Pesce, pesca e pescatori nei miracoli medievali

In this essay some ten of miracles relating to fishing and to the sea in Central and Southern Europe in medieval times are analyzed. From these miracles information about methods and strategies of fishing and about the most documented species of fish has been collected. Moreover, information can be found about the imagery connected to the sea, which is in most cases the place of ancestral fears and of the unknown and finally the place of spectacular punishments of saints, above all evangelists. A picture emerges where fishing is developed along rivers and in lakes rather than at sea and where the Mediterranean looks like the place of rescues from storms and from ship wrecks rather than an economic resource: this picture certainly comes from the type of documents that have been analyzed but maybe also from more general themes of an economic and nutitional nature