Overcoming Peripherality: The Devotion to the Virgin of Peñafrancia, 1700s to 1898

Prevailing narratives about the now-prominent Virgin of Peñafrancia in Naga City take for granted the locals’ response to its introduction in the 1700s. This study demonstrates that Peñafrancia was marked by geographic, institutional, and social peripherality for the first century and a half of its existence, which began to be overturned from the mid-nineteenth century onward when, in the absence of a sponsoring religious order, diocesan bishops began to promote, control, and invent traditions that strengthened the devotion. This study highlights the complex interplay of popular piety, ecclesiastical dynamics, and sociopolitical realities in shaping the trajectory of a once peripheral devotion.