Changes

The “red thread”of modernity and the problematic interactions between the forces of change and the proponents of tradition acquire new depth and complexity in Blackbourn’s analysis of the apparitions at Marpingen. The failure of the Catholic Church to subdue or absorb popular religious movements and the inability of the Prussian state to repress and punish such movements demonstrate the diverse and contradictory currents of modernity and popular sentiment in Marpingen during the 1870s, but also speak to the underpinnings of Marian devotion in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Visions of the Virgin Mary have continued in Germany, between the two World Wars, during the 1930s and the Cold War, supporting Blackbourn’s argument that apparitions occur during “times of political and social stress” [16], yet his caution that these material trends do not suffice when analyzing Marian apparitions is significant because the personal lives and experiences of the visionaries themselves, and the communities in which they live, are crucial pieces of the story.

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