The pilgrim church in Vienna : mobile memories at the 1912 International Eucharistic Congress

Like pilgrimage itself, this chapter is part journey, part meditation on the experiences of Catholic pilgrims in Vienna, the former imperial capital of the Habsburg Empire. Drawing on scholarship in memory studies and recent work on pilgrimage I aim to situate Catholic pilgrimage in Central Europe within a global, interdisciplinary approach to pilgrimage as mobile memories. The metaphor of pilgrimage as mobile memories, I argue, offers a way to interpret the landscape, both external and internal, into which Catholic pilgrims in Central Europe ventured. Just as recent scholars of pilgrimage have tried to broaden out from the place-centred approach of earlier anthropological studies of religion, scholars of memory have also sought to show that the “lieux de mémoire,” Pierre Nora’s now ubiquitous term, were not only connected to place, they could also include textual, visual, corporeal and affective forms of commemoration. Similarly I argue that sites of pilgrimage were more than the physical environments of a shrine or international congress, but also encompassed the artefacts, songs, poems, performances and prayers that made up the interior landscapes of pilgrim communities in Central Europe.