In this work, Skye Doney presents a detailed study of pilgrimages to two sets of relics, the Holy Cloak (Heiliger Rock) at Trier and four different relics relating to Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist at Aachen from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Church authorities exhibited the Holy Cloak approximately every fifteen years and the Aachen relics every seven years. Doney combines extensive archival research, especially in the diocesan archives, with quantitative research into acknowledged cures and the types of pilgrims seeking a cure. Doney does not discuss the cures as miracles but instead analyzes the perception of the cures by the pilgrims. He delivers a detailed analysis of the differences between the evolving interpretation of the relics by church authorities toward a more symbolic understanding of the relics and the unwavering understanding by pilgrims as authentic artifacts imparting divine healing. By emphasizing religious history “from below,” Doney provides an outstanding example of how religious history is complex and multifaceted and requires further differentiation even within distinct populations.
One of the strengths of this volume is Doney's emplacement of the events in the broader course of German history. The annexation of the Rhineland in 1815 by protestant Prussia led to conflict between Catholics and the Prussian state, an event known as the Kölner Wirren. This conflict culminated in the imprisonment in 1837 of the Archbishop of Cologne because of his insistence that children of mixed marriages be raised as Catholics. Catholic leaders in Prussia wanted to proceed cautiously so the pilgrimages would manifest Catholicism's strength. They sought to regulate the pilgrimage processions while pilgrims insisted on venerating the relics in their own way. They often explicitly rejected church instructions concerning the need to travel in pre-arranged and registered groups of pilgrims and to seek documentation of ailments if seeking a cure.
Similarly, Doney places the pilgrimage events held during the Kulturkampf of the 1870s and the interwar period in the context of the new national socialist regime. Despite the efforts of church authorities to avoid politicizing the pilgrimages, during politically tense times, the pilgrimages became statements of Catholic identity and pride.
An essential theme of Doney's work is the church's effort to control the meaning of the relics and their veneration, which proved much more challenging than church leaders expected. During the nineteenth century, the church faced increased criticism that relics encouraged superstition and enriched church authorities at the expense of the laity. Doney shows how the pilgrimages’ material benefits to the church were limited and that most of the profits went to vendors of Andenken, officially sanctioned items such as medals, rosaries, and cards that had been touched to the relic, as well as to vendors of food and lodging. Doney does not mention reluctance by municipal authorities to hold the pilgrimages. These authorities provided public safety and emergency medical services, cleaned the streets, and directed the pilgrimage crowds until they reached the cathedrals. To authorities, the logistical efforts seemed worthwhile. During the national socialist period, party groups, especially the SA and the Hitler Youth, limited the church's autonomy in regulating the pilgrimages.
Church leaders took the criticism of the relics’ authenticity and the accusation of superstition seriously. In the 1840s, church authorities began emphasizing the relics’ symbolic rather than literal sacred nature. By the early twentieth century, the church agreed to subject the relics to scientific scrutiny, the results of which would never convince the skeptics. More importantly, they did not influence the faithful, who continued to seek cures for medical problems. Seeking legitimacy, church authorities instituted rigorous medical requirements to be met before seeking cures. Forms and physicians’ reports had to be submitted before the individual encountered the relic. The church used the forms to determine which individuals needed to touch the relic and which needed only to spend time in prayer before the relic.
Further, to minimize criticism, those seeking miraculous cures were admitted to the cathedrals only during night hours. In their organized groups, other pilgrims passed by the relics during the day. Doney notes how little time individuals spent before the relics, given the time spent traveling to and from Trier or Aachen (24). While all this helped the church fend off criticism of its veneration of relics, the faithful rejected such distinctions. For them, touching the relic or even being in its presence created a manifest experience of a God intervening directly in place and time on Earth (59). Doney argues that this proves the weakness of the theory of the coherent and unified Catholic milieu (8), which, while popular among social scientists, increasingly has come under fire in the works of scholars such as Mark Edward Ruff (The Wayward Flock: Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany, 1945–1965, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005) and others. It also raises questions about levels of control by Prussian, Wilhelmine German, and national socialist authorities over the sentiments of its citizens, which is worth pursuing.
Doney contributes to scholarly discussions by refining some conclusions about the nature of pilgrimages and other expressions of popular piety. For example, he shows that, in Aachen and Trier, unlike in Marpingen, investigated by David Blackbourn, there were signs of males seeking miraculous cures, not only women. Also, in the cases investigated by Doney, most of those seeking a cure were lower middle class rather than poor, as in Marpingen. Doney's conclusions about the inability of the church to control pilgrimages by the faithful are supported by the cases of Therese von Konnersreuth, who supposedly bore stigmata, and the Marian apparitions at Heede in the Emsland, which occurred during the national socialist period. In his findings about gender differences in the pilgrimages and cures, as well as the weight given to male and female testimony about cures, Doney contributes to the discussion of the feminization of religion in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, here his conclusion remains tentative as more men than previously thought participated in pilgrimages, but women's voices became less significant.
This all-to-brief review can only skim a thoroughly researched, contextualized study that bears on several important scholarly debates and presents a great wealth of insights.
