POST-REFORMATION CHRISTIAN PILGRIMAGE AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF SENTIMENT

Changes to post-Reformation European pilgrimage as it was variously abandoned, revived, and transformed, are indicative of the wider changes that happened to western society. Pilgrimages are useful examples for understanding the relationship between the sixteenth-century Reformations, and, eventually, those forces which resulted in globalization. The decline of pilgrimage, especially in Protestant areas, helped lead to the emergence of tourism as a separate, identifiable, and eventually globalizing, phenomenon. Whether for contemporary bus pilgrims going to a healing shrine like at Lourdes, or long-distance walkers seeking experience and authenticity, this short study of pilgrimage proposes that the changes to pilgrimage highlight the effects of the Romantic era.