Pardons, Pilgrimage and the (Re-) construction of Identities in Brittany

The pattern of pilgrimage in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Brittany thus involved both regional and local pilgrimages analogous to the romeras in Galicia. It is this pattern that began to unravel along with the socioeconomic changes of the post-Second World War era, and which has also experienced renewal since the 1980s. The largest regional pilgrimage in the Lon is the grand pardon du Folgot, celebrated at the basilica in Le Folgot, a town of 3,100 in the interior of the Lon, approximately 25 kilometres northeast of the port city of Brest. Pilgrimage to the shrine increased in importance during the tenure of the abb Guguen, who served as the priest of Le Folgot between 1925 and 1954. Multiple local, regional, French and international networks of social relationships and exchange intersect in these diverse forms of contemporary pilgrimage in Brittany.