This chapter focuses on the symbolic keys of a very long-standing model of perception of the
sea among the cultures of the Mediterranean, which includes a combination of events played
out on a cosmogonic stage: the deity’s domination over the sea as the incarnation of original
chaos, the differentiation between the places belonging to the land and to the sea, and the
imposition of unpassable limits on the latter with the perpetual command that it should never
transgress them. In the framework of this model, a phenomenon like that of a tsunami is
understood as the sea’s unlawful transgression of the limits imposed on it and as a return to
original chaos. This conceptual model was employed by Christian authors to represent the
tsunami occurring in the Eastern Mediterranean in AD 365 and to construct accounts, such as
the miracle of St Hilarion in Epidaurus (Croatia), of the miraculous detention of the waters
through the establishing of an impassable boundary. The same narrative scheme is revealed in
traditions emerging after the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami in 1755, for instance, the miracle
of Our Lady of the Palm in the southern Spanish city of Cadiz. These examples allow for a
reflection on the role of religious rituals in preserving the memory of catastrophes such as
tsunamis from a long durée perspectiv
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