Description
Book SynopsisPlastic Madonnas, packaged holy tours, and biblical theme parks can arouse discomfort, laughter, and even revulsion in religious believers and nonbelievers alike. Scholars, too, often see the intermingling of religion and commerce as a corruption of...
Trade ReviewAn engaging entrée into the ways in which the re-appropriated Traditions' and popular religiosity that the shrine spawned challenged the growing secularism and anti-clericalism of fin-de-siècle France.... Kaufman is especially good at showing how the Lourdes medical bureau, charged with verifying cures, was a particularly inspired and effective means of engaging the modern culture.... Kaufman also explores well the complicated role women played in the shrine's growth.... The experience of Lourdes chronicled by Kaufman might hold answers for our own day as we struggle to rediscover our traditions in the light of postmodern realities.
-- Mark Mossa * America *
This is a sophisticated, erudite, and provocative study of one of the world's most enduringly popular modern sites of Christian worship. In arguing for the transformative character of the shrine's amalgamation of spirituality and commerce, Kaufman offers a compelling explanation for its longevity and for the ever-growing market for mass-produced religious objects even today. Refusing to condescend to her subjects, in particular the thousands of desperate women who made their often painful way to the shrine, Kaufman has produced an important book that will be of great interest not just to historians of France but to anyone interested in the role of religion in the modern world.
-- Katrin Schultheiss * American Historical Review *
Breaks new ground for the study of Lourdes and French religious history.... For historians looking to understand the Lourdes phenomenon within the context of mass culture in fin-de-siècle France..., this book provides an insightful and persuasive argument for the centrality of Lourdes to the development of modern France. Historians of religion can only rejoice that their objects of interest have finally gone mainstream.
-- Sarah A. Curtis * H-France Review *
