Stefan’s Seal May Be Among Oldest Episcopal Seals in Eastern Adriatic

What changed

Polish and Croatian archaeologists found a 22-by-19-millimetre lead seal on the uninhabited Croatian islet of Lukovac in the Rab archipelago. Its Latin inscription reads “Stefan, bishop,” and researchers provisionally date it to the sixth or seventh century, making it potentially one of the oldest known episcopal seals from the eastern Adriatic.

Why it matters

This is more than a tiny name tag. A channel through the lead shows that a cord once passed through it before the seal was clamped shut, securing an official letter, legal act or package. The document is gone, but the seal preserves a small piece of the machinery that made authority portable: a bishop’s identity attached to something that could be sent and checked for tampering.

Stefan remains a name without a biography. No bishop matching him has been identified in surviving regional records, so the object may point to a church official whose work left no written trace.

Its archaeological setting gives the find unusual value. Many seals reached collections without reliable information about where they came from. Lukovac offers researchers the place, layer and surrounding context needed to test what the seal can say about the period.

The use of Latin adds another clue. Byzantine seals are often associated with Greek, while Latin remained in use in the empire’s western regions, including Italy. Italian clerical seals from the sixth and seventh centuries offer comparisons, but researchers have not found a direct eastern Adriatic equivalent. Further comparisons will determine whether Stefan’s seal is an isolated object or evidence of a wider administrative pattern.