Coastal sailing, landscape inspection, and the making of holy sites along the eastern Mediterranean sea-routes

Abstract

The present paper explores the ways in which holy sites located on the coastal landscape of the Mediterranean were experienced visually by sailors and pilgrims of the late medieval to early modern periods and raises questions as to the different modi whereby holiness was perceived as site-bound, depending on the expectations of the viewer. The focus is on two prominent places encountered in the coastal navigation of the eastern Mediterranean: one invested with a strong biblical pedigree (Mount Carmel), and another (Saint Nicholas of the Cats, Cyprus), whose miraculous aura stemmed from the presence of a vast number of cats deemed be exceptionally hardy in their battle against the marauding snakes. Despite their different lineages, both religious sites worked as important orientation marks for ships and came to be acknowledged by pilgrims as important cultic attractions whose worship basically consisted of the emotionally charged contemplation and detailed inspection of the geographic features they presented from the sea. Emphasis is laid on the dynamics whereby the visual dimension of Holy Land pilgrimage and the role played by coastal inspection in Mediterranean seafaring practice mutually interacted and contributed to the reading of landscape as an uninterrupted sequence of interrelated loca sancta.