The following extract is taken from the third chapter of ‘Highly Holy’, in which both the phenomenon of pilgrimage and its relationship to various Marian shrines from across the Pyrenees is discussed. Another extract from this chapter will be given next month, focussing on lesser-known examples, however below is presented a brief analysis of the premier Marian site in the region, that of Lourdes, whose comparatively late origins in the nineteenth-century are belied by its rapid and enduring popularity.
Extract from Chapter Three, ‘Sacred Trails and Marian Tales’.
In the Winter of 1867, Irish author Denys Shyne Lawlor embarked on a tour of several pilgrimage sites within Landes, the Central and Western Pyrenees, recording her observations in 1870.[1] Whilst Lourdes was clearly the focus of her attention, a great many other shrines devoted to ‘Our Lady’ make an appearance, as well as sites devoted to Saint Savin, Saint Aventin d’Aquitaine, Saint Bertrand de Comminges and Saint Vincent de Paul; the majority holding foundational dates from the late Medieval to Early Modern period and host a steady flow of pilgrims from the local region and across France. Marian shrines appear to be the most popular form of pilgrimage site in the Central Pyrenees (as is generally the case in Western Europe) and the restoration of Catholicism across the Pyrenees in the seventeenth century (following the decline of the Huguenots) helps to explain the remarkable renaissance of Marian shrines in this area dating from this period.[2] In using Lawlor as the foundation for an analysis of many of these sites,[3] it is possible to present both first-hand accounts of pilgrim activity towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, thus presenting a living rather than merely an archaeologically extant tradition, and also information drawn from those priests and villagers who were involved in the direct care of these shrines at the time of Lawlor’s writing.
Having already addressed the phenomenon of Roncesvalles, the Marian site of Lourdes deserves close attention due to its rapid ascent as the premier Pyrenean pilgrimage site over the past century and a half, illustrating the fervour, faith and pageantry more typically associated with Medieval shrines in their heyday.[4] The details of the young shepherdess Bernadette Soubirous’ 1858 Virgin visions in the grotto of Massabielle are already briefly discussed in Chapter Two but can be summarised thus. Between the 11th February and the 16th July 1858 Bernadette saw the same vision eighteen times in the Grotto of Massabielle, a small cave which then lay outside of Lourdes on common ground, on the left bank of the Gave de Pau river. She would see a ‘lady’ standing on a rose bush in a niche above the cave’s opening. The ‘lady’ would command Bernadette to drink and wash herself in the water which flowed from a spring inside the grotto, and also to command the local priests to build a shrine within the grotto. The ‘lady’ eventually introduced herself as being the Immaculate Conception, which convinced one local priest named Dominique Peyramale that Bernadette’s visions were real; he bought the land (with the help of the local bishop) in 1861 and set about making the area accommodating to pilgrims.
With the growth of the communication network in the nineteenth century, news of Bernadette’s visions travelled far and wide across France, resulting in many visitors (both devout pilgrims and the curious) making their way to Lourdes in August 1858 ‘from as far away as Paris to see the peasant girl who was said to be in mysterious contact with the Blessed Virgin. Many came to pray and atone for their sins or to seek out the healing powers of a spring that Bernadette had discovered during one of her visionary encounters.’ [5] [6] At this point the visions had not been officially authorised by the Catholic Church, nor was a shrine built. Thus, the first Lourdes pilgrims were flocking to look upon and pray with the young girl to whom the Virgin Mary had apparently appeared no less than eighteen times between February and July that same year. This intensely direct encounter with a human intermediary between us and the divine is difficult for many to comprehend in the secular age, and it carries something from a far earlier and more miracle-imbued era, which no doubt played a role in the Church’s speedy recognition of Bernadette’s visions in their eagerness to capitalise on Lourdes’ sudden fame in the wake of France’s then-contemporary Catholic revival. By 1862 number of gathering crowds in Lourdes forced the hand of the local bishop to proclaim the apparitions authentic, and a mere decade later the Paris-based ‘Augustinian Fathers of the Assumption’ made Lourdes the site of their national pilgrimage, a move which was greatly aided by improvements in railway networks and the Catholic popular press. This transformed Lourdes into a site of mass pilgrimage and by the early years of the twentieth-century, nearly half a million pilgrims were making their way to Lourdes on church-sponsored pilgrimages, the bulk of which were made up of women from rural France. Very quickly the simple grotto shrine was transformed into something far more monumental which offered highly orchestrated rituals, and the sleepy town of Lourdes itself quickly became developed into a tourist city which offered every religious souvenir and service imaginable. Unlike many other pilgrimage sites referred to in this chapter, Lourdes does not reflect locally based devotional practises which gather and accrue fame, gradually responding to increased attention in their infrastructure and architecture; Lourdes was swiftly transformed by industrial ecclesiastical development from a place of localised religious interest into one of organised mass spectacle, aided not only by evolving transport networks but also by the Church’s use of contemporary advertising in the popular press. This makes it something of an anomaly in the story of Pyrenean pilgrimage, but by far its most successful example and reflective of the newly emerging commercial society of the late-nineteenth century.[7]
