Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age

Lourdes was at the very centre of nineteenth-century debates on religion, science and medicine and was used as THE example by both Catholics and secularists to champion new arguments about body, spirit and psyche. Ruth Harris brings the history of Lourdes out of the thicket of nineteenth-century political polemic by tracing longstanding spiritual and popular traditions which convinced both rich and poor alike of the truth of the apparitions. She places Lourdes and the spirituality of the movement firmly at the centre of French history and shows its importance for the county's development.