Holy House of Loreto

The Book of Luke tells us that the angel Gabriel appeared to the young virgin, Mary, and announced that with her consent she was to conceive and bear the Son of God (the Annunciation). She had been chosen by God to become the mother of Jesus, the only begotten Son of the Father (“God from God, Light from Light. . .). This was such a phenomenal cosmic event that we sometimes wonder whether God could have left some evidence to confirm this story.

We are certain he has, and it’s called the Holy House of Loreto.

Interior of the Holy House showing the three walls which arrived in Loreto in 1296

The Holy House of Loreto is misnamed; it isn’t a house, but a brick and mortar U-shaped structure of three walls. It is approximately 30 feet long by 15 feet wide and about 15 feet high. Here is a photograph of the Holy House showing its three walls. In 1296 the Holy House inexplicably appeared fully constructed on the main road near Loreto, Italy, with one of its corners hanging over a ditch. There is a strong tradition and belief that this is the house in Nazareth that Mary grew up in and lived. It would have been in this house that the angel Gabriel appeared to her. It could even be the house where Jesus spent his childhood. How can this be? Loreto is located half way up the eastern coast of Italy, about 1,500 miles northeast of Nazareth. Notwithstanding its location, the house has been a Catholic pilgrimage destination since the 14th century and several million people visit it every year. What evidence is there that this is in fact the house of Mary and how did it get to Italy?

From Nazareth to Loreto – A Chronology

From the beginnings of Christianity, the house and the grotto which formed one side of the Holy House was a place of pilgrimage and worship in Nazareth.

In about 312 Constantine had a Basilica built over the house and the grotto, which were interred within a subterranean crypt. The House always remained protected by the original Basilica or its replacements until the Muslims invaded the Holy Land in about the year 1090. They ravaged the Christian Holy places and turned churches and basilicas into mosques and destroyed other Christian sites. While the Basilica over the Holy House was destroyed, the Holy House itself and the grotto survived.

The Crusaders reclaimed the Holy Land in 1100 and built a new Basilica. In 1219 St. Francis of Assisi visited the site. Around the year 1250 St Louis IX king of France visited, prayed, and received Communion while on a Crusade to the Holy Land. But in 1263 the rebuilt Basilica was destroyed by the Muslims. As before, however, the House and the grotto remained intact.

In 1291 the Crusaders were completely driven out of the Holy Land, and with them left the last line of defense for the remaining holy Christian sites, including the Holy House. It was then that it disappeared from Palestine.

On May 10, 1291, the Holy House suddenly appeared in fields of what is now Croatia, near Trsat (sometimes called Tersatto). The day before there had been neither building nor building materials. There was nothing, but now there was a three-walled structure and inside was an ancient altar and a statue of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. The local priest, who was in ill health, prayed for help. What was this building and why is it here? His hours of intense prayer were answered when the Blessed Mother appeared to him in sleep and told him that this was the Holy House of Nazareth where the Annunciation took place and it was brought here through the power of God. This was the house in which she was raised and the altar within it had been consecrated by Peter. To confirm what she was telling him, he would be restored to health.

The sudden cure of the priest convinced him and the villagers of the veracity of his vision the night before. With knowledge certain they venerated the little house accordingly.

The Governor of Dalmatia (predecessor of parts of current Croatia) sent a delegation to Palestine with the assignment of determining whether the Holy House was still there. They reported back that not only had the Holy House disappeared from Nazareth, but that the length and breadth of the walls of the dwelling found at Tersatto corresponded exactly with the foundations beneath the Basilica which had been built over the original Holy House. Moreover, the Tersatto house was built of limestone, mortar and cedar wood, common in Nazareth, but almost unobtainable in Dalmatia.

In 1294 the Muslims continued their march northward and closed in on Croatia. On December 10, 1294, and just as suddenly as it had appeared, the Holy House disappeared. Within a few years the first church was built on the site and a shrine erected. Today it is known as Our Lady of Trsat. In 1367 Pope Urban V gave the people of Trsat an oil painting of Miraculous Mary (also known as Our Lady of the Graces) in consolation for their loss of the Holy House. To this day the painting remains, in the same place where the house of Nazareth was recreated.

On the same date the Holy House disappeared from Croatia, December 10, 1294, it suddenly came to rest on a hill next to the Adriatic Sea, near the town of Recanati, Italy. Later it was moved again to a nearby forest. There it became a place of pilgrimage for a number of months, but the pilgrims became targets of bandits and the House again suddenly was moved. This time it arrived on a hill belonging to two quarreling brothers. Finally, in 1296 the House was moved again, and this time to its present location on top of an ancient public road. In total, the House had been moved five times: (1) Nazareth to Croatia; (2) Croatia to an Italian hill by the sea; (3) to a forest; (4) to the quarreling brothers’ property; and (5) its present location.

In each case the walls had no foundation. It finally came to rest over an ancient public road in what is now Loreto, partially dangling over a ditch.

Why would we believe this story?

There are numerous contemporaneous documents, tablets, inscriptions, churches and other hard evidence to support this history and the traditional explanation that the House was borne from place to place by angels. There is even contemporaneous testimony from those who claimed to have seen the House in flight!

The angelic translation seems hard to believe in this day and age. Perhaps there are more rational explanations.

One explanation is that the house was disassembled and the stones were transported from Palestine by the Crusaders to its present site in Loreto, Italy. The best evidence of this tradition is that there is an Italian receipt showing the importation by the Angeles family of stones from the House of the Blessed Virgin at about the same time the House suddenly appeared.

A second tradition is that the stones were first taken to Trsat. There a delegation was sent to Nazareth to measure the dimensions of the foundation of the house for its reconstruction. The house was then rebuilt and the local Prince then gave the Holy House to the Pope and shipped it to Italy, where it was then placed in Loreto.

Among other problems, both these more “rational” traditions ignore the well-attested fact that the house first appeared (fully constructed) in Trsat, Croatia and that it then would have to have been deconstructed and moved three more times and then moved to its present location. The House would have to have been reconstructed five times. But the real question is whether this is the house of Mary.

Evidence that this is the Nazarene house of Mary

There is powerful, but not conclusive, evidence that this is the site of the Annunciation. In particular:

1.  In 1296 the fully constructed House (the three walls, altar, and the statue of Mary) suddenly appeared overnight at its present location. There was no planning, drawings, materials, workers – the House simply showed up and claimed its spot.

2.  It appeared on the area’s principal public road. There can be no rational explanation for building a house on the region’s principal public road in the 1290’s. It’s as though the House proclaims that this is not its real home.

3.  Unlike all other houses in the region it had no foundation.

4.  A corner of the House was incomprehensibly hanging in the air over a ditch. (Because the House had no foundation, was partially ‘built’ hanging over a ditch, and the nature of the soil, supporting arches were later added.)

5.  The House originally had one door which faced north. Locals never built their house with doors facing north because of the prevailing northern winds. The original northern door was later filled in and two other doors were opened to accommodate the pilgrims.

6.  The position of the original door was on the longer side of the house and not on the shorter side, which would have been more usual.

Interior of the Holy House showing the altar which would have been at the entrance to the grotto

7.  In Nazareth at the time of Jesus, the three walls would have been snugged against the opening to a grotto (a shallow cave or recess). The area enclosed by the three walls and the grotto itself would have constituted the living area. As shown in this photograph, the part where the altar now stands would have been the opening to the grotto. Over the altar stands a replica of a wooden statue of the Madonna. The original one, made of cedar of Lebanon, arrived in the Loreto region together with the house in 1294, but was destroyed by fire in 1921.

8.  The dimensions are such that if we were to transfer these three walls to the grotto at Nazareth every dimension, every size and every proportion matches perfectly. This had been confirmed as far back as 1292, and later in 1296 and 1524. This is a typical house from Palestine in the first century

9.  In the original part of the house the walls from ground level up to about nine feet are built with stones identical to those used in Palestine at the time of Jesus, but quite different from stones in the Loreto region. The working and finishing of the stones and patterns were well-known in the Nazarene area.

10.  The mortar used in the walls is of Palestinian origin, and precisely in the area around Nazareth. This mortar was not used in Italy. It doesn’t seem realistic for the crusaders to bring the makings of mortar with them from Palestine

11.  The stones used in the altar are of Palestinian origin and of the same style of finishing as the walls. The altar would be consistent with the conclusion that after the Resurrection the first disciples transformed the House of the Lord’s mother into a place of worship. This could very well be the most ancient altar in all of Christianity and we can easily envision Peter standing and kneeling before it, offering the Eucharist.

12.  There are about 60 graffiti in the form of engraved markings which are dated between the first and third centuries after Christ. Some are the initials of Jesus in Hebrew. The graffiti were typical Judeo Christian. One is written in Greek with two letters in Hebrew and it says in Greek, “Oh Jesus Christ Son of God.”

13.  The remains of an ostrich egg were found which was totally inappropriate in Italy while they were frequent in mid-east Christian churches. It’s hard to fathom why the Crusaders would return with the remains of an ostrich egg.

14.  In the 13th century the settlement and, later, city that we now know as Loreto, Italy did not exist. Suddenly something of such importance occurred to mandate the building of a basilica and the building of a town. Before the end of the 13th century there was nothing. Then, and quite suddenly, the location became a site of pilgrimage and miracles and immediately endowed with a rich tradition explaining the sudden appearance of these three walls, altar and statue on the major public road of the time.

Facing the facts

Clearly, there can be a lot of confusion surrounding events which occurred more than 700 years ago in medieval Europe. Nevertheless, regardless of which transportation tradition we believe, we need to account for a number of inexplicable facts, including the fact that the House was constructed five different times in five different locations overnight and with no knowledge of anyone that it was being constructed.

While we can never prove the mode of removal from Palestine and the history of its journey, nearly all evidence points to a divine intervention and angelic transportation according to the 700-year-old tradition. The one countervailing piece of evidence of the document dated in September or October 1294 stating that the stones from the House of Mary were being imported. But even this documentation doesn’t mention how many stones, what the circumstances were or give any detail.

Whatever tradition we consider the most likely, they all point to one undeniable conclusion: these walls and the altar originated in first century Palestine and were considered a holy site by the earliest Christians, all consistent with the continuing belief that these were the walls of the Holy House of Mary where the Annunciation occurred. Whether they arrived in Loreto by the Translation or by multiple deconstructions, shipments by land and sea, and the multiple reconstructions, we know this House is a gift from God to us to help us in our faith.

Today the Holy House stands as one of the most sacred and important of all Catholic shrines. Written at the door of the basilica are these words: “The whole world has no place more sacred… For here was the Word made Flesh, and here was born the Virgin Mother…”

There are numerous internet sites describing the Holy House of Loreto. I would suggest the article by Servants of the Pierced Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Some websites and references

Footnotes and Attributions

Last modified September 28, 2019