Shrines and
Pilgrimage in the
Modern World
Peter Jan Margry (ED.)
Amsterdam University Press
New Itineraries into the Sacred
Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World
New Itineraries into the Sacred

Shrines and Pilgrimage
in the Modern World
New Itineraries into the Sacred
Edited by Peter Jan Margry
Amsterdam University Press
Cover: Kok Korpershoek, Amsterdam
Illustration: based on Christ giving his blessing by Hans Memling, ca 1478
Lay-out: ProGrafi ci, Goes
ISBN 978 90 8964 0 116
NUR 728 / 741
© Peter Jan Margry / Amsterdam University Press, 2008
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the
written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.
Contents
On the Authors 7
Map of Pilgrimage Shrines 11
1. Secular Pilgrimage: A Contradiction in Terms? 13
Peter Jan Margry
I The Political Realm
2. The Anti-Mafi a Movement as Religion? The Pilgrimage to

Jill Dubisch
Conclusion 323
List of Illustrations 329
Bibliography 331
Index 359
7
On the Authors
Marijana Belaj (1970) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Ethnol-
ogy and Cultural Anthropology, University of Zagreb, Croatia, where she de-
fended her PhD thesis in 2006 on the veneration of saints in Croatian popular
religion. Her research interests are contemporary pilgrimages, non-institu-
tional processes of the sacralization of places and religious pluralism. Her list
of publications includes articles in edited volumes and national and interna-
tional journals. She is currently developing a research project on Medjugorje
(Bosnia-Herzegovina).
[email protected]
Marion Bowman (1955) is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies, and Co-di-
rector of the Belief Beyond Boundaries Research Group, the Open University,
UK. She is currently President of the British Association for the Study of Re-
ligions and Vice-President of the Folklore Society. Her research interests in-
clude vernacular religion, contemporary Celtic spirituality, pilgrimage, material
culture, and ‘integrative’ spirituality. She has conducted long-term research on
Glastonbury, and her publications include ‘Drawn to Glastonbury’ in Pilgrim-
age in Popular Culture, edited by Ian Reader and Tony Walter in 1993 and most
recently ‘Arthur and Bridget in Avalon: Celtic Myth, Vernacular Religion and
Contemporary Spirituality in Glastonbury’ in Fabula, Journal of Folktale Studies
(2007). She co-edited (with Steven Sutcliffe) the volume Beyond New Age: Ex-
ploring Alternative Spirituality (Edinburgh University Press 2000).
[email protected]
Huub de Jonge (1946) is Senior Lecturer in Economic Anthropology at the

mage, Gender and Politics at a Greek Island Shrine (Princeton 1995), Run for the
Wall: Remembering Vietnam on a Motorcycle Pilgrimage (with Raymond Micha-
lowski, 2001) and Pilgrimage and Healing (co-edited with Michael Winkelman,
2005).
[email protected]
9
Peter Jan Margry (1956), ethnologist, studied history at the University of Am-
sterdam, the Netherlands. He was awarded his PhD by the University of Til-
burg (2000) for his dissertation on the religious culture war in the nineteenth-
century Netherlands. He became Director of the Department of Ethnology at
the Meertens Institute, a research center of the Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. As a senior researcher at the institute, his
current focus is on nineteenth-century and contemporary religious cultures
in the Netherlands and Europe. He has published many books and articles
in these fi elds, including the four-volume standard work on the pilgrimage
culture in the Netherlands: Bedevaartplaatsen in Nederland (1997-2004). He
co-edited (with H. Roodenburg) Reframing Dutch Culture. Between Otherness
and Authenticity (Ashgate 2007).
[email protected]
Paul G.J. Post (1953) is Professor of Liturgy and Sacramental Theology and
Director of the Liturgical Institute, University of Tilburg, the Netherlands. His
current interests include pilgrimage and rituals. His major publications are
(with J. Pieper and M. van Uden), The Modern Pilgrim. Multidisciplinary explo-
rations of Christian pilgrimage (Peeters 1998); as co-editor Christian Feast and
Festival. The Dynamics of Western Liturgy and Culture (Peeters 2001) and a Cloud
of Witnesses: The Cult of Saints in Past and Present (Peeters 2005).
[email protected]
István Povedák (1976) studied history, ethnography and religious studies at
the University of Szeged, Hungary. He is currently writing his PhD at the ELTE
University of Budapest on celebrity culture in Hungary. His academic inter-

as numerous articles on apocalyptic beliefs and millenarian movements, ver-
nacular religion and folk belief, self-taught visionary artists, and subcultures
and youth cultures.
[email protected]
11

