Mass Pilgrimage and the Usable Empire in a Napoleonic Borderland

Abstract This article analyses the biggest pilgrimage event of Napoleonic era, showing how Catholics used imperial opportunities and loopholes to progress on their path toward religious revival. In September 1810, more than 200,000 pilgrims rushed small provincial city Trier venerate one Christianity's most important relics, Holy Coat Jesus. could take place grow such gigantic dimensions because both clerical elites laypeople deftly navigated territorial frameworks created by state. Rhenish borderlands which belonged, French hegemony enabled return relic in first place, but subsequently exploited malleability public order that also characterized governance. The great 1810 represented neither a form exclusively top-down mobilization orchestrated church controlled state, nor an act overt, politicized opposition – even as state officials, turn, proved undeniably hostile pilgrim mobility ‘superstition’. therefore argues that, peaceful parts Napoleon's empire, organizers accelerated post-revolutionary Catholic renewal using empire rather either resisting or collaborating with it.