The cult of the Virgin Mary went global during the early modern period, as Catholics embraced her with renewed fervor in the wake of Protestant attacks. Using one of Mary’s most famous advocations as a case study, this chapter investigates the origins, spread, and reinvention of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Extremadura, Mexico, and in the Philippines, demonstrating both the causes and limitations of her success across different parts of the Spanish empire.

When Catholicism went global during the early modern period, it did so through the practices, idioms, and procedures of sanctity, in an uneven, messy, embodied process that often escaped control. Well beyond the papacy’s formal processes of beatification and canonization, the worldwide early modern Catholic community was united by belief in the continued immanence of the sacred and the supernatural in everyday life, especially through the cult of saints. The quest for and defense of sanctity defined early modern Catholicism. Every aspect of its pursuit also refuted the new Protestant dogmas of sola fide, sola Scriptura, and sola gratia. This Companion therefore offers sanctity as a new prism through which to envision the Catholic Church in the early modern era.

Chapter 3 provides a comparison to show the differences between the new era and the previous period. This chapter discusses the centre–periphery relationship through Wahhabism in what I call “the age of caravans and manuscripts”. Accordingly, I constructed this chapter around three stories: the story of a person, a pamphlet and a land. The first is about a scholar from Istanbul who was sent to speak with the Wahhabis in 1803. It shows just how far away the capital city was from their location, as the journey to Mecca took about six months. The second is about a pamphlet that was penned by Ottoman ulema who had once served in the Hejaz. It demonstrates that one pamphlet could have provided more than enough information about the Wahhabi movement even during the peak of the rebellion. The third is about the Hejaz, and it shows how Wahhabism was perceived as an illegitimate faction by examining news about the Hejaz occupation as a key point. Through the detailed examples in these three stories, I argue that the Ottomans saw Wahhabism as a local problem before the age of steam and print, as the centre and periphery were very far from each other.

The conclusion offers a broader look into the role of emotions in alliances and the similarities and differences between Sino-North Korean friendship and other Cold War alliances. It shows how the idea of Sino-North Korean friendship limited emotional freedom in China and North Korea.

From the summer of 1957 and throughout the Mao era, “poisonous weed” was a label to be avoided at all costs. Having fallen for the flowers in early 1957, Xu Chengmiao would find himself labeled a “poisonous weed” by the end of the year. As with the Hundred Flowers, the advent of this pernicious botanical label has its own history. This chapter explores how “poisonous weeds” entered the Chinese garden, the role of the Soviet Union in the Chinese Arcadian turn, and how lionized writers such as Guo Moruo gave an endogenous spin to writing that celebrated an idyllic rural life. This then deepened the creative engagement with the Hundred Flowers as it traveled back to the Soviets and into internal circulars. It also studies how the circulation of the Hundred Flowers helped Mao navigate the fallout from Khrushchev’s “secret speech,” and what happened after the chairman stepped into the garden with his own take on the flowers.

Catholics continued to make pilgrimages, near and far, during the early modern period, despite the challenges of the Reformation. Drawing on examples from Western Europe and beyond, this chapter follows pilgrims on their quests for healing, penitence, and spiritual growth and demonstrates that shrines and saints continued to act as focal points for devotion.