Our Lady of Nazareth

Since the fifteenth century, and possibly even earlier, the “Holy House” of Loreto has been numbered among the most famous shrines of Italy.  Loreto is a small town a few miles south of Ancona and near the sea.  Its most conspicuous building is the basilica.  This dome-crowned edifice, which with its various annexes took more than a century to build and adorn under the direction of many famous artists, serves merely as the setting of a tiny cottage standing within the basilica itself.  Though the rough walls of the little building have been raised in height and are cased externally in richly sculptured marble, the interior measures only thirty-one feet by thirteen.  An altar stands at one end beneath a statue, blackened with age, of the Virgin Mother and her Divine Infant.  As the inscription Hic Verbum caro factum est, reminds us, this building is honoured by Christians as the veritable cottage at Nazareth in which the Holy Family lived, and the Word became incarnate.  Another inscription of the sixteenth century which decorates the eastern faA&ade of the basilica sets forth at greater length the tradition which makes this shrine so famous.  “Christian pilgrim”, it says, “you have before your eyes the Holy House of Loreto, venerable throughout the world on account of the Divine mysteries accomplished in it and the glorious miracles herein wrought.  It is here that most Holy Mary, Mother of God, was born; here that she was saluted by the Angel, here that the eternal Word of God was made Flesh.  Angels conveyed this House from Palestine to the town Tersato in Illyria in the year of Salvation 1291 in the pontificate of Nicholas IV.