Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours: Writing About Shrines in Early Modern France

Seventeenth-century shrine books in France blended myth, history, and archives to revitalize Marian shrines post-religious wars. These hybrid texts, akin to sacred histories, aimed to establish the authenticity of shrines by documenting their origins, miracles, and divine favours through written records and eyewitness testimony. Authors like Odo de Gissey and Pierre Geoffroy used a mix of legal and theological language to bolster truth claims, creating archives of faith to counter iconoclasm and doubt. The study reveals how early modern historians crafted these narratives to restore ruined sites and reinforce Catholic identity, demonstrating the fusion of scholarly rigor with popular devotion.

Reinburg, V. (2016). Archives, Eyewitnesses and Rumours: Writing About Shrines in Early Modern France. Past & Present, 230(suppl 11), 171–190. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtw030