Transgressive Devotion: Pilgrims and Borders in the French Revolutionary Era

Throughout the turbulent decades around 1800, Catholic pilgrims mingled piety and politics in the borderlands between German- and French-speaking Europe. While clerical leadership remained important, my current book project shows how lay Catholics often mobilized themselves as they faced the political and religious challenges of Enlightenment reform, revolution, and Napoleon’s authoritarian rule. Pilgrims’ actions affected power dynamics in the borderlands that were being reshaped dramatically by French expansion, from the takeover of Lorraine in 1766 to the time of Napoleonic hegemony. Pilgrimage thrived on the loopholes that formed in this process of expansion. Whether as individuals or in larger groups, pious travelers often transgressed territorial boundaries, which made their mobility both suspicious and hard to control for authorities. Among other things, pilgrims sought to evade passport controls, to cross provocatively into Protestant territories, and to visit shrines abroad, beyond the reach of anticlerical revolutionaries. In the ensuing struggles, Catholics pioneered key strategies for a post-revolutionary Church capable of coping with nationalism, imperial power, and secular as well as Protestant criticism.