This is a scholarly but accessible overview of a very important aspect of Catholic piety in the early modern period and one which acted as a significant boundary marker with Protestant regions. Given the havoc wrought on historical research by the COVID pandemic, the book also offers a salutary example of the possibility of producing excellent work by intelligent exploitation of printed sources. While the book contains a wealth of detail about many different aspects of pilgrimage, its declared focus is on a trio of very important Atlantic sites—namely Compostela, Mont Saint-Michel, and Lough Derg.
Chapter 1 offers a detailed and reflective consideration of the existing historiography as it relates to pilgrimage, examining such themes as sacred space, materiality, and early modern constructions of the self, as well as late medieval practices, the challenges posed by the theology of Protestant reform, and the evolution of pilgrimage in Counter-Reformation Europe. It is a meticulous and generous survey of existing scholarship and provides a solid underpinning to the exposition of the structure of the book.
The second chapter engages with the motivations of long-distance pilgrims. While the preponderance of males is hardly surprising, on certain routes quite significant numbers of women can be detected—19–22 percent of the pilgrims at Santissima Trinità in Rome, for instance, were female. On Atlantic routes, however, men evidently constituted a much higher percentage: Tingle notes that 98 percent of those hosted at the Hospital Real de Santiago were male. And men undertaking these journeys tended to be younger, with the pilgrimage frequently serving as a masculine rite of passage, proving the hardiness of the male body and the participants’ fitness to enter adult men's society. Very interestingly, they also very often travelled in groups, which has interesting implications for the manner in which preexisting hierarchies and relationships may have been maintained rather than subverted in these social nexuses. While clerical writings which stress the importance of penitence, of imitation of Christ, of visible contradiction of heresy, and, from the early seventeenth century, of reformation of interior disposition, indicate the renewed salience which pilgrimage held in Catholic Europe, they do not necessarily accurately reflect the motivations of secular pilgrims. Devotion and penitence certainly figured, but the single most common motivation on long-distance pilgrimage seems to have been the fulfilment of a vow as thanksgiving for saintly assistance (actual attempts to acquire a healing intercession were more likely to involve shorter journeys). The acquisition of indulgences was another common objective. Collective interests also spurred groups into motion, often as members of devotional confraternities, seeking intercession, in thanksgiving, or expressing Catholic identity. Particularly given the age of men involved, a desire for novelty and adventure in a socially sanctioned context was probably also important.
Chapter 3 takes as its subject the actual journeys to shrines and their evolution across the period which encompassed the French Wars of Religion and then a greater governmental desire to regulate pilgrimage to prevent vagabondage. Departure and return had their own particular rituals, often beginning from a specific site in the locality marked by a pilgrim cross. Travel to Compostela in particular could take months but the arduous geography which had to be traversed offered spiritual possibilities, with the landscape frequently “read” through a narrative structure based on the passion narrative which encouraged intimacy with the divine through prayer and suffering. Nor was there one sole shrine to be visited: long distance pilgrimages consisted of a linear series of shrines and sacred spaces providing indulgences and the opportunity to participate in the sacraments of the church. The topography of hospitality was critical to the pilgrim's progress, not least to the 2 percent or so who fell sick, and was recorded in great detail. Basic food and lodging were available, although at the cost of provoking local worries that this charity would be exploited by vagabonds masquerading as pilgrims.
Chapter 4 explores the experience of sacred time and space. The emotional and physical encounter with the sacred site or relics was of prime importance, helping to promote a sense of personal attachment to St. James in Compostela, for instance. Catholic Reformation reimagination of pilgrimage also involved the development of a more explicitly Christological and eucharistic framework of devotion and a Romanization of liturgy. Handbooks developed a strict historicity with a strongly anti-heretical cast, and indulgences played their part in this aggressive denial of Protestantism. Above all, the experience was tightly controlled and channeled through careful devotional rituals in highly structured spaces.
Chapter 5 considers the aftermath and impact of the sacred journey, which was amplified by numerous confraternities whose liturgies and rituals commemorated and echoed the original pilgrimage. Physical souvenirs, most commonly metal badges and lead ampullae, were sought by almost every pilgrim, both as a focus of their own memories and for distribution to family and friends to allow them to participate in the experience. Some returning travelers evidently stocked up in order to sell them on their journey home or in their native localities. Small pictures, often with an indulgence or invocation, were produced in huge quantities, although relatively few have survived. Certificates became the most important souvenir of all, official attestations of pilgrimage completion.
The conclusion to the volume stresses the importance of pilgrimage as a popular phenomenon in Catholicism, in particular from the later decades of the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. As the book demonstrates, in many different ways, the Catholic Reformation both insisted on continuity with the past and instituted significant changes. Pilgrimage represents a particularly salient example of the manner in which the Reformation could inspire both a modification of traditional behaviors and an intensified attachment to the target of Protestant criticism as an overt demonstration of anti-heretical identity. While the book ostensibly concentrates on three long-distance pilgrimages, it is certainly not limited to these. Indeed, this represents one of its strengths, because it is not really convincingly argued why these three sites of themselves make up a particularly coherent field of study. By ranging very broadly, however, the book contextualizes each of these pilgrimages within the wider and intense web of sacred journeys across Catholic Europe.
