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Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Pilgrims to Loreto


Donato Bramante 1434 - 1514
Shrine of the Holy House
Marble
Santuario della Santa Casa, Loreto, Le Marche, Italy





Andrea Sansovino 1450 - 1529
Detail, relief, Annunciation
Marble
Santuario della Santa Casa, Loreto, Le Marche, Italy



Niccolò Tribolo 1500 - 1550, Raffaello da Montelupo 1495 - 1567. Andrea Sansovino 1450 - 1529
Detail, relief, Marriage of the Virgin
Marble
Santuario della Santa Casa, Loreto, Le Marche, Italy



Andrea Sansovino 1450 - 1529
Detail, relief, Nativity
Marble
Santuario della Santa Casa, Loreto, Le Marche, Italy


The tale is quite fantastic and very hard to believe

Belief in it is not a matter of faith

Yet Popes and other pilgrims flock to it

On 4 October 1962, Blessed John XXIII came as a pilgrim to this Shrine to entrust to the Virgin Mary the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, due to begin a week later.

Nowadays Catholics get rather embarassed by it

However it is still a magnet

In 1582 the great sceptical Montaigne went on pilgrimage there. He thought that the cures there were true
See The journal of Montaigne's travels in Italy by way of Switzerland and Germany in 1580 and 1581. Translated and edited, with an introd. and notes by W.G. Waters (1903)

Erasmus wrote a Mass in honour of The Virgin of Loreto

In 1619 René Descartes had three dreams which were to change his life and the course of Western philosophical thought. He was inspired to seek a new method for scientific inquiry and to envisage a unified science

At the same time he made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of Loreto in thanksgiving In 1623  he carried out his vow

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