This volume by Elizabeth Tingle is the culmination of many years of research on the subject of early modern long-distance pilgrimage, and it builds on two significant articles in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society and the Journal of Religious History respectively (both published in 2018). Her task is to discover what happened to the tradition of international pilgrimage in the Atlantic region of Europe during the period of the Reformations, with its primary focus being on pilgrims from France and the British Isles. While Tingle also adverts to a number of smaller shrines, she directs her attention, in the main, to three major sites: Compostela, Mont Saint-Michel and St Patrick's Purgatory, Lough Derg, in the north-west of Ireland.

The sixteenth century, her period of departure, witnessed a number of monumental challenges to the tradition of late medieval pilgrimage, and not just from Protestant reformers. Tingle recalls, for instance, how there were no canonisations between 1523 and 1588, and also how many saints’ Lives were shorn of their more dubious or fantastical elements. St James of Compostela himself would get caught in the cross-hairs of this development when the new Roman Breviary issued by Pius v in 1568 stuck largely to biblical texts and omitted details of the legendary journey of St James to Spain with nine disciples, on which the cult of Santiago was based (p. 27). There were also works such as Cristóbal de Villalón's Viaje de Turquía (1557) which concluded that the devout are better off staying at home rather than visiting the saint. This is essentially the point of Erasmus’ fictional character Menedemus when he asks Ogygius why he feels the need to travel from Antwerp to England to visit a shrine of the Virgin: ‘But could not our Virgin Mary have done as much for you here?’ For de Villalón, the Ten Commandments are the road that leads to heaven, rather than any other penitential camino (p. 45). Moreover, by the sixteenth century, ecclesiastical or secular courts were rarely imposing long-distance pilgrimages on those who came before them (p. 55).

And yet international pilgrimage experienced a revival in the late 1500s, and more particularly, from the early seventeenth century. Tingle proposes three factors that help explain why: pilgrimage's link to confessional identity and an explicit rejection of Protestantism; its masculine nature; and its validation of a sacrally charged universe. Regarding the first of these, Tingle cites an interesting example of how the destruction of shrines and relics during the sixteenth century could be interpreted (spun) in ways that reinforced, rather than weakened Catholic identity in the face of iconoclasm. In the case of the destruction of the shrine and relics of St Martin of Tours in 1562, local clergy came to view this as a providential act – here God was using the actions of heretics to bestow upon the saint the crown of martyrdom (pp. 61–2). The pursuit of pilgrimage as a self-conscious act of confessional defiance is borne out in the account of Domenico Laffi, the Italian priest who visited Compostela three times in the 1660s and 1670s. One of the incidents Laffi mentions on his journey to the shrine has a very sharp confessional edge. In describing the Corpus Christi procession at Orthez, ‘a village full of heretics’, Laffi makes mention of ‘heretic scoundrels … laughing like lunatics while the procession passed’.

With the revival of pilgrimage in the 1600s and 1700s also came increasing regularisation, greater scrutiny from clergy and secular rulers, and a reconceptualisation of what lay at the heart of the exercise. For one thing, the amount of paperwork required increased. Philip ii of Spain, in a bid to curb the activities of false pilgrims, introduced a licence for all pilgrims visiting Spain. Later, under Louis xiv of France, pilgrims were faced with needing a certificate from their parish priest, authorisation from their bishop and likewise from a local royal officer. Meanwhile, some ecclesiastical authorities moved to discourage overnight pilgrimages, which could lead to sinful behaviour. In 1660 Bishop Lescot of Blois prohibited all processions that could not be accomplished between sunrise and sunset on a single day (p. 7). They also made every effort to eliminate pilgrimage practices that they deemed ‘superstitious’ (p. 42). The advent of the pilgrimage booklet would assist in the effort to purify pilgrimage from persistent practices no longer considered fitting in this new age (p. 148).

Furthermore, the very raison d’être of pilgrimage was to be the focus of efforts towards reform. Tingle cites Dominique Julia who writes of an effort to redefine the emotional engagement with the sacred from touching towards sight – the ‘devotional gaze’ rather than the ‘panicky and wild touching’ of the relic (p. 115). But there was also an interior shift in emphasis; in Tingle's words, from pilgrimage as a response to an ‘emergency’ to pilgrimage as a devotional exercise (p. 9). The new literature available to pilgrims increasingly emphasised traversing an inner landscape (often modelled on the narrative of Christ's passion) just as much as an outer, geographical one (p. 92). Furthermore, reception of the sacraments, en route to the shrine, and at the shrine itself – not just confession, but communion as well – now became a much more regular feature of pilgrimage practice, increasingly tied to the acquisition of plenary indulgences. These practices were later reinforced when the pilgrim returned home through membership of the large number of confraternities that were founded during this period. There were also changes to the interiors of some churches, the re-location of relics at a remove from the high altar and the increasing importance of the reliquary itself in which they were housed. Tingle is careful to note, however, that these new Catholic practices ‘were not imposed from above, but adopted and popularised because they were valued for their display and, above all, efficacy at the grassroots level’ (p. 217).

While Tingle cites Phillipe Martin's observation that pilgrimage was a ‘sufficiently malleable activity to be reinvented in all periods’ (p. 220), what I am nevertheless more often struck by is not so much the evolution of pilgrimage practices (which, as we have just seen, is well documented), but the resilience and persistence of attitudes, gestures and behaviours over the longue durée, even down to our own day. In 1668 Robert Quatremaire's pamphlet L'Histoire abrégée du Mont Saint-Michel warned pilgrims not to get too caught up with the surrounding physical landscape of their journeys, cautioning against ‘the motive of satisfying human curiosity when on such a holy journey’; in Tingle's words, ‘visiting such a place was not about sight-seeing’ (p. 92). I smiled as I read this, recalling how many times I have heard similar cautionary words being uttered by zealous spiritual directors on pilgrimages to European shrines in the 1980s and 1990s. Likewise, Tingle notes the persistence of ex-votos, what Mary Laven calls ‘archives of miracles’, at shrines during this period (p. 157). In this, the Bavarian shrine of Altötting in Bavaria is a good example of where one can view ex-votos dating from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries. Another form of votive was graffiti, such as on the walls of the cathedral at Oviedo from the 1600s (p. 160). This practice, of course, persists to the present day in some shrines, as, for instance, at the mountain village shrine of Our Lady of Letnica in Kosovo where they can still be seen on the walls behind the sanctuary. In these respects, as in many others, plus ça change …

Elizabeth Tingle has written an important book. It will be required reading for all who are interested in religious belief in the early modern period. Besides its central arguments, it also offers some fascinating asides that will either delight, or horrify, depending on your tastes. For the account of how pilgrims visiting the shrine of Saint-Hubert in the Ardennes were relieved of animal bites (not for the squeamish) it is alone worth consulting the book in your university library; or better still, ordering your own copy.