Title: Looking for the Monastery St Peter of Osor in the Written Sources
Abstract: At first sight, the study of medieval written sources contrasts with the results of archaeology. Indeed, the monastery St Peter of Osor does not appear in the written documentation before the beginning of the 13th century, unlike other nearby island foundations mentioned in the written sources as early as the 11th century, such as St Peter in Neum islands (Ilovik) or St Michael in Sansigo (Susak). Moreover, mentions of the monastery St Peter of Osor are rare and often very brief in the medieval documentation. How can we interpret the silence of the written sources of the 11th and 12th centuries on the monastery St Peter of Osor? Without calling into question the archaeological research, this observation invites us to be cautious in the interpretation of the representations transmitted by the Vita beati Gaudentii (whose author and precise date are unknown) and by the monastic historiography (in this case the Annales Camaldules and Illyricum Sacrum written in the modern period). It also prompts us to question the nature of the relationship between the monastery and the cathedral of Osor and the conditions of production, transmission and archiving of the monastic documentation, which may have been partly lost or integrated into the episcopal documentation. Finally, it allows us to reflect on the meaning of the ecclesiastical reform, which is nourished both by its religious, material and legal foundations and by its hagiographic and historiographic representations.