Devout and Defiant
How Pilgrims Shaped the Franco-German Borderlands in the Age of Revolutions
Kilian Harrer
How Catholic pilgrims in an era of revolution challenged state authority and redefined the practice of their faith
In the days of the French Revolution, as zealous government officials sought to sweep away the vestiges of a less enlightened age, they made a concerted effort to clamp down on religious “superstition” and to fix modern territorial boundaries. Catholic pilgrims on the western edge of German-speaking Europe, however, refused to let worldly barriers stand in the way of their devotional practices. As Kilian Harrer reveals in this groundbreaking book, pilgrimage became a form of transgressive devotion that spurred religious renewal.
By the hundreds of thousands, pilgrims exposed the limits of state authority as they traveled to shrines and holy sites across the borderlands that stretched from Luxembourg in the north to Alsace and Switzerland in the south. These Catholics evaded passport controls, crossed provocatively into Protestant territories, and went abroad to visit shrines beyond the reach of anticlerical officials. Pilgrims and pilgrimage organizers reshaped the politics of religion by grappling with shifting borders, dramatic regime change, and police repression. In the end, they reoriented Catholicism itself as they boldly confronted the state-led policing of borders and worship.
An original and substantial contribution based on archival work of truly impressive depth and breadth. Harrer explains in lucid prose why Catholicism in general, and pilgrimages in particular, retained – and expanded – their appeal during a period of Enlightenment and revolution, despite the hostility of the authorities.- Tim Blanning, Emeritus Professor of Modern European History, University of Cambridge, editor of The Oxford History of Modern Europe
- H-FranceFills important lacunae on the history of pilgrimage, which often skips from pre-Revolutionary Baroque pilgrimage to its mid-nineteenth century revival. Beyond the primary arguments about spatiality and transgressing borders, this book places revolutionary- and Napoleonic era pilgrimages and Marian apparitions in their broader historical context. They belong to neither the Baroque nor the nineteenth century camp. Instead, they maintained aspects of both, showing that pilgrimage evolved. It did not simply disappear and then revive. Scholars interested in the history of pilgrimage, confessional identities, and how everyday people responded to the new border regimes of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods will gain much from this monograph. So will those with a more general interest in the cultural history of the time period and region.
Kilian Harrer is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, Germany.
