For the debates about the ultramontanization of Catholicism in the course of the nineteenth century the contrast of an early example of pilgrimages and a later case during the heyday of ultramontanism can be revealing. Though sim-ilar in social and gender aspects there are differences on the level of organiza-tion, inherent ultramontanism and transnational traits. The phenomenon of pilgrimages is approached in three steps. Firstly, the issue should be embedded in the context of scholarly debates concerning German Catholicism in the nine-teenth century, secondly a system of in sum fourteen variations of pilgrimages can be unfolded, and finally the two prominent examples of Trier (1844) and Marpingen (1876) should find a place in this framework. Catholicism was taken up again, although pilgrimages were but a small element of this question; 3) parallel to this the structures of Catholic self-exclusion, among them patterns of self-representation such as pilgrimages, were analysed; and 4) the debate about ultramontanism, of which centralized pilgrimages were a part, was enriched with new perspectives, among them transnational dimensions.