Marie-Marthe-Baptistine Tamisier

As a result, fifty years of neglect eventually took its toll, and in the 1840s a number of movements, predominantly local initiatives amongst lay female worshippers, were set up to restore the material fittings of churches in Northern France and Belgium.

In the UK, Thomas Cook started his business in support of adherents to a revival in religious fundamentalism, and pilgrimage similarly became a much easier proposition for French Catholics.

[1] In 1847 she became a pupil of the Religious of the Sacred Heart at Marmoutier, remaining there four years, and thereafter fell into the circle of Peter Julian Eymard, a priest from Lyon who had changed the orientation of his vocation towards Eucharistic worship.

[citation needed] Following the death of the latter in 1868, in 1871 she moved to Ars in eastern France in the hopes that the supernatural powers of vocational discernment associated with the Blessed Jean Vianney, a friend of Eymard's who lived and is buried there, would guide her.

A further pilgrimage to Faverney in 1878 gained the support of the newly enthroned Pope Leo, whose encouragement led her to organise the first Eucharistic Congress in Lille, 28-31 June 1881.