The Adriatic sound world: listening to the sea (1300–1650)

This article explores the Adriatic Sea as a historically specific sound world in the late medieval and early modern periods. Focusing on the eastern Adriatic littoral and archipelago, it asks how travelers and local observers described the sounds of the sea and what cultural meanings they attached to its many states. Drawing on pilgrimage and related travel narratives, complemented by local narrative sources, the article treats these texts as both records of experience and theologically mediated reconstructions of past journeys. Situated at the intersection of sensory history and auditory history, the study combines close reading of sensory language with attention to distal touch. It argues that the Adriatic functioned as an acoustic threshold into pilgrimage, a moral and theological environment in which travelers learned to hear danger, community, and environmental change. Storms turned ships into resonant chambers of fear, while dead calm produced a paradoxical state of audible stillness and immobilized travel. Over time, the sea’s murmur became a sound that faded into the background yet could be reactivated in moments of nocturnal vigilance and monastic contemplation. The article thus adds a maritime dimension to recent work in sensory and auditory history.