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
Loreto has been a popular pilgrimage site since the 13th century
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
My favorite shrine next to Lourdes.
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