Devout and Defiant

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.