Erin Giffin’s book, Early Modern Replicas of the Holy House of Loreto: Translating Space (Routledge, 2025), examines cult replicas of the Holy House of the Virgin Mary. In this interview, Giffin shares rich details about this early modern replication and its connection to Catholic piety.
Your book investigates replicas of the Holy House of the Virgin Mary at Loreto, Italy. What inspired you to write this book?
While researching the Santa Casa di Loreto cult site for my dissertation, I came across multiple vague references to replicas of the Holy House in Italy and Switzerland. This intrigued me because I was well aware of the practice of replicating cult icons, such as Lucan icons (think the Volto Santo in Lucca, or the Madonna del Popolo, otherwise known as the Salus Populi Romani in Rome), and so I wanted to know more. While I did not have the space to flesh out my interest in the dissertation, the perfect postdoc materialized at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany (in the ERC-funded research group SACRIMA: The Normativity of Sacred Images in Early Modern Europe, PI: Chiara Franceschini