Montaigne: The Godfather of 4Chan?
The Holy House of Loreto
In 1291, a little house appeared in northern Italy, near the Balkans. People were overjoyed.
Then in 1294, the little house disappeared and popped up in eastern Italy, on a field owned by two brothers, who began to argue about the profits they would make off it. The house vanished and the next day was found atop a public road near the town of Loreto, on the Adriatic. The locals erected bricks around it so it wouldn’t fall down. Word got out. Pilgrims started to arrive. In 1469, a large basilica was built over the little house to accommodate the throngs.
The Basilica of the Holy House enshrines the house where Mary conceived Jesus Christ and where the Holy Family lived. It was a pilgrimage site in Nazareth until 1291. It then vanished as the Mamelukes were extinguishing the last-remaining Crusader kingdom at Acre (you can get from Acre to Nazareth today in about 45 minutes along Route 79).
No one knows how the house got to Italy. Tradition says angels picked it up and moved it, which by the evidence is the most plausible explanation unless your worldview excludes angels, in which case, you’d probably opt for the theory that the wealthy Angeli family arranged and paid the moving expenses. Over the years, the Angeli family's beneficence blended with divine intervention…