At the time of Lawlor’s visit in 1867, Lourdes had been a site of national religious interest for less than a decade and had yet to be recognised by the Augustinian Fathers as their pilgrimage site of choice. Thus it is an early Lourdes that we find in her writing and one in which Bernadette had, at that point, been absent from for only a year, having joined the Sisters of Charity of Nevers at their Saint Gildard Convent in Nevers.[8] [9]Interestingly, it would appear that Lourdes, whilst having remained relatively unremarkable in its civic status prior to Bernadette’s visions, possessed a culture of piety unequalled in the surrounding region. Lawlor quotes (and translates) a section of de Lagrèze’s 1866 ‘Chronique de la Ville et du Château de Lourdes’, in which it is reported that:
Almost the entire population [of Lourdes] belongs to some pious confraternity. The workmen, united under the name of brothers, place their trade under the Divine protection, and reciprocate Christian relief and temporal assistance. A common box receives a weekly offering from each workman, while in health, to be repaid when he is in sickness or poverty, or at his death, when his funeral expenses are discharged, and his remains conveyed by the confrères to their last home. Each confraternity has a chapel of its own in the church, from which it takes its name, and which it supports by a small collection on Sundays. The confraternity of Notre-Dame des Grâces is composed of labourers; that of Notre-Dame du Mont Carmel of slaters; that of Notre-Dame de Monserrat of masons; that of St. Anne the joiners; that of St. Lucy of dressmakers; that of the Ascension of stone-cutters; that of the Blessed Sacrament of the church-wardens; those of St. John and St. James of all those who have received those names in baptism […] This book has shown how numerous are her [the Virgin Mary] sanctuaries from Sarrance to Garaison; and at Lourdes, in the old parish church, all the altars are dedicated to the Virgin.[10]
It should be noted that the parish church referred to in this extract is that of St Pierre, which was located on the town’s market square (now called the Place Peyramale) but destroyed by fire in 1904. Thanks to the economic boost provided by pilgrimages a new parish church was already under construction in 1875 and was completed in 1903, housing Bernadette’s baptismal font and after the loss of the old parish church it immediately became the primary parish church in Lourdes.
To return to the first pilgrim building within the vision site, the original chapel sanctuary (which was located directly above the actual grotto itself and completed in 1866, later known as ‘the crypt’), soon became unable to deal with the sheer volume of pilgrims which flocked to Lourdes. In response to the ever-growing number of visitors, this first church at Massabielle had a Basilica built atop it between 1862 and 1871, being consecrated in 1876 and devoted to the Immaculate Conception. Lawlor provides us with a first-hand description of the Basilica during its construction and of crypt, the latter being (at the time) close to completion and already in use:
One enters [the basilica] by two large long vaulted galleries. The first impression is one of astonishment: a forest of pillars and arches, crossing each other at every point, supports a low ceiling. Through these multiplied archings the various altars are half seen, whilst the light of day streams dimly through the narrow windows. The effect is bewildering, until the eye gradually becomes accustomed to it, and then one discovers the most admirable harmony in all that apparent confusion. A line of confessionals is placed along the wall at the western extremity; and as these are generally surrounded by groups of penitents, words are not needed to impress upon the visitor the obligations and privileges of the place. The plan of the chapel is of that peculiar type of which the Cathedral of Alby is the best known example: a nave flanked by ten lateral chapels in place of aisles, and terminating in a chevet, with five polygonal chapels. Two sacristies are substituted for the chapels of the first or parallel bay of the choir, which is wider than the bays of the nave. The crypt, occupying the width of the nave above, is divided into a nave and aisles by fourteen pairs of coupled marble columns, with stone base and capital common to each pair. […] The architecture of the crypt is not overloaded with ornament. All is simple, grand and solid, such as befits a structure whose strength has been multiplied to sustain the immense weight overhead. The general character of the crypt is solemn and severe, producing upon the mind a profoundly religious impression. I know few places in which recollection and prayer seem to be more spontaneous and congenial.[11]
In 1899, the ‘Rosary Basilica’ or ‘Lower Basilica’ was completed in the Byzantine style, capable of holding up to one and a half thousand worshippers at any one time. This not only eased the strain on the ‘Upper Basilica’ but also goes some way to demonstrate the numbers of pilgrims which could be found circulating around the growing Lourdes pilgrim complex. The centenary celebrations of Lourdes in 1958 also saw the completion of the ‘Basilica of St. Pius X’, otherwise known as the ‘Underground Basilica’, which was constructed partly in expectation of the crowds drawn to the pilgrimage site during this anniversary event. In contrast to the delicate Neo-Gothic and Byzantine forms of the other two basilicas, this new largely subterranean basilica was constructed entirely out of concrete and is capable of hosting up to twenty-five thousand people.
