ABSTRACT
In the nineteenth century, the situation was the inverse, as the pilgrimages almost always took place in Europe and were national in character and organised. In some ways, although Lourdes was the symbol of the new “ century of pilgrimages”, pilgrimages were carried out across the entire European continent, from Portugal to Russia. Obviously, the demarcation of Europe has never been unequivocal or simple. If the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had put an end to the classic, elitist Grand Tour of the eighteenth century, ultramontanism internationalised the new pilgrimages, peacefully combining Europeans from various nations in an organised manner, without them being run on a national basis. The aforementioned European character, with its community of literary artistic and religious interests and to have filled the continent with medieval-style buildings, fully coincides with other nineteenth-century characteristics that are also reflected in the pilgrimages analysed. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
