engleski

Adriatic Maritime Pilgrimages and the “Re-Enchantment”

Based on ethnographic research of four different locations in Croatia and Monte Negro: Nin, Kukljica, Kornati, Perast, I will discuss how the processes of “re-enchantment” influenced maritime pilgrimages of the Adriatic Sea. Maritime pilgrimages are ritual practices that include boat travel for persons or icons as part of the actual ritual structure. Translocation of the sacred object and/or people also includes processing towards or over the sea to a location that has historical and/or folkloric connections with the object or the pilgrimage place. It emerges in specific geographical contexts where the population is oriented towards the sea where the basic resources and determinants of the local life, economics, culture and religion are found. Maritime pilgrimages are about the relationship between mariners’ religious beliefs, changes of everyday life, tourism, heritage, migrations, but also in some cases national identity, political economy, and the institutionalization and heritagisation of the practices and sites. Close dependence on the seascape for livelihood and communication shaped religious beliefs in this coastal region, including the promotion of a local saint to save them from dangers at sea, and help them in their work. With changes in everyday life and modernization that followed, touristification and heritagisation the importance of local religious beliefs and oral tradition waned. However, the seascape of maritime pilgrimage has been constantly reshaped by successive generations of pilgrims who have interpreted it in a different way adding new layers of meanings and resisting the changes in everyday lives. In this paper I would like to explore how the notion of “re-enchantment” helps to understand the persistence and re-invention of these practices within different political, social and economic contexts.

Adriatic ; Maritime Pilgrimages ; Re-Enchantment

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