"In 1858, near the tiny French town of Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous witnessed the Virgin Mary in a grotto. Since then, every year millions of pilgrims from all over the world have traveled there to take part in the procession to a shrine whose waters have made it a synonym for healing." "Historian Ruth Harris traces the history of this mass phenomenon, placing Lourdes at the center of nineteenth-century debates on religion, science, and medicine - debates that continue today. She examines the pivotal role of women and children as visionaries, devotees, and advocates, and addresses issues of mysticism and nonorthodox faith that speak to our own era of spirituality. Above all, she explores how, at a moment in French history when the Catholic Church was under attack, this place of pilgrimage improbably prospered, and she offers a serious challenge to the view that the spirit of modern Europe has been exclusively secular and "progressive.""--BOOK JACKET.