History
The basilica holding the Santa Casa was built starting from 1468.
In 1797, Napoleon's troops sacked the church. The treasury was emptied, either looted by soldiers, or its contents requisitioned by the pope who needed money for the payments required by the Treaty of Tolentino, which he had signed with Napoleon. Still, by 1821 the Black Madonna had been returned from the Louvre via Rome, and the treasury was again filled with valuable offerings
Basilica della Santa Casa
The Basilica della Santa Casa (English: Basilica of the Holy House) is a shrine of Marian pilgrimage in Loreto, Italy. The basilica is known for enshrining the house in which the Blessed Virgin Mary is believed by some Catholics to have lived. A legend claims the same house was flown over by angelic beings from Nazareth to Tersatto (Trsat in Croatia), then to Recanati, before arriving at the current site.
Pope Benedict XV designated the Blessed Virgin Mary under the same title to be Patroness of air passengers and auspicious travel on 24 March 1920. Accordingly, Pope Pius XI granted a Canonical Coronation to the image of Our Lady of Loreto made of Cedar of Lebanon on 5 September 1922, replacing the torched image consumed in fire on 23 February 1921.
The church building
The basilica is a Late Gothic structure continued by Giuliano da Maiano (1432–1490), Giuliano da Sangallo (1445–1516) and Donato Bramante (1444–1514). It is 93 meters long, 60 meters wide, and its campanile is 75.6 meters high.
The façade of the church was erected under Sixtus V, who in 1586 fortified Loreto 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 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 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 Santa Casa
The main attraction of Loreto is the Holy House itself (in Italian, the Santa Casa di Loreto). It has been a Catholic pilgrimage destination since at least the 14th century and a popular tourist destination for non-Catholics as well.
The "house"
The "house" itself consists of three stone walls. It is a plain stone structure, with a door on the north side and a window on the west. The size is 31 13 feet, i.e. 9 x 4 m (or 8.5 m by 3.8 m and 4.1 m high).
The "house" contains the "Altar of the Apostles", venerated as the authentic one built by St Peter and the Apostles.[5]
A niche contains a 33 inches high black image of the Virgin and Child, a statue made of Lebanon cedar, richly adorned with jewels, placed above the altar.[6] A legend attributes the statue to Saint Luke, described in the Bible a physician, with a later tradition adding painting to his skills, and here given also the attribute of a sculptor; but its style suggests it was created in the 15th century.
The "Black Madonna", known as Our Lady of Loreto, owes its dark colour to centuries of lamp smoke[dubious – discuss] and is carved from Cedar of Lebanon. Much like the Holy House, it is associated with miracles. The statue was commissioned after a fire in the Santa Casa in 1921 destroyed the original madonna, and it was granted a Canonical Coronation in 1922 by Pope Pius XI. In October 2019 Pope Francis restored the feast of Our Lady of Loreto, commemorated on December 10, to the universal Roman calendar.
The sculpted marble screen
Around the house is a tall marble screen designed by Bramante and executed under Popes Leo X, Clement VII and Paul III, by Andrea Sansovino, Girolamo Lombardo, Bandinelli, Guglielmo della Porta and others in the baroque style. 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 in 1605-1610 by Cristoforo Roncalli, known as Pomarancio. The architectural design is finer than the details of the sculpture.The apse is decorated with 19th-century German frescoes.
Translation to Dalmatia and Italy
The narrative further states that, threatened with destruction by Muslim soldiers, the house was miraculously carried by angels through the air 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. In 1294, angels again carried it across the Adriatic Sea to the woods near Recanati (although the reasoning is not clear as to why this happened); from these woods (Latin lauretum, Italian Colle dei Lauri or from the name of its proprietress Laureta) the chapel derived the name which it still retains (Lat. sacellum gloriosæ Virginis in Laureto). From this spot it was afterwards removed to the present hill in 1295, with a slight adjustment being required to fix it in its current site. It is this house that gave rise to the title Our Lady of Loreto, sometimels applied to the Virgin; the miracle is occasionally represented in religious art wherein the house is borne by an angelic host.
A more detailed narrative mentions five transitions: in May 1291 from Nazareth to Tersatto, where it remained for over three years; from there to the other side of the Adriatic Sea, to Posatora (now part of Ancona) in the Marche region; after nine months to woods near Recanati in Marche; after eight months to a hill a mile away, Monte Prodo, near Loreto, where local counts petition the pope for ownership of the pilgrimage site; and finally, at the end of 1296, to the current position on the road then connecting Recanati to Porto Recanati, on public ground free of property claims.
Papal support
Bulls in favour of the Shrine at Loreto were issued by Pope Sixtus IV in 1491 (although, since Sixtus IV died in 1484, either the date is erroneous, or else the pope should be Innocent VIII), and by Julius II in 1507, the last alluding to the translation of the house with some caution (ut pie creditur et fama est). While, like most miracles, the translation of the house is not a matter of faith for Catholics, nonetheless, in the late 17th century, Innocent XII appointed a missa cum officio proprio (a special mass) for the Feast of the Translation of the Holy House, which as late as the 20th century was enjoined in the Spanish Breviary as a greater double on December 10. This mass was recently restored by Pope Francis in 2019.
On 4 October 2012, Benedict XVI visited the Shrine to mark the 50th anniversary of John XXIII's visit. In his visit, Benedict formally entrusted the World Synod of Bishops and the Year of Faith to the Virgin of Loreto.
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_della_Santa_Casa