13
Chapter 1
Secular Pilgrimage: A Contradiction in Terms?
1
Peter Jan Margry
The defi nition of the term ‘pilgrimage ’ is in need of re-evaluation. This does
not imply that there have been no previous re-evaluations – quite the oppo-
site, in fact. The phenomenon of the pilgrimage has been a focus of special at-
tention in various areas of academic research for several decades. As a result, a
broad corpus of ethnographic, comparative and analytic studies and reference
books has become available, and the pilgrimage has been ‘regained,’ ‘locali-
zed,’ ‘re-invented,’ ‘contested,’ ‘deconstructed,’ ‘explored,’ ‘intersected,’ ‘refra-
med,’ etc. from a variety of academic perspectives.
2
However, the results of
all these different approaches have certainly not led to a fully crystallized aca-
demic picture of the pilgrimage phenomenon. There are still plenty of open
questions, and distinct perspectives and schools of thought still exist.
This volume is based on a symposium held in Amsterdam in 2004 which
was dedicated to the phenomenon of ‘non-confessional pilgrimage’ and the
issue of religious pilgrimage versus non-religious or secular pilgrimage.
3
By
both widening and narrowing the scope, the differences between ‘traditional’

lective and performative way.
Insights into the great signifi cance of shrines and cults in relation to pro-
cesses of desecularization and ‘re-enchantment’ in the modern world have in
themselves also reinforced the pilgrimage phenomenon (cf. Luckmann 1990;
Berger 1999, 2002; Wuthnow 1992). The growing importance of religion in its
social, cultural and political context has only increased the signifi cance of the
pilgrimage. For example, over the past few decades an informal fundamental-
ist Catholic network, active on a global scale, has apparently succeeded in
strengthening the conservative movement within the Catholic church with
the help of the relative autonomy of contestative Marian shrine s (Zimdars-
Swartz 1991; Margry 2004a+b). The best-known and most important example
is the Marian shrine at Medjugorje (Bosnia-Herzogovina). It is important not
only because of its spiritual and liturgical infl uence but also – and above all
– because of the ecclesiastical and political confl icts it has led to (Bax 1995).
But the growing social and political role of Islam in the world has also strong-
ly enhanced the signifi cance of the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca , which is
one of the fi ve sacred obligations of Islam, in strengthening identity in the
Islamic community (Abdurrahman 2000; Bianchi 2004). This signifi cance in
15SECULAR PILGRIMAGE: A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
terms of identity formation is not only manifested on a global scale as in the
case of the hajj; the symbolism and identity-forming powers of shrines have
also increased greatly at the local, regional and national levels. In general, the
considerable attention devoted to religion and rituals in the modern world
has also indirectly enhanced ethnic/religious identities (Van der Veer 1994; cf.
Guth 1995). Partly as a consequence of this, pilgrimage sites have also become
involved in the strategies of military confl icts; the deliberate destruction of
pilgrimage sites and shrines has evolved into an effective tactic for the pur-
pose of harming national or religious identities or as a rationale for provoking
confl icts, as in the case of the Sikhs’ golden temple at Amritsar (India 1984) or
the Shiites’ golden mosque at Samarra (Iraq 2006, 2007).

academics. Until then, the pilgrimage had been more or less the exclusive
domain of ethnographers, church historians and theologians, who had been
analyzing the phenomenon since the nineteenth century, mainly at the local
level (Margry and Post 1998: 64-74). In terms of analytic comparison, pilgrim-
age in Europe had been relatively poorly studied, until the interest of cultural
historians and cultural anthropologists was aroused. It was scholars such as
Alphonse Dupront and Victor Turner who opened the theoretical debate about
the signifi cance of pilgrimage from the 1960s on.
5
The most important themes
of that debate will be briefl y evaluated below.
How ‘clandestine’ and little known and thus poorly studied the phenom-
enon of pilgrimage could be was revealed – for example – in the Netherlands.
The stereotypical image of this small Western European country is of a Calvin-
ist nation. Lengthy Protestant domination of the country had made the signifi -
cant Catholic minority (35-40%) ‘invisible’ in the public domain. Nevertheless,
it turned out that the Dutch Catholics had a large and fi nely meshed network
of pilgrimage sites and pilgrimages, which was not widely known, even in
the Netherlands itself. It was due to historical factors – the rigid political and
social segmentization of the country into ideological ‘pillars’ and the constitu-
tional restrictions imposed on the public manifestation of Catholicism – that
the pilgrimage had been reduced to a more or less clandestine phenomenon
ever since the Reformation. A large-scale ethnographic and historical study in
the 1990s resulted in a sizeable body of data about no fewer than 660 Dutch
pilgrimage sites, of which about 250 are still active today.
6
The amount of mate-
17SECULAR PILGRIMAGE: A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS?
rial which emerged from this effort to catch up made it possible to analyze the
functions and meanings of Dutch pilgrimages in greater detail. From a broad

suggestive connotations and signifi cances, could also be applied in a society
where mass culture and personality cults such as those associated with fi lm
and rock stars, sports celebrities and royalty took on an increasingly important
role, and media coverage followed the trend (cf. Couldry 2003: 75-94). Any
place where people met occasionally or en masse to pay their respects to a
18 SHRINES AND PILGRIMAGE IN THE MODERN WORLD
special deceased person soon came to be referred to as a ‘place of pilgrimage,’
although it was not clear what this actually meant. Although the religious
realm in the postmodern ‘Disneyesque’ environment is changing, it is ques-
tionable whether visitors to or participants in such diverse destinations and
occasions as the house where Shakespeare was born, the military Yser Pil-
grimage in Flanders, a papal Mass in Rome , the D-Day beaches in Normandy,
the Abbey Road zebra crossing, the World Youth Days, personal journeys, Dis-
ney World, or shopping malls can really be categorized as pilgrims (Reader
and Walter 1993: 5-10; Clift and Clift 1996: 88-112; Lyon 2000; Pahl 2003).
Occasionally, a certain link with religion may be found, as in the case of
the ‘civil religion’ element in commemorations of war victims and monuments
and in visits to the houses or graves of national heroes or famous battlefi elds
(Zelinsky 1990). Even in the early twentieth century, visits to war cemeteries
were referred to in newspapers as pilgrimages.
9
A form of religion also of-
ten seems to be involved in these visits. In this context Lloyd wrote that the
presence of the memory of the war in private lives ‘transformed these sites
[battlegrounds/cemeteries] into places of pilgrimage’ (Lloyd 1998: 217). It is
more or less clear that religion frequently plays a role (Walter 1993; Lloyd
1998). However, Lloyd also takes the ‘pilgrimage’ concept for granted in his
study, without operationalizing it or giving it any further empirical basis. His
conclusion is that ‘Pilgrims distinguished themselves from tourists in order to
stress their special links with the fallen and the war experience’ (Lloyd 1998:

ched, the word has acquired a new semantic dimension, so that more and
more frequently visitors themselves refer to profane practices and events
as pilgrimages, partly because fans themselves are often aware of parallels
between traditional Christian religion and their own (Cavicchi 1998: 51-57).
Fans of rock singer Bruce Springsteen said that they regarded going to one of
his concerts as ‘going to a church and having a religious experience’ and visits
to places where he had lived and places mentioned in his songs as ‘pilgrimages’
(Cavicchi 1998: 186). In her description of Graceland , Christine King – unlike
Doss in her later study – used so many Christian terms with so little dis-
crimination that it became a self-fulfi lling academic prophecy and – without
any substantial empirical justifi cation – the place was proclaimed a pilgrimage
site in the universal sense (King 1993). What meanings are concealed behind
these terms, and how can the religious factor be identifi ed and interpreted?
To an increasing extent, not only the media but also researchers characte-
rize tourism and other transitory phenomena metaphorically as ‘pilgrimages’
20 SHRINES AND PILGRIMAGE IN THE MODERN WORLD
(cf. Reader and Walter 1993; Kaur 1985; Basu 2004; Hodge 2006; cf. Chide-
ster 2005). In his book Sacred Journeys, anthropologist Alan Morinis ascribes
an explicit place to the allegorical or metaphorical pilgrimage, namely the
pilgrimage ‘that seeks out a place not located in the geographical sphere’ and
says that ‘one who journeys to a place of importance to himself alone may also
be a pilgrim’ (Morinis 1992:4). No matter how titillating it may be to thought
processes and the imagination to combine these apparently similar phenome-
na, constantly linking them to each other does not seem to have provided any
essentially deeper insights into the ‘traditional’ pilgrimage; in fact, its main re-
sult has been to increase the confusion surrounding the concept. For example,
as Jennifer Porter wrote: ‘By broadening the boundaries of pilgrimage to en-
compass such secular journeys [= Star Trek Conventions], pilgrimage scholars
can perhaps go where they’ve never gone before.’ Expanding on Morinis’s
work, Porter goes on to say (merely on the basis of external analogies and

