Basilica della Santa Casa

The basilica containing the is a Late Gothic structure built starting from 1468, It is long, wide, and its campanile is high. The façade of the church was erected under Pope Sixtus V, who fortified Loreto in 1586 and gave it the privileges of a town; his colossal statue stands on the parvis, above the front steps, a third of the way to the left as one enters. Over the principal doorway there is a lifesize bronze statue of the Virgin and Child by Girolamo Lombardo; the three superb bronze doors executed at the latter end of the 16th century under the reign of Pope Paul V (1605–1621) are also by Lombardo (1506–1590), his sons and his pupils, among them Tiburzio Vergelli (1551–1609), who also made the fine bronze font in the interior. The doors and hanging lamps are by the same artists. The richly decorated campanile (1750 to 1754), by Luigi Vanvitelli, is of great height; the principal bell, presented by Pope Leo X in 1516, weighs 11 tons. The interior of the church has mosaics by Domenichino and Guido Reni and other works of art, including statues by Raffaello da Montelupo. In the sacristies on each side of the right transept are frescoes, on the right by Melozzo da Forlì, on the left by Luca Signorelli and in both there are some fine intarsias; the basilica as a whole is thus a collaborative work by generations of architects and artists. ==The ==

The main focus of Loreto is the Holy House itself (in Italian, the ). It has been a Catholic pilgrimage destination since at least the 14th century and a popular tourist destination as well. (or ) high. The Black Madonna of Our Lady of Loreto A niche contains a high image of the Virgin and Child, richly adorned with jewels, above the altar. The original statue, dating back to the 1400s, was an image of the Black Madonna with the Christ Child, both of whom were covered since the 16th century with a jeweled mantle or dalmatic. The statue was stolen by Napoleonic troops in 1797 and taken to Paris. It was returned with the Treaty of Tolentino and ended up in Rome, from where the image made an eight-day journey as a pilgrim Madonna, arriving in Loreto on 9 December 1801. During the absence of the original statue from the Holy House, a copy made of poplar wood was placed in the niche and remains the only copy to have been venerated in the Holy House. This copy is now enshrined at the Chiesa della Buona Morte in Cannara. The sculpted marble screen Around the house is a tall marble screen designed by Bramante The four sides represent the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Arrival of the Santa Casa at Loreto and the Nativity of the Virgin, respectively. ==The Hall of the Treasury==

The Hall of the Treasury dates from the beginning of the 17th century. It contains votive offerings, liturgical objects and vestments. The frescoes on the vaulted ceiling are exquisite examples of late Roman Mannerism and were created between 1605 and 1610 by Cristoforo Roncalli, known as Pomarancio. ==Traditional account==

1st-century Judaea Late medieval religious traditions developed suggesting that this was the house in which the Holy Family (Mary, Joseph and Jesus) had lived while in Judea at the start of the first century AD. 1291 miraculous translation to Dalmatia Just before the final expulsion of the Christian Crusaders from the Holy Land, in order to protect it from Muslim soldiers, the house was miraculously carried by angels and initially deposited in 1291 on a hill at Tersatto (now Trsat, a suburb of Rijeka, Croatia), where an appearance of the Virgin and numerous miraculous cures attested to its sanctity. The miraculous translation of the house is said to have been confirmed by investigations made at Nazareth by messengers from the governor of Dalmatia. 1294: miraculous translation to Italy As pilgrims were prey to bandits, in 1294, angels again carried it across the Adriatic Sea to the woods near Ancona (although the reasoning is not clear as to why this happened); from these woods (Latin , Italian or from the name of its proprietress Laureta) the chapel derived the name which it still retains (Latin ). The house that gave rise to the title Our Lady of Loreto, applied to the Virgin. 1295–1296: three more translations "By the will of God", it was afterwards moved again thrice: in 1295 to a hill near Recanati, but being too close to the sea and therefore exposed to the dangers of Turkish raids, after eight months it was again moved to a hill a mile away, Monte Prodo, near Loreto. Here two counts sought to acquire title to the land in order to profit from the pilgrimages. In 1296, the Santa Casa is moved for the fifth time to the road that goes from Recanati to Porto Recanati, and therefore not on private property. ==Historicity==