The grotto itself bears some evidence of enlargement, primarily in terms of masonry cuts along the walls and presumably to deal with pilgrim crowds, however all evidence points towards its essential form having been preserved since Bernadette’s visions. Lawlor provides another first-hand account of the grotto’s simple alterations in 1867:
By degrees the land about the grotto was made level and laid out with suitable taste: an esplanade created in front by the sand that was taken from the bed of the river was covered with green sods, and rendered an agreeable place of repose for the visitors; a large iron grating was placed before the grotto, and a handsome marble basin erected for the fountain, into which it now pours itself through three distinct spouts or tubes, pouring forth no less than 122,000 litres in the course of the day.[12]
Whilst the primary object of these waters to be drunk and ‘bathed in’ (i.e. rubbed on the appropriate body part), many litres would be carried away by pilgrims, initially in their own containers but it would not take long for Lourdes to being selling ‘pilgrim flasks’ designed and decorated specifically for this purpose. Today these range from sculpted glass flasks to simple plastic containers, the latter of which can carry anything up to five litres.[13] The spring itself is located at the rear end of the cave and above the entrance a statue of the Virgin Mary (in the form now known as ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’) stands in a niche where Bernadette claimed to have seen the ‘lady’. Originally, the wild rose bush which featured in her visions grew there. However, much like in early days of popular pilgrimage discussed above, it was quickly destroyed by the first Lourdes pilgrims, many of whom wanted a souvenir from grotto in the form of a thorny branch or blossom. A new bush was subsequently planted but this marked the beginning of the formalised and commercial pilgrim souvenir trade which now dominates Lourdes.[14] From the start, the grotto’s spring waters became subject to claims of curative properties, ranging from reversing the effects of blindness and badly reset joints after dislocation, unidentified illnesses in infants, sores, dyspepsia, cholera, swellings in the throat which prohibited swallowing and many other ailments. At that time, many of those who were cured were assessed by professional doctors who claimed to be both convinced of and baffled by the efficacy of the waters, which led to the grotto’s growing reputation as a site of divine healing.[15]
As can be seen, in one hundred years Lourdes had been transformed from a worshipful cavern outside of the town itself to a large pilgrim complex corresponding to its status as a site of national pilgrimage. Perhaps the greatest draw towards Lourdes lay in its allegedly curative waters, most particularly the baths, into which part of the Grotto’s spring was diverted, as well as to standpipes and fountains for drinking and for filling containers. Of all the ailments which were said to be cured by the Lourdes waters, those relating to eyes appear to be the most common, and an interesting linguistic suggestion has been put forward to explain this ocular preference:
The Pyrenean word for fountain or spring, hount,[16] also means an eye and there was a widespread folk belief that such places provided a window into the underworld. When a spring dried up, it was often said that the eye of the fairy had closed. The development of Lourdes as a healing shrine tapped into this rich local tradition that mixed pagan animism and Christian devotion.[17]
The first baths were built on the western side of the grotto in 1862; by 1880 a wooden bathhouse was in existence housing fourteen baths which serviced an almost continuous line of pilgrims. In a report which echoes something of the horror with which Erasmus’ Gratian encountered one of the relics of Saint Thomas Beckett in Canterbury many centuries earlier.[18] The author Emile Zola wrote in his 1893 novel ‘Lourdes’ that: ‘As some hundred patients passed through the same water, you can imagine what a horrible slop it was at the end. There was everything in it: threads of blood, sloughed-off skin, scabs, bits of cloth and bandage, an abominable soup of ills.’[19] This dubious level of hygiene did nothing to deter the faithful, who queued every morning and afternoon to enter the baths, which were renovated and extended in 1891, 1955, 1972 and 1980. Currently, there are seventeen separate bathing cubicles. Interestingly, the aforementioned tendency towards female pilgrims continues to this day, particularly with regard to bathing:
Pilgrims continue to queue every morning and afternoon at the bathhouses beyond the Lourdes grotto. Around 400,000 a year brave the cold waters, with female bathers greatly outnumbering men. After a long wait, they undress in a small changing area and then go behind the curtain into one of the small individual marble baths. Wrapped in a cold towel and prayed over, each bather is then guided down into the water by two or three helpers and, if able to do so, sits down in the bath. Many more pilgrims fill up containers at a row of standpipes beneath the basilica to which water from the grotto is piped. [20]
Lastly, it is worth briefly examining the element of spectacle at Lourdes, something which larger pilgrimage sites make full use of and which dramatically amplifies the experience for visitors in terms of elevating the sensation of being in the presence of the sacred. Direct interaction via the daily Mass as well as the very physical contact with Bernadette’s legacy through bathing form an important part of Lourdes’ attraction, however another form of ritual which constitutes a key aspect of sacrality is found in the twice-daily processions.[21] The first of these takes place at five o’clock in the afternoon with the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, which begins in the meadow across the river from the grotto and is led by ailing pilgrims who are followed by a priest carrying the monstrance containing the Blessed Sacrament. Around the Sacrament the pilgrims carry candles and censors, whilst behind others carry the banners of their various dioceses, and at the back of the procession are doctors. The entire procession crosses the river and parades down the wide avenue (or ‘esplanade’) towards the Basilica of St. Pius X, during which prayers, hymns and chants take place in several different languages. Once everyone has assembled within the Basilica the Adoration of the Eucharist is followed by the Blessing of the Sick by the priest. The first recorded instance of this procession took place in 1874.[22]
The Marian Procession or ‘Torchlight Procession’ first took place in 1872,[23] and due to its visual effect has become the more famous of the two daily events. Every evening at nine o’clock crowds of pilgrims gather outside of the grotto, each carrying a candle contained within a paper wind protector, on which the ‘Immaculate Mary’, the traditional song of Lourdes, is printed.[24] At the head of the procession a statue of the Virgin Mary is carried while behind the crowds of pilgrims walk in groups behind their pilgrimage banners. The rosary is recited throughout in a number of languages and all sing the ‘Immaculate Mary’ hymn, with intercessions and the Laudate Mariam periodically invoked. This takes place while the procession makes its way from the grotto to the square in front of the Rosary Basilica, where a Latin blessing is given by the priest and all exchange the sign of peace.[25]
Before leaving Lourdes for its Marian sanctuaries in the immediately surrounding area, it is worth quoting a lengthy and romantic description by Lawlor which sums up the large numbers of devout pilgrims that flocked to this town even in its infancy as a pilgrimage site:
The long days of the year are days of pilgrimages.[26] Then the winding road from the town resembles the course of a river, rolling along its waves of pilgrims. Never is the grotto left for an hour without a votary; the succession of the faithful makes prayer and thanksgiving, as it were, permanent. The edification among these diversified visitors is reciprocal. The greater part of them are on their knees, their eyes fixed on the statue of the Immaculate; others, who have finished their devotions, are seated by the banks of the Gave, recounting their pious impressions, while they admire the mysterious rock and the lovely landscape. All approach the fountain in their turn, drink its miraculous waters, or bathe in them their suffering limbs. Others, again, are scattered along the greensward, or repose under the flowering shrubs, while they partake, in picnic fashion, of the refreshments which they have brought with them from a distance. Differences of rank and condition disappear in this community of faith and piety. The countenances and attitude of all exhibit the same respect and confidence; all hearts seem inspired with the same sentiment – the Virgin was there! It would seem as if they never could grow weary of praying; and it rarely happens that the summer tourist, be he even sceptical and indifferent, visits the grotto and witnesses this spectacle without carrying away a salutary impression, and perhaps renewing the long-forgotten prayers which he had learned and lisped in innocent childhood.[27]
[1] Lawlor, Danys, Pilgrimages in the Pyrenees and Landes (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1870).
[2] Reinburg, Virginia, Storied Places: Pilgrim Shrines, Nature, and History in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), p. 57.
[3] In conjunction with archaeological and historical studies which provide both broader contexts and very particular details.
