The twenty thousand people who descended upon the tiny city of Chartres in northern France on Pentecost Monday made for an impressive and uplifting sight. But even more striking and inspiring was its <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/why-young-people-love-the-chartres-pilgrimage/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">largely youthful component embracing</mark></a><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-black-color"> a <em>pèlerinage de Chrétienté</em></mark> – pilgrimage of Christendom – rooted in ancient tradition. What some would label as archaic and irrelevant is in fact finding enthusiastic youthful advocates in today’s Church.
The pilgrimage owes its origins to the <em>Sancta Camisa</em>, a piece of silk reputed to have been worn by the Virgin Mary at the Nativity. According to tradition, Charlemagne either stole it in Constantinople – or was given it by the Byzantine royal family – and then in turn gave it to his grandson Charles II, less charitably known as Charles the Bald, who presented it to Chartres Cathedral in 876.
The <em>Sancta Camisa</em> came to fame in 911, when Chartres was subjected to a Viking raid. Gantelme, the bishop and military leader of Chartres, is reported to have displayed the relic above the gate of the town. This is said to have emboldened the defenders of Chartres and terrified the pagan armies, resulting in Chartres withstanding the attack. It also led to the Vikings’ conversion and the establishment of the Duchy of Normandy, with their Viking leader made its first Duke in return for loyalty to Charles III.
Despite the cathedral buildings being vulnerable and prone to the outbreak of fires, the popularity of the pilgrimage and the pride of the Chartrains meant that their cathedral was continually restored in more splendid forms after every conflagration. The piety with which these reconstructions occurred reverberated around Christendom. Reports mention the curious practice of the faithful taking the place of the oxen to then themselves haul the carts of building materials to the cathedral site – it became known as the “Cult of the Carts”.
Letters from the Bishop of Rouen to the Bishop of Amiens, and from the Abbot of Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives to the monks of Tutbury Abbey tell of this pious practice, which seemed to create a kind of mystical, harmonious movement of thousands of pilgrims and locals moving in silence, save for their prayers, while tied to heavy carts.
For the next millennium, Chartres continued as a vital place of pilgrimage. Indeed, Chartres is often considered a cornerstone of the growth of lay Marian devotion and one of the first of many European cathedrals dedicated to Our Lady. Most French Kings made a pilgrimage to the cathedral, and the Calvinist-turned-Catholic Henry IV even had his coronation there.
Charles Péguy, the French poet and essayist, is often credited with keeping the pilgrimage alive in the 20th century. For much of his life, Péguy was irreligious. An ardent Dreyfusard (a supporter of the Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus who was unjustly convicted of treason and later declared innocent), he was committed to socialism and nationalism. However, his nationalism ultimately led him to a love of his homeland’s religion, and he became a Catholic by conviction, if not by practice, as his state of life made receiving the sacraments difficult.
In 1911, Péguy made a promise to Our Lady to walk to Chartres on behalf of his son, who was sick with diphtheria. After his own death in the First World War, some of Péguy’s friends decided to walk the pilgrimage in his memory. A student pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres grew from the desire to follow in the footsteps of the great poet, and it soon attracted thousands.
During the 1960s, however, the pilgrimage to Chartres seemed to fall out of use – along with many other Christian traditions – as an unintended consequence of the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council. In 1982 a small group of Catholics set out to revive it, and the event quickly regained its popularity.
There was turbulence after Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was excommunicated in 1988 – the Society of Saint Pius X now walks the route in reverse, beginning at Chartres and ending at Notre-Dame de Paris – but since then the revived original has grown year on year. In 2010, ten thousand people joined the pilgrimage; in 2023, the organisers had to close registration early and limit the attendees to sixteen thousand. This year the pilgrimage had its largest group yet, with twenty thousand pilgrims engulfing the city.
The logistics of the pilgrims’ arrival were meticulously well-organised by literally thousands of volunteers wearing Marian blue. Priests were plentiful, ensuring that everyone had access to Confession, and the Pontifical High Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Gerhard Müller with all the beauty and mystery of the Extraordinary Form that strives to offer mankind’s very best to God, amid one of the most beautiful cathedrals in Europe.
The unofficial motto of the pilgrimage is “<em>Vive le Christ Roi</em>!” If the past decade is anything to go by, this pilgrimage march that proclaims the "Reign of Christ" will only continue to grow. And as it grows, it will emerge as a sign of what Christendom could be, as thousands attend earnestly, while continuing to bear testimony to the <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/pilgrimage-to-chartres-tens-of-thousands-come-to-celebrate-the-traditional-latin-mass/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">younger Church’s hunger for reverent liturgy</mark></a>.
There is a certain irony, however, that while many Church leaders decry the absence of young people in their churches, and argue that the Church must listen more to young people, the voices that get heard are somehow those that fit the leaders’ preconceived ideas of what young people want.
We should celebrate and rejoice in these new expressions of energy in the Church and remember that those who attend Chartres are not attending out of some kind of spiritual revolt against their older brethren who were formed by the spirit of a different, post-conciliar age. They are <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/pilgrimage-standoff-assisi-or-santiago-de-compostela-its-a-tough-call/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">walking in the footsteps of mediaeval pilgrims</mark></a> and making use of a liturgy which has remained largely unchanged since the third century.
They are claiming their spiritual birthright: to be united with a universal Church that spans millennia. The fact that these traditions were not handed down to these young people does not mean that they have no right to them. Their embrace of such ancient traditions is only sweeter for the discovery involved. <br><br><em>Main photo: Pilgrims receiving Holy Communion outside Chartres Cathedral at the end of the pilgrimage; photo by Thomas Edwards.<br></em><br><strong><strong>This article will appear in print in the July 2024 issue of the <em>Catholic Herald</em> magazine. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world click</strong> <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">HERE</mark></a>.</strong>
