Description
Book SynopsisFor millions of Catholic believers, pilgrimage has offered possible answers to the mysteries of sickness, life, and death. The Persistence of the Sacred explores the religious worldviews of Europeans who travelled to Trier and Aachen, two cities in Western Germany, to view the sacred relics in their cathedrals.
The Persistence of the Sacred challenges the narrative of widespread secularization in Europe during the long nineteenth century and reveals that religious practices thrived well into the modern period. It shows both that men were more active in their faith than historians have realized and how clergy and pilgrims did not always agree about the meaning of relics. Drawing on private ephemeral and material sources including films, photographs, postcards, correspondence, and souvenirs, Skye Doney uncovers the enduring and diverse sacred worldview of German Catholics and argues that laity and clergy had very different perspectives on the meaning of pilgrimage
Trade Review
“An eminently readable and very fruitful study.” -- Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri * Catholic Historical Review *
“The work offers readers new, engaging ways of thinking about German Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and provides a glimpse into the world of everyday German Catholics and their attempts to navigate the practice of their religious faith in the modern world.” -- Beth Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University * German Studies Review *
“Offering a tightly bounded history of Catholic pilgrimages to Trier and Aachen, Skye Doney has ably foregrounded how Catholicism in Germany, both as an institutional religion and as a mass movement of millions, sought to straddle faith and empirically-based science.” -- Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Flinders University * Journal of Religious History *
Table of Contents
Archive Abbreviations Acknowledgments Select Dates in German Catholicism: 1813–1939 Introduction 1. What They Practiced: Prayer, Songs, and Processions 2. Modern Miracles 3. The Sacred Economy 4. Rending Religiosity: Johannes Ronge and the 1840s Trier Controversy 5. Clerical Crossroads: Medical Verifiability of the Sacred 6. Historical Authenticity as Presence Conclusion: Verifying Presence Appendix 1: Selected Pilgrim Songs in Translation, 1839–1933 Appendix 2: Daily Pilgrim Totals in 1891 Appendix 3: Daily Pilgrim Totals in 1933 Appendix 4: Holy Coat Songs in Trier Hymnal, 1846–1955 Appendix 5: Pilgrimage Dates Appendix 6: 1933 Trier Pilgrimage Sick Pilgrim Complaints Appendix 7: 1867 Aachen Closing Ceremony Procession Bibliography
