Les « retraites insulaires » en Dalmatie du IV^e au XI^e siècle. Idéal ascétique, monastères et diplomatie pontificale

The representations of the “insular retreat”, between the Vth and the XIth century, reveal the centrality of the figure of the “island”, borrowed from the ancient culture and converted by the Christian monasticism. The ideal of the “Holy Island”, which the Lérins insular foundation constitutes a paradigm for the Early Middle Ages, shows that the Island remains the symbol of the retreat from the world, but being in a permanent relationship with the Christian world. On the other side of the Italian Peninsula, the Dalmatian monasticism, of which the written and archaeological sources are progressively revealing the importance, brings to light another function of the island foundations. The numerous Benedictine monasteries founded on the islands of Dalmatia and Kvarner appear indeed as a precursory element of the Gregorian reform in the Adriatic and as a new definition of the spheres of influence between Papacy and Byzantine East. It joins within the framework of the takeover of the region by the Roman Church which strengthened its authority through a variety of canonical decisions, family networks as well as some religious and cultural measures, which all together constitute the different instruments of the Reform of the Dalmatian Church during the Xth and XIth centuries.