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Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (review)

2001; The Catholic University of America Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cat.2001.0067

1534-0708

Thomas Kselman,

Religious Tourism and Spaces

With the publication of Ruth Harris' Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age, the famous shrine in the French Pyrenees has a book worthy of its remarkable history. Many people, including non-Catholics, have some sense of Lourdes, derived for the most part from pious and journalistic accounts. Harris' work, however, is the first large-scale treatment of Lourdes by a professional historian, a lack of attention she attributes to a general suspicion among scholars "of the sustained attraction of religious mystery and adherence" in the modern world. In place of this Harris calls on historians to develop "a more sympathetic approach to the sustained appeal of the miraculous in religion" (p. 12). Harris' book enters sympathetically and imaginatively into the world of nineteenth-century Catholics, starting with Bernadette Soubirous, the Lourdes visionary. But she also brings into play the rich historiography on nineteenth-century France, placing the stories of miraculous apparitions and cures within their particular social and political contexts. This combination of religious sensitivity and historical rigor makes her work an essential starting point for anyone interested in Lourdes.