Bully – Čaušević-Bully 2011 = S. Bully, M. Čaušević-Bully, Le monachisme insulaire dans l’archipel du Kvarner (Croatie) entre le Ve et le XIe siècle. Projet de recherches archéologiques, 2011-2014, in Bulletin du centre d’études médiévales d’Auxerre, 15, 2011, p. 335-350, http://journals.openedition.org/cem/12017.
Bully et al. 2013 = S. Bully, M. Jurković, Chr. Sapin (dir.), Le monachisme insulaire du VIe à la fin du XIe siècle, in Hortus artium medievalium, 19, 2013, p. 7.
Codou – Lauwers 2009 = Y. Codou, M. Lauwers (dir.), Lérins, une île sainte de l’Antiquité tardive au Moyen Âge, Actes du colloque de Nice-Lérins, 21-23 juin 2006, Turnhout, 2009 (Collection d’études médiévales de Nice, 9).
Gioanni 2020 = S. Gioanni, Gouverner le monde par l’écrit. L’autorité pontificale en Dalmatie, Rome, 2020 (BEFAR, 386)
Jurković – Caillet 2007, 2009 = M. Jurković, J.-P. Caillet (eds), Velika Gospa près de Bale (Istrie), I, L’église Velika Gospa près de Bale, Zagreb-Motovun, vol. 1, 2007 (Dissertationes et Monographiae, 2), vol. 2, 2009 (Dissertationes et Monographiae, 3).
Jurković 2008 = M. Jurković, Benediktinci na sjevernom Jadranu [Les Bénédictins dans l’Adriatique nord], in I. Crnković (ed.), Opatijske crkvene obljetnice. Radovi sa znanstvenog skupa održanog 17-19 studenoga 2006, Opatija, 2008, p. 7-30.
Miladinov 2008 = M. Miladinov, Margins of solitude. Eremitism in Central Europe between East and West, Zagreb, 2008.
O´Carragáin 2009 = T.O´Carragáin, New light on early Insular monasteries, in Antiquity, 83, 2009, p. 1182-1186.
Ostojić 1963 = I. Ostojić, Benediktini u Hrvatskoj, vol. 3, Split, 1963.
Riera Rullan 2017 = M. Riera Rullan, El monacat insular de la Mediterrània occidental. El monastir de Cabrera (Balears, segles V-VIII), Barcelone, 2017 (Studia Archaeologiae Christianae, 1).
Schwerdroffer – Racinet 2004 = J. Schwerdroffer, P. Racinet (eds), Les Religieux et la Mer, Actes du colloque de Lille – Baie de Somme, 21-22 septembre 2001, Amiens, 2004 (Cahiers du CAHMER, 16).
Tabacco 1965 = G. Tabacco, Romualdo di Ravenna e gli inizi dell’eremitismo camaldolese, Atti della Seconda Settimana internazionale di studio (Mendola, 30 agosto-6 settembre 1962), Milano, 1965.
Uroda 2019 = N. Uroda, Arheološka baština pustinjaka i redovničkih zajednica u srednjoj Dalmaciji od njihovih početaka do 12. stoljeća [Le patrimoine archéologique des ermites et des communautés religieuses de la Dalmatie centrale de leurs origines au 12eme siècle], thèse de doctorat, Université de Zagreb, 2019.
Notes de bas de page
1 Codou – Lauwers 2009.
2 Among the extensive bibliography of recent years, the following are particularly noteworthy: Schwerdroffer – Racinet 2004; Bully et al. 2013; O’Carragáin 2009; Riera Rullan 2017.
3 Jerome, Letter 118, 5: Exstruis monasteria, et multus a te per insulas Dalmatiae sanctorum numerus sustentatur.
4 Bully – Čaušević-Bully 2011.
5 Gioanni 2020.
6 Ostojić 1963.
7 Uroda 2019; Jurković 2008; Jurković – Caillet 2007, 2009.
8 The Franco-Croatian collaboration on the monastery of St Peter of Osor is based on a partnership established since 2006 between the UMR 6298 ARTEHIS of the CNRS (Dijon) and the International Centre for Research on Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages of Zagreb-Motovun (IRCLAMA)/University of Zagreb; a partnership has been established with the French School of Rome since 2012 and with the University of Franche-Comté/UMR 6249 Chrono-Environment since 2015. The leadership of the St Peter's mission in Osor was provided by Sébastien Bully, Miljenko Jurković, Morana Čaušević-Bully and Iva Marić. Funding for the mission was provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Croatian Ministries of Culture and Research, the EFR and the Caritas veritatis foundation.
9 Entitled “Archaeological and historical studies of island monasteries and ecclesiastical sites from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the historical Dalmatian space: the example of the Kvarner archipelago (Croatia)”. This colloquium constituted the 7èmes Journées d'études monastiques, a series of scientific events initiated by the ARTEHIS laboratory of the CNRS, the CEM of Auxerre and the APAHJ, within the framework of the research programme “Monasteries in Western Europe (5th-10th century)”.
10 It should be noted that the ecclesiastical tradition of the foundation of the monastery of St Peter of Osor in 1018, which is sometimes postulated in various articles, is not attested by any medieval source.
11 Annales Camaldulenses, p. 258.
12 Ostojić 1963, vol. II, p. 154.
13 Tabacco 1965, p. 109, n. 111.
14 On a presentation and authenticity critique of modern sources: Miladinov 2008, p. 142-156; see also Stéphane Gioanni's contribution in this volume.
15 Tabacco 1965.
Auteurs
CNRS-UMR ARTEHIS-University of Bourgogne – sebastien.bully@u-bourgogne.fr
University of Franche-Comté-UMR Chrono-environnement – morana.causevic-bully@univ-fcomte.fr
University Lumière-Lyon 2, UMR 5189 HISOMA - stephane.gioanni@univ-lyon2.fr
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