An authority on Loreto has summed up the controversy concerning the miraculous flight of the Holy House by writing that it has attracted "the ridicule of one half of the world and the devotion of the other." Other Christian sources describe Hebrew and Greek graffiti on the walls, which they compare to writings found at the Grotto of the Annunciation in Nazareth. A sixteenth-century investigation ordered by Pope Clement VII reported that the house's measurements exactly matched those of foundations in front of the Grotto in Nazareth. Finally, apologists cite the house's placement partly on a public road, arguing that a house would not be deliberately built in such a location. Earliest mentions of the house The documented history of the house can only be traced as far back as the close of the Crusades, around the 14th century. An early brief reference is made in the of Flavius Blondus (1392–1463), secretary to Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, Calixtus III and Pius II; it can be read in its entirety in the , contained in the (1576) of Baptista Mantuanus. The first detailed mention of the tradition is a 1472 leaflet by Teramano. There are 16th-century bas-reliefs, which suggest that the Holy House was transported by sea. In May 1900, papal physician Giuseppe Lapponi indicated that he had read in the Vatican archives documents suggesting that the members of the noble Byzantine family named Angelos had saved the stones of the House from Muslim devastation and transported them to Loreto. In a second step, in late 1294, Nikephoros, ruler of Epirus from the Angelos family (in Italian: ), sent on the bricks to Italy as a wedding gift for his daughter who had married Prince Philip, the son of the King of Naples, in October that year. The stones considered by researchers to be authentic are still visibly marked with Roman numerals, by scratching or with coal, which suggests that the three walls were carefully taken apart with the intention to faithfully reassemble them at another location. Counter-arguments: chronology and late origin According to Herbert Thurston, in some respects, the Lauretan tradition is "beset with difficulties of the gravest kind", which were noted in a 1906 work on the subject. There are documents which indicate that a church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin already existed at Loreto in the 12th and 13th centuries, at least a century before the supposed translation. There is no mention by early pilgrims or other sources of a building at the venerated site in Nazareth, other than the rock-hewn chamber. Neither does any document from the time following the alleged transition mention any missing structure at the site. There is also no mention of the alleged transition before 1472, 180 years after the time of the supposed translation. Statue-before-house-legend theory Thurston suggests that a miracle working statue or picture of the Madonna was brought from Tersatto in Illyria (more precisely Dalmatia) to Loreto by some pious Christians and was then confounded with the ancient rustic chapel in which it was harboured, the veneration formerly given to the statue afterwards passing to the building. ==Vision of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich==

The Marian stigmatist, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824) explicitly claims that the house was transported by angels, even to her own near-disbelief: ==Modern era==

In 1797, Napoleon's troops sacked the church. ==Papal support==

Papal support of the Loreto tradition comes relatively late. The first Bull mentioning the translation is that of Julius II in 1507, and is a rather guarded expression. Julius introduces the clause , "as is piously believed and reported to be". On 20 June 2020, during the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pope Francis added three invocations to the Litany of Loreto: Mother of mercy, Mother of hope, and Solace of migrants. He later approved the extension of the Jubilee Year of Loreto to 2021. The jubilee year marks the 100th anniversary of the official proclamation of Our Lady of Loreto as the patroness of pilots and air passengers. It began 8 December 2019 and was due to end 10 December 2020, the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, but was extended to 10 December 2021 because of disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. ==Similar traditions==

Nazareth A competing tradition holds that the location of the Annunciation was at or near the site of the present Basilica of the Annunciation, whose lower level holds the Grotto of the Annunciation, said to be the remains of Mary's childhood home. (The Church of Saint Anne in Jerusalem is also said to have been built on the site of Mary's childhood home.) Some proponents of Loreto maintain that the Holy House and the Grotto were originally part of the same dwelling. Walsingham, England The shrine at Walsingham is the principal shrine of the Blessed Virgin in England. The legend of "Our Lady's house" (written down about 1465, and consequently earlier than the Loreto translation tradition) supposes that in the time of St. Edward the Confessor a chapel was built at Walsingham, which exactly reproduced the dimensions of the Holy House of Nazareth. When the carpenters could not complete it upon the site that had been chosen, it was moved and erected by angels' hands at a spot two hundred feet away. ==Veneration==

Our Lady of Loreto is the title of the Virgin Mary with respect to the Holy House of Loreto and the image displayed therein. In the 1600s, a Mass and a Marian litany was approved. and is invoked for healing of mental illness; finding inner balance and harmony; consolation in sorrows and griefs; assistance in studying and acquiring new knowledge (for oneself and one's children); and assistance in making the right decisions. The prototype was enshrined in theCathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior in Rybinsk, but is now lost. The oldest existing copy is at the Church of the Intercession in Tutayev. Another miraculous copy is kept at the Church of the Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God in Moscow. The nuns of Pokrovo-Tervenichesky Monastery have enshrined a copy of the Loreto statue at their skete of the Mother of God, Inexhaustible Chalice. In July 2020, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church approved an Akathist to the Mother of God Прибавление ума. The icon is commememorated on August 15 or on the first Sunday following the 15th. Feast day In October 2019 Pope Francis restored to the universal Roman calendar, the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, as an optional memorial commemorated on 10 December. Patronage In 1920 Pope Benedict XV declared the Madonna of Loreto patron saint of air travellers and pilots. Iconography The is occasionally represented in religious art borne by angels. ==Notable people==

• Giuseppe de Rossi (born mid 17th-century - died c. 1719–1720), maestro di cappella at the Basilica della Santa Casa from 1701 through 1711. ==In popular culture==

Due to Our Lady of Loreto being the patroness of aviators, Charles Lindbergh took a Loreto statuette with him on his 1927 flight across the Atlantic, and Apollo 8 carried a Loreto medallion on its 1968 flight to the Moon. ==See also==