Boise State University ScholarWorks University Author Recognition Bibliography: 2020 The Albertsons Library 2020 St. Roch Military Marches in Wallonia: Memory, Commemoration, and Identity, 1866-1940 Erik Hadley Boise State University Publication Information Hadley, Erik. (2020). "St. Roch Military Marches in Wallonia: Memory, Commemoration, and Identity, 1866-1940". Quidditas: Online Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 41, 182-205. This document was originally published in Quidditas: Online Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association by Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association. Copyright restrictions may apply. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Quidditas by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. Quidditas 41 (2020) 182 St. Roch Military Marches in Wallonia: Memory, Commemoration, and Identity, 1866-1940 Erik Hadley Boise State University Ritualized public processionals known as military saint marches thrive in popu- lar memory and define local identity in Francophone Belgium (Wallonia). The annual processionals involve thousands of marchers dressed in Napoleonic-era military uniforms, carrying authentic muskets and escorting a statue of St. Roch, the patron saint of disease protection. Many of these marchers trace family participation through multiple generations and two St. Roch marches received UNESCO recognition as examples of “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Human- ity” in 2012. While participants claim there is no historical rupture between the modern marches and the processionals celebrated prior to the French Revolution, there is a fictive, inventive origin to these marches.