Lourdes

About this book

"In 1858, near the tiny French town of Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous witnessed the Virgin Mary in a grotto. Since then, every year millions of pilgrims from all over the world have traveled there to take part in the procession to a shrine whose waters have made it a synonym for healing." "Historian Ruth Harris traces the history of this mass phenomenon, placing Lourdes at the center of nineteenth-century debates on religion, science, and medicine - debates that continue today. She examines the pivotal role of women and children as visionaries, devotees, and advocates, and addresses issues of mysticism and nonorthodox faith that speak to our own era of spirituality. Above all, she explores how, at a moment in French history when the Catholic Church was under attack, this place of pilgrimage improbably prospered, and she offers a serious challenge to the view that the spirit of modern Europe has been exclusively secular and "progressive.""--BOOK JACKET.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Ruth Harris

1958

Ruth Harris FBA (born 25 December 1958) is an American historian and academic. She has been Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford since 2011 and a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, since 2016. Previously, she was a junior research fellow at St John's College, Oxford, from 1983 to 1987, an associate professor at Smith College from 1987 to 1990, and a fellow of New College, Oxford, between 1990 and 2016. She was awarded the Wolfson History Prize in 2010 for her book The Man on Devil's Island, a biography on Alfred Dreyfus. -Wikipedia