Pilgrimage in Early Modern Catholicism

Pilgrimage—a journey to a sacred place as an act of religious devotion—was one of the great traditions of medieval Christianity, in the Latin and Greek churches and the Eastern and African traditions. Pilgrims of all social stations, from King Louis XII of France to the housewife Margery Kempe of King’s Lynn, traveled to holy places for a combination of physical healing, spiritual devotion, material requests, thanksgiving, and simple curiosity. Jerusalem, Rome, and Compostela in Spain were important international sites of pilgrimage, but there were numerous regional and local shrines as well. Most Christians visited a shrine at some time in their lives; many did so repeatedly. With the Reformation, from the 1520s, pilgrimage declined in Europe. Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther and Jean Calvin denied the efficacy of saintly intercession, the existence of sacred space, and the need for good works for salvation. In regions that became Protestant, shrines were destroyed, and religious journeys ceased, although there were some illicit survivals such as the pilgrimage to St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg in Ireland. But from the later sixteenth century in Catholic Europe, pilgrimage expanded again, a result of the Council of Trent’s confirmation of the validity of saints’ cults and relics in 1563, the great Roman jubilees of 1575 to 1650, and the readoption of traditional devotional activities by an increasingly confident and militant Catholic Church. Thousands of people visited healing shrines such as Sainte-Reine in Burgundy, and the jubilee years in Rome saw vast crowds in attendance. Medieval shrines such as the Mont Saint-Michel and Compostela were revived, but there were also new developments. There was an increased focus on local sanctuaries and many new shrines were founded, such as Sainte-Anne-d’Auray in western France. Shrines contributed to the building of confessional identity in regions of religious conflict such as Scherpenheuvel in the Low Countries and Altötting in southern Germany. Satellite or franchise shrines also expanded across the Catholic world: the Holy Land was recreated on mountainsides in Italy, and Guadalupe and Loreto traveled to the Americas with the Spanish and Portuguese imperial administrations. The new Catholic territories in the Americas and Asia developed their own pilgrimage traditions. An important role in pilgrimage was played by the new and resurgent religious orders of the Counter-Reformation; the mendicant orders in particular were active pilgrims in theology and practice, and also acted as shrine guardians in many places. Pilgrimage continued to be a popular practice in Catholicism across the globe down to the eighteenth century, when state regulations imposed greater restrictions on travel and new religious ideas became prominent. Only then did the flow of holy travelers slow.

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