A lead seal scarcely larger than a coin has produced a name absent from the surviving history of a part of the Adriatic. On Lukovac, a small island in the Croatian Rab archipelago, archaeologists found a bulla inscribed STEPHANVS on one side and EPISC on the other. Researchers date it provisionally to the sixth or seventh century, and a Polish research news report published on November 1, 2026, describes it as a potentially exceptional early example of a bishop’s document seal from the eastern Adriatic.
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The abbreviation EPISC stands for the Latin episcopus, or bishop. A cord ran through the lead disc; once compressed, the seal could secure a written message or package and signal the authority of its sender. The surviving object is therefore not the text of a letter, but physical evidence that a document was authenticated and transmitted. The letter itself has not survived, and its contents must not be invented.
The find is unusually valuable because its excavation context is recorded. Many comparable seals were separated from their original locations long before modern study, leaving historians with a name but little idea of where the object circulated. At Lukovac, the layer and associated settlement provide a firmer basis for interpretation, even though a received seal does not establish that its sender lived on the same island.
The identity of Stefan remains unresolved. Researchers have noted a long gap in the surviving list of bishops connected with the nearby island of Rab, but the bulla cannot yet be assigned confidently to that diocese. A bishop from another Adriatic center could have dispatched a document to the settlement. Its Latin lettering and decorative elements provide clues, not a complete biography.
The island itself has yielded remains of a fortified settlement, an early Christian church and objects associated with wider Mediterranean exchange. A written authority operating across such networks illuminates how religious and administrative power could reach small coastal places. Christianity in this region was not confined to monumental urban churches; communication and documentary practice also mattered to communities at the margins of larger political centers.
The discovery complements recent efforts to use ancient letters to identify a lost church near Venice. In one case a text helps guide archaeological investigation; here an archaeological object preserves a sender’s name when the text is missing. Both reveal how fragmentary the historical record remains.
References
- Polish Press Agency / Nauka w Polsce, November 1, 2026, including the archaeological team’s statements: Bishop’s seal discovered on Lukovac.
- HeritageDaily, November 1, 2026: 1,400-year-old bishop’s seal discovery.