TO PUT THE CHURCH ON THE MAP: EARLY MEDIEVAL ECCLESIASTICAL STRUCTURES AND TENDENCIES IN THE REGION OF DUKLJA (6TH–11TH CENTURIES)

From Late Antiquity/Early Byzantium to the verge of the First Crusade, the territory of Praevalitana, later Doclea (Duklja) and Zeta, represented a cultural landscape of interaction between East and West, the Latin and the Orthodox Church. The development of ecclesiastical structures and the peculiarities of the denominational interplay in this geopolitical area remain, however, still a little-explored issue. This paper analyses this specific cultural and religious interconnection by implementing the following aspects and methods: new interpretational approaches to the toponomastic evidence and written sources, especially papal letters, digital processing of database-embedded data and its analysis, including the designing and application of distribution maps, and artistic interpretation of on-site monuments. The examination of cultural and geographical features of medieval Duklja, i.e. churches, monasteries, roads, in combination with the output from the source study, enable us to shape a new perception of what is regarded here as a “Sacred Landscape”.