The contribution of archaeology to the knowledge of the St Peter’s Monastery in Osor Origins, architecture and topography
Résumé
The archaeological research carried out on St Peter of Osor between 2006 and 2017 has made it possible to undertake a thorough examination of the origins of the monastery, its topography and the architecture of its abbey church. In contrast to the paucity of archival sources, the archaeological results give some credence to the accounts of the 18th c. of a monastery existing at the beginning of the 11th century, while opening up the possibility of a foundation in the last decades of the 10th century. This monastic urban foundation succeeded and expanded an earlier complex from the 800s, which consisted of a private church, perhaps associated with the family mausoleum of its founder, a tribunus from the Byzantine kastron of Osor. The small funerary building played a major role in the topography of the monastery in the year 1000, since the maintenance of the mausoleum for the monastic community of St Peter between the 10th(?) – 11th and the beginning of the 14th century determined the construction of a Romanesque cloister to the southeast of the abbey church.