Naslov
Croatian Regions, Cities-Communes, and Their Population in the Eastern Adriatic in the Travelogues of Medieval European Pilgrims

Autori
Ladić, Zoran

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Poglavlja u knjigama, znanstveni

Knjiga
Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: Image of the Town in Narrative Sources: Reality and/or Fiction? Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History, 2017

Urednik/ci
Benyovsky Latin, Irena ; Pešorda Vardić Zrinka

Izdavač
Hrvatski institut za povijest

Grad
Zagreb

Godina
2017

Raspon stranica
359-393

ISBN
978-953-7840-30-3

Ključne riječi
Dalmatia, Istria, the Late Middle Ages, Pilgrim Travelogues

Sažetak
In this article, based on the information gathered from a dozen medieval pilgrim travelogues and itineraries, my aim has been to indicate the attitudes, impressions, and experiences noted down by sometimes barely educated and at other times very erudite clerical and lay pilgrims, who traveled to the Holy Land and Jerusalem as palmieri or palmarii ultra mare and wrote about the geographical features of the Eastern Adriatic coast, its ancient and medieval monuments, urban structures, visits to Istrian and Dalmatian communes, contacts with the local population, encounters with the secular and spiritual customs and the language, the everyday behavior of the locals, and so on. Such information is contained, to a greater or lesser extent, in their travelogues and journals. To be sure, this type of sources, especially when written by people who were prone to analyse the differences between civilizations and cultural features, are filled with their subjective opinions: fascination with the landscapes and cities, sacral and secular buildings, kindness of the local population, ancient monuments in urban centres, the abundance of relics, and the quality of wine, fish, and other foods, but also amazement, prejudices, misunderstandings, and rejection concerning the society, people, and customs in this region. First of all, one must say that the descriptions of the Eastern Adriatic coast primarily depended on the intellectual mindset and erudition of their authors. Thus, one may generally say that those pilgrims who had started on a journey to the Holy Land exclusively for religious reasons, especially clerics, were less into descriptions and barely prone to subjective assessments of the cultural and intellectual aspects of the Eastern Adriatic societies. And vice versa, secular noblemen and magnates, rich patricians from the Italian Peninsula and other members of secular social elites, for whom pilgrimage to the Holy Land was a sort of adventure, especially in the period of humanism, their desire to see new regions often seems more important than the pilgrimage itself, and their peregrinatio could also be related to business interests. Intensely coloured by a secularly oriented, Renaissance-humanist worldview, in which travel was considered as a chance for learning and broadening one’s horizons, or even as a holiday, such pilgrims were far more likely to express very subjective opinions without much reserve, and their diaries and travelogues are full of generalized and subjective descriptions of the customs, languages, and people, as well as rather superficial descriptions of the cities they visited on their way, including those on the Eastern Adriatic coast.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Povijest

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