J.R.R. Tolkien Loved Lourdes

[Michie]

December 8th marks the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. It was a date of great importance to J.R.R. Tolkien, who had a deep devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He confessed that it was upon Mary that “all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”1 He had a “special devotion,” so he said, to the feast of the Immaculate Conception in particular and a profound veneration for a figure closely associated with it, namely St. Bernadette Soubirous, whom he referred to as “beloved Bernadette.”2 Having encountered this aspect of his Christian life in my research for Tolkien’s Faith: A Spiritual Biography, I was delighted to find that the recently released Revised and Expanded Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien3 contains fresh material about Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes and even provides a fascinating new link to The Lord of the Rings.

In one of the newly published letters, we learn that on January 8, 1945, Tolkien and his wife Edith went to see The Song of Bernadette, the Academy Award-winning film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Franz Werfel, which was based on the real-life history of Bernadette. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher:

The story of Bernadette Soubirous, one of the most amazing things of the whole 19th C., is both profoundly moving, and true, and therefore all the more moving, and also in some aspects puzzling (as shd. be expected) . . . I was moved deeply, and I am v. pleased indeed that I went: not so much to have seen the film but to be reminded of Bernadette (and Lourdes) whom (& which) we take too much for granted. A most marvellous story in every aspect, human and religious.4

Who is Bernadette Soubirous, what is her connection to the Immaculate Conception, and why were they important to Tolkien?

“Dear most blessed Sancta Bernadette”​

Continued below.

Tolkien, “Beloved Bernadette,” and the Immaculate Conception - Word on Fire

Tolkien had a “special devotion” to the feast of the Immaculate Conception and a profound veneration for St. Bernadette Soubirous.

www.wordonfire.org