Abstract: This case study uses five sixteenth-century Netherlandish travelogues of pilgrims to analyze how they experienced religious otherness in the Eastern Adriatic region and the Greek islands en route to the Holy Land. The region has not yet been much studied from this angle, thus the main aim of this study is to provide an impetus for future research comparing travel accounts coming from different traditions. While the five sources cannot truly be representative or generalizable for a conclusion, they did show that the Eastern Adriatic was described much more succinctly in many areas. The further one moved away from the known habitat of Catholicism, the more elaborate the descriptions become. The dichotomy between East and West is emphasized more strongly. Here, the East is not only to be understood as the Ottomans or the Islamic other, on the contrary, hardly anything is said about them and the focus is mainly on the similarities and differences to be found with the Greek or Orthodox faith. Consequently, one gets a much clearer picture of traditions and customs in Greek Orthodox churches than the religious traditions in Catholic churches in the Eastern Adriatic towns, where mere descriptions of relics, veneration of saints, and the like are mentioned. Reasons for this may include, on the one hand, the fact that the Eastern Adriatic region was possibly too similar to the pilgrims’ own Catholic traditions and therefore could not be of interest to potential readers if the pilgrims decided to publish their travelogue on their return. On the other hand, the Orthodox faith had such different ways and customs that this could prompt the pilgrims to emphasise religious otherness.

Keywords: Eastern Adriatic, Greece, Pilgrims

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