engleski

Canons regular of Hebron in medieval Srijem

A few contemporary Croatian researchers of medieval church history have put forward and accepted a thesis about the existence of the monastery of Austin canons in Irig and another of Austin hermits in Banoštor (both places were situated in the medieval county and bishopric of Srijem). In the first two sections of this paper, these fictitious monasteries are shown to be the result of a misinterpretation of the sources in question (charters from 1393 and 1345 respectively), which in actuality deal with otherwise well-known monasteries in Irög near Pécs (county of Baranya) and in Bátmonostor (county of Bodrog). The remaining sections of the paper analyze two letters of pope Innocent III from 1198 which deal with the "canons of St. Abraham from the valley of Hebron" (canonici s. Abrahae de valle Ebron), present by that time in the formerly Benedictine abbey of Banoštor. This information is put in several relevant contexts: 1) history of the Crusader Hebron 1100-1187, its priory of canons regular and later bishopric ; 2) the continental routes of the first three Crusades, which crossed Srijem, as well as the relations of the Hungarian king Béla III (1173-1196) with the Holy Land ; 3) finally, the Byzantine-Hungarian confrontation over Srijem, especially the war of 1164-1167, which resulted in a short-lived Byzantine domination of the area. It was the Hungarian king Béla III and an archbishop of Kalocsa who handed over the abbey of Banoštor to the canons regular from Hebron, a decade before the fall of Hebron to the Muslims, and it appears that Banoštor was the canons' unique European daughter-house. The fact that the Hungarian king and the archbishop were able to interfere in ecclesiastical matters in Srijem in the late 1170s reveals the ambiguous nature of Byzantine domination there, which is usually assumed to have lasted up to the years following Emperor Manuel's death (1180). The canonical community of Banoštor briefly outlived that of Hebron, dissolving before the end of the 12th century. The Pope's eventual decision to replace it with "the canons regular who serve God according to the rule of St. Augustine", probably shows that the canons regular of Hebron did not yet accept Augustine's Regula ad servos dei in shaping their communal life.

Canons regular; Hebron; Medieval Srijem

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