Abstract
The text is based on the hypothesis that current anti- modernist movements are reacting to a break-down of meaning, and help to regenerate activities in which meaning can reinvest. It is in this context that we should like to reinterpret prestent-day religious effervescence. Does it indicate afundamentalist return to the past, in the style of 19th century religious revivals? Or are we here beyond secularization? These religious forms are characteri zed less by their involvement in an ethical sphere than by their rediscovery of aesthetics in the original sense of the world. A socio-historical study of pilgrimage would help us to understand this evolution. How has the change from a pilgrimage which, in the Middle Ages, structured the life of Christianity, to a pilgri mage which, today, is associated with popular religions actually taken place, when in many other major religions such as Islam and Hinduism the pilgrimage helps to structure collective life.