LORETO, lo-r5'to: The most famous place of
pilgrimage in Italy, and the principal seat for that
country of the devotion to the Virgin Mary. It is
situated 14 m. s.e. of Ancona on the road to
Fermo, and is celebrated for its possession of what is alleged
to be the house of the Virgin, transported thither
from Nazareth by angels. The legend, although
its first mention in literature is found in Flavius
Blondus about the middle of the fifteenth century,
seems to have grown up at the end of the crusading
period. In its developed form, as found in Baptists Mantuanus (1576) and on a tablet on the
wall of the church cited by Matthias Bernegger in
1619, it asserts that this is the actual portion of
the dwelling of Mary at Nazareth in which she was
born and brought up and received the angelic message, in which she lived after the ascension of her
Son. Tile apostles, then, the legend goes on,
made a church of it; St. Luke decorated it with a
wooden figure of the Virgin holding the Child in
her arms; and it was continuously used for worship until the fall of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
Then, to save it from destruction by the unbelievers, angels appeared, caught it up into the air,
and deposited it first at Raunitza in northern Dalma,tia, between Fiume and Tersato (1291). Its
genuineness was accredited by the healing of some
sick people who prayed within it and by an apparition of the Virgin to Bishop Alexander of Tersa,to, who was himself miraculously healed of a
long illness. Three years later the angels again
picked it up and carried it to the opposite coast of
Italy (Dec. 10, 1294) setting it down in a wood belonging to a pious woman named Laureta, from
whom the shrine took its name. It was once more
removed a mile nearer to Recanati, and reached its
final resting-place Sept. 7, 1295. The second half
of the fifteenth century saw a marked increase in
devotion to the shrine. The earliest papal sanction
of the devotion dates from Sixtus IV. (1471), who,
as well as Julius II. (1507), uses the expression "as
it is piously believed and the report is" in reference to the translation of the house. Sixtus V.
(1587) founded a knightly order (Ordo et religio
equitum Lauretanorum pontificiorum) for the protection of pilgrims, which as late as the eighteenth
century had between two and three hundred members. Innocent XII. (d. 1700) sanctioned a special
mass and office in honor of Our Lady of Loreto;
and other popes granted special privileges, which,
together with the munificent gifts of many Roman
Catholic sovereigns, contributed to the spread of
the devotion. At the beginning of the seventeenth
century, not less than 200,000 pilgrims are said to
have come to Loreto each year; but by the end
of the eighteenth this number had much diminished, and in 1797 the French troops carried off
nearly the whole of the enormous treasures of the
shrine. Napoleon, however, made restitution of a
part of them in 1800; and since the Roman Catholic revival of the nineteenth century the annual
number of pilgrims has again exceeded 100,000.
The artistic decoration of the shrine was carried on
with great richness under Julius II., Leo. X., Clement VII., and Sixtus V. Numerous other shrines
intended as reproductions of this have grown up
in different parts of the world and attract many
pilgrims. The Litany of Loreto, consisting of a
long series of invocations of the Virgin under various
titles, dates from the second half of the sixteenth century; the invocation Auxilium Christianortcm, ors
pro
nobt's
was added in commemoration of the victory of
Lepanto in 1571. The litany is now one of the most
popular Roman Catholic devotions.
(O. Zöckler.)
Bibliography:
:
The account by Baptists Mantuanus is
contained in his Opera, iv. 216 sqq., Antwerp, 1578. Consult further: B. Bartoli, Le Clorie maeatose del aantuario
dx Loreto, Maeerata,1712;
Kirwan's
Rornanis»I of Home, pp ~
99-107, New York, 1852: P. Arrigh7, Hist. de la demeure
de la S. Vi-9c h Nazareth dam la baailique de Lorete, Paris,
1889; W. Garratt, Loreto, the New Nazareth, London. 1890;
The Loretto Manual, Dublin, 1891; W. F. H Garratt,
Loreto, the New .Nazareth and its Jubilee, London, 1895;
Lichtenberger, ESR, viii. 371-372; KL, viii. 145-1b2. A
long list of the polemical writings of Protestants and of
the apologetics of Roman Catholics is given in HauckHerzog, RE, xi. 647.
