The Persistence of the Sacred

For millions of Catholic believers, pilgrimage has offered possible answers to the mysteries of sickness, life, and death. The Persistence of the Sacred explores the religious worldviews of Europeans who travelled to Trier and Aachen, two cities in Western Germany, to view the sacred relics in their cathedrals.

The Persistence of the Sacred challenges the narrative of widespread secularization in Europe during the long nineteenth century and reveals that religious practices thrived well into the modern period. It shows both that men were more active in their faith than historians have realized and how clergy and pilgrims did not always agree about the meaning of relics. Drawing on private ephemeral and material sources including films, photographs, postcards, correspondence, and souvenirs, Skye Doney uncovers the enduring and diverse sacred worldview of German Catholics and argues that laity and clergy had very different perspectives on the meaning of pilgrimage.

Recovering the history of Catholic pilgrimage, The Persistence of the Sacred aims to understand the relationship between relics and religiosity, between modernity and faith, and between humanity and God.

The Persistence of the Sacred examines how Catholic religious practices endured over a century of conflict, revolution, and dramatic social upheaval.

• Imprint: University of Toronto Press
• Published: August 2022
• Pages: 372

• epub: 9781487543112
• pdf: 9781487543129
• hardcover: 9781487543105

Skye Doney is the director of the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“An eminently readable and very fruitful study.”

Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri

Catholic Historical Review

“The work offers readers new, engaging ways of thinking about German Catholicism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and provides a glimpse into the world of everyday German Catholics and their attempts to navigate the practice of their religious faith in the modern world.”

Beth Griech-Polelle, Pacific Lutheran University

German Studies Review

“Offering a tightly bounded history of Catholic pilgrimages to Trier and Aachen, Skye Doney has ably foregrounded how Catholicism in Germany, both as an institutional religion and as a mass movement of millions, sought to straddle faith and empirically-based science.”

Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Flinders University

Journal of Religious History

"Through meticulous use of archival evidence and stunning visual images, Skye Doney describes an enduring connection between many German Catholics and the divine through their most revered relics and the tension their fervour increasingly caused with religious leaders. The analysis of Johannes Ronge’s attacks on the 1844 pilgrimage to Trier is compelling and sheds light on the growing concern among many Catholic clergy for how the devotional practices of pilgrims were perceived in the modern era."

Michael E. O'Sullivan, Professor of History, Marist College

"The study of religion in modern Germany is expanding rapidly and in many directions. The Persistence of the Sacred focuses on Catholic laity and pilgrimage across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Even as official, clerical definitions of miracles became ever more restrictive, millions travelled to Rhineland relic sites, in groups and on their own, to come into contact with the sacred. Doney’s book is to be commended for the careful way it broadens our image of who took up pilgrimage and why, not least across lines of gender, occupation, class, and age."

Monica Black, Professor of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and author of A Demon-Haunted Land

"This deeply researched, engagingly written study analyses the vitality of Catholic pilgrimage in the Rhineland as a means of understanding popular devotional practices, ecclesiastical politics, and traditional piety’s encounter with modern medicine and science across a crucial century in German history. Based on an impressive array of sources, Doney’s book contributes importantly to our knowledge of modern Germany, modern Catholicism, and the character of religious belief and practice in modern Europe."

Brad S. Gregory, Henkels Family College Professor of History, University of Notre Dame