ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book shows how Russian Orthodoxy also sought legitimation in sites beyond the nation state, incorporating claims over Mount Athos and even the Holy Land itself. Elsewhere in Europe, both the Marianisation and the materialisation of sites of faith, bolstered by miraculous visions and painstaking research respectively, were often made to co-exist. The book provides a nuanced and multi-layered set of clues as to the reasons for the efflorescence of pilgrimage practices in the nineteenth century. Pilgrimage had undergone numerous revivals in Europe before, not only during the various phases of the Middle Ages but also as part of the Counter-Reformation’s theological, military and material resurgence against the threat of Protestantism.
