A Pilgrimage to See the Holy Father: Or, the Modern Papacy Through the Stereoscope

Abstract

Abstract: In 1907, the American company Underwood & Underwood published a deck of thirty-six photo cards with an accompanying book entitled A Pilgrimage to See the Holy Father, Through the Stereoscope . Used with a special device called a stereoscope, the cards enabled viewers to immerse themselves in a 3-D experience of the Vatican and to come face to face with Pope Pius X. This article analyzes how the deck was arranged and the text was written to promote an experience of both awe and intimacy. It establishes the set as part of a late-Victorian middle-class world of travel, education, and culture that incorporated both Protestants and Catholics, a world that both made its existence possible and that it helped to create. Finally, it argues that A Pilgrimage to See the Holy Father is less significant in itself than as part of a constellation of mass-produced modern artifacts that collectively created a feeling of personal attachment to individual popes and therefore made possible their central place in the emotional and faith lives of the modern Catholic laity.