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Contribution short abstract:

This paper examines the ritual act of crawling at Marian pilgrimage sites across Europe as a dynamic expression of local religious belief shaped by global cultural, historical, and social influences.

Contribution long abstract:

This paper examines the ritual act of crawling at Marian pilgrimage sites across Europe as a dynamic expression of local religious belief shaped by global cultural, historical, and social influences. It raises the anthropological question of how embodied practices such as crawling mediate relationships between individuals, sacred spaces, and broader cultural narratives, while also reflecting political, territorial, local, and global claims. Based on multi-sited ethnography conducted at Marian sites, including the Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland, the Santuario della Madonna del Lares in Trentino, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima in Portugal, the shrine of Saint Xenia in Saint Petersburg, and the Scala Sancta in Rome, the findings of this study illustrate how pilgrims negotiate doubts, and politics through the embodied practice of mimesis. Drawing from Aristotle’s conceptualization of mimesis as not merely replication but an active, creative re-enactment that fosters learning, crawling emerges as a profound imitation that evokes both developmental movements associated with infancy and the corporeal suffering of Christ’s Passion. These practices reenact a bodily journeys that emulate medieval predecessors while creating a ritual time zone that intertwines ancient imagery with contemporary faith. The act of crawling thus re-embodies dual temporalities: the medieval gestures of penance and the political-theological narrative. This blending links physical endurance to narratives of national redemption. Additionally, crawling rituals evoke connections to sacred lands and reinforce territorial belonging, demonstrating how body-mimetic rituals intersect with national sentiments, political histories, and global-local dynamics.