intention of forming a new theory was the American anthropologist Victor
Turner. Because of the inter-related dynamic social processes involved, he
thought that he could see a special kind of group formation during pilgri-
mages, and on this basis he developed what was to become a leading theory
in cultural anthropology. Proceeding from the notions of Van Gennep, Turner
drew up a theoretical framework for pilgrimage as a rite of passage (cf. Van
Gennep 1909). Turner saw pilgrimage not as a phenomenon which confi r-
med the existing social structure with its status and hierarchies, but precisely
as an alternative structure – therefore termed ‘antistructural’ – because of the
development of a new community of pilgrims. In his opinion, pilgrimage was
a temporary antithesis of the ordinary, everyday community to which the pil-
grim normally belonged (Turner and Turner 1978; Turner 1986). The liminal
and transitional character of pilgrimage temporarily eliminates the pilgrim’s
normal situation and status, and in consequence spontaneous, egalitarian ties
are created which Turner refers to as the group experience or ‘communitas .’
Turner also drew attention to a certain tension between the journey and the
location, and in connection with this, to the necessity of ‘liminoid’ behavior on
the part of the pilgrim.
Although Turner’s postulate that ‘anti-structure’ and ‘communitas ’ are cre-
ated during a pilgrimage is regarded as the only signifi cant theory regarding
pilgrimage and was decisive for the debate for a long time, the theory has
been falsifi ed over and over again on the basis of ethnographic case studies
22 SHRINES AND PILGRIMAGE IN THE MODERN WORLD
(cf. Eade and Sallnow 2000: 4-5; Reader and Walter 1993: 10-15; Badone and
Roseman: 3-5). In response, critics such as Eade and Sallnow called on resear-
chers to collect much more ethnographic material.
11
Whatever the case may
be, in practice researchers always encountered a wide variety of behaviors and
experience, and to an ever-increasing extent the theory was abandoned (Sall-

is a long way away and the journey thus more arduous, more expensive or
more complicated to organize. People prefer to conduct an activity which is
so personal as a pilgrimage with a certain measure of privacy: with few other
pilgrims present, without being constrained by collective rituals, and if pos-
sible using their own cars, perhaps accompanied by close family members or
a good friend. Pilgrimages are personal visits, with strictly personal intentions
directed toward the cult object. Pilgrims are generally not keen to talk about
the religious dimensions and fi nd it diffi cult to do so; this is also true of the
pilgrims who feature in this book.
12
In fact, it may apply to them even more
strongly, because on the face of it their motive has no right to exist in this
environment which is so secular in other respects. For privacy reasons, this
dimension is scarcely expressed in writing at all, with the exception of inten-
tion books with their anonymous messages. This characteristic individuality is
also found in the pilgrimages discussed here. For example, it turned out that
the close in-crowd fans around Jim Morrison ’s grave who did actually seem to
have a form of communitas were not among those who had a religious motiva-
tion for their visit. Such a motivation was found mainly in individual visitors to
the grave. If individualization is a sign of the times, then this is also refl ected
in pilgrimage.
Movement and travel vs sanctuary and locality
Movement is an inherent part of pilgrimage. As a result, throughout history
the performance of the phenomenon has been visible as spatial movement.
But at the same time the pilgrimage site is fi xed in space (Coleman and Elsner
1995: 2002), and the holy place or shrine is the ‘very raison d’être of pilgri-
mage’ (Eade and Sallnow 1991/2000: 6) or as Dupront put it: ‘Il n’y a pas de
pèlerinage sans lieu [sacré]’ ( ‘There is no pilgrimage without a [sacred] place’)
(1987: 371). This is why it is important for the theoretical discussion about
the primary aspect of pilgrimage to continue: should the focus be on location

Without the lengthy and wide media coverage of
this ancient pilgrimage and the cultural politics of Spain, the transition from
a destination-oriented pilgrimage to seeing the journey as a pilgrimage in
itself would not have been so universal. It was due to this process that ‘transit’
pilgrimage made its appearance in the west. Transit pilgrimage does not really
have a beginning or an end, or at any rate they are not relevant. Moving, wal-
king, the accessibility and freedom of the ritual, being in nature, and tranqui-
lity are all elements which have contributed to its success. As a transit pilgri-
mage, the Santiago pilgrimage is sometimes even spread across several years
or vacations, with one stage of the whole journey being completed at a time.