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.