[4] It is worth noting that Lawlor visits Lourdes last in her tour of the Marian sites in the surrounding area of the Béarn, mentioning that she had followed ‘the penitential footsteps of many a former wayfarer’ and ‘mingled our orisons in loving supplication at many a sacred shrine with those of the pilgrim brothers who have preceded us’. This may indicate a tradition among the more devoted pilgrims, or at least those who travel from afar to Lourdes, to take in many of the smaller Marian shrines (discussed below) prior to their journey culminating at Lourdes itself. Lawlor, 1870, p. 295.
[5] Here again we see the popular link between springs or water sources and divine appearances.
[6] Kaufman, Suzanne, Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), p. 2.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Bernadette Soubirous (born 1844, died 1879) would live the rest of her life at this convent, a span of time which was sadly very short. She died at the age of thirty-five, having contracted a sever bout of cholera as a child which left her with chronic asthma and later provoked attacks of tuberculosis in both her lungs and bones. She died whilst praying the rosary and was interred in the St Joseph Chapel within the grounds of the convent. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1921 and granted a feast day on the 16th April in the Catholic liturgical calendar. For a comprehensive biography of Bernadette, see: Taylor, Thérèse, Bernadette of Lourdes: Her Life, Death and Visions (New York, NY: Burns & Oates, 2003).
[9] Various accounts of Bernadette’s time in Lourdes prior to her leaving for the convent, including the flocks of pilgrims which came to visit her and watch her pray within the grotto (thus inadvertently leading to her decision to leave Lourdes for the quiet of the cloister) can be found in Lawlor, 1870, pp. 352 – 373.
[10] Lawlor, 1870, pp. 299 – 300.
[11] Ibid., pp. 423 – 424.
[12] Ibid. p. 418.
[13] The town of Lourdes is filled with shops which sell a variety of traditional and very modern pilgrim souvenirs. These range from the more typical array of medals, incense, candles, water flasks, Marian statues (of varying sizes) and religious jewelry to hologrammatic posters of Jesus, the Virgin Mary etc., portable shrines illuminated by built-in by LED lights, keychains, t-shirts and more.
[14] Todd, Oliver, The Lourdes Pilgrim (London: Matthew James Publishing, 2003), p. 41.
[15] For the details of several of these curative accounts, see: Lawlor, 1870, pp. 377 – 402.
[16] By this the author is likely referring to a word in the Gascon variant of Occitan.
[17] Bradley, Ian, Water: A Spiritual History (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012), p. 182 – 183.
[18] ‘Some torn fragments of linen; and most of them retaining marks of dirt. With these, as they told us, the holy man used to wipe the perspiration from his face or neck, the runnings of his nose, or other such superfluities, from which the human frame is not free. There my friend Gratian ran into not the best favour. To him, who was at once an Englishman, a person well known, and of no small consequence, the Prior graciously offered to present one of the pieces of linen, imagining that he was making a present that would be most highly acceptable. But Gratian, not sufficiently grateful, drew it together with his fingers, and not without some intimation of disgust, and disdainfully replaced it.’ Erasmus, Desiderius, Pilgrimages to Saint Mary of Walsingham and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, John Gough Nichols (Trans.)(London: John Bowyer Nichols & Son, 1849), pp. 57 – 58. The identity of ‘Gratian’ has been linked with Erasmus’ friend Dr John Colet (born 1467, died 1519), an English scholar, Catholic priest, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral in London and Renaissance humanist.
[19] Zola, Emile, Lourdes, 1894, quoted in Bradley, 2012, p. 183.
[20] Ibid., p. 184.
[21] The feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes falls on the 11th of February, commemorating the first day of Bernadette’s visions, during which the regular daily offices are said and processions are made with even greater numbers of pilgrims.
[22] Todd, 2003, p. 151.
[23] This is known locally as the ‘Procession aux Flambeaux’.
[24] This hymn, known in French as ‘Ô Vierge Marie’ was first written in 1873 by Father Jean Gaignet specifically for pilgrims to sing during their visits to Lourdes. Originally Father Gaignet composed eight verses, however he felt moved to expand this number to one hundred and twenty verses later in his life. Needless to say, the earlier, shorter version is more commonly encountered at Lourdes. The hymn has been translated into many languages and each version contains a slightly different aspect in an effort to render the emphasis meaningful in each linguistic culture. Miles, Margaret, Maiden ad Mother: Prayers, Hymns, Devotions, and Songs to the Beloved Virgin Mary Throughout the Year (London: Burns & Oates, 2001), p. 60.
[25] Todd, 2003, p. 155.
[26] Here we see that, even in the nineteenth century, Summer retained its primary position as the season of favour for pilgrim travel.
[27] Lawlor, 1870, p. 427.
Perennial Pyrenees 