A New Creation: Translating Lourdes in America

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

“Concerning Pilgrimages,” Ave Maria 33 (14 Nov. 1891): 473.

Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 6.

For a history of Lourdes see Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (New York: Viking, 1999), 66, 109, and 169.

Fr. Basil Moreau founded the Auxiliary Priests in the Diocese of Le Mans in France in 1835, sending missionaries to Africa and, in 1840, to North America. The priests were not recognized by the Holy See as an official religious community until 1857, less than a year before Bernadette’s visions began at Lourdes.

Dorothy Corson discovered compelling evidence that an even earlier shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes was constructed across the street from Notre Dame by the Sisters of the Holy Cross at St. Mary’s College. See Dorothy Corson, A Cave of Candles (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Publishing House, 2006), 13–17.

Anthropological theories of Christian pilgrimage often operate on this assumption of the pilgrim making a journey: Turner and Turner, Image and Pilgrimage (see n. 2); John Eade and Michael J. Sallnow, Contesting the Sacred (London: Routledge, 1991); and Jill Dubisch, In a Different Place: Pilgrimage, Gender, and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Theological accounts of pilgrimage are also most often situated in theological works on sacred space: Craig G. Bartholomew, Where Mortals Dwell: A Christian View of Place for Today (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011); John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003); Heather Walton, “Theological Perspectives on Christian Pilgrimage,” in Christian Pilgrimage, Landscape, and Heritage, ed. V. Dora, A. Scafi, and H. Walton (New York: Routledge, 2015). Within Catholicism, when not using the term metaphorically, the current catechism also presumes that pilgrimage entails a going out [2101, 2696]; the Code of Canon Law mentions pilgrimage only tangentially in reference to pilgrims who come to shrines.

On translation as exportation regarding Lourdes water at Notre Dame, see Colleen MacDannell, Material Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 132–62.

Colleen MacDannell demonstrates how exporting Lourdes water effectively packaged and translated the Lourdes devotion to Notre Dame. See also Simon Coleman and Jas Elsner, Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).

Kathryn R. Barush, “The Root of the Route: Phil’s Camino Project and the Catholic Tradition of Surrogate Pilgrimage,” Practical Matters (29 June 2016), http://wp.me/p6QAmj-Iu. If someone is unable to make a pilgrimage, another may be sent as a stand-in—a practice known as vicarious or surrogate pilgrimage. Thus, throughout time, the healthy have made the journey for the sick, the young for the very old, and even the poor might hire themselves out as surrogates for the rich who did not want to face the risks of the pilgrim road. Today, pilgrims still act as surrogates when they make offerings and prayers for friends or family who remain at home.

See Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Colombia University Press, 1988), 222–26.

“Notes and Remarks,” Ave Maria (15 Aug. 1896).

“Grotto of Lourdes at Notre Dame, Indiana,” Annals (June 1896): 91.

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London: HarperCollins, 1995), 61.

While images of Sorin’s initial grotto have not been preserved, the student periodical Scholastic in April 1878 mentions that the Grotto of Lourdes was constructed in a small wooded dell northwest of the church. Other archival material indicates that this small replica of the grotto was built at the base of a hill and encased in an octagonal frame with glass panels. Scholastic 11 (6 April 1978): 506; The Columbian Jubilee (1892): 493–94.

The Kalamazoo Augustinian 4, no. 9 (18 Aug. 1894).

The Kalamazoo Augustinian 8, no. 10 (22 Aug. 1896).

In 1874, a group of over sixty pilgrims from both America and Canada made the first official American pilgrimage to Lourdes en route to Rome. Organized by the popular publisher, James Alphonsus McMaster, pilgrims paid $150 for ship’s passage to France, and then expenses in Europe and their return ticket. The pilgrim group was comprised largely of wealthy laypersons, priests, and the Bishop of Ft. Wayne, IN. Women were initially excluded from the trip, although some wealthy women organized their own pilgrimage to Lourdes, arriving there well before the official group!

“Grotto of Lourdes at Notre Dame, Indiana,” Annals (June 1896): 91.

Thomas Dooley to Theodore Hesburgh, 2 Dec. 1960, Thomas Dooley Collection, University of Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame, IN.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Layla A. Karst

Layla A. Karst is a PhD candidate in religion and serves as managing editor for the journal Practical Matters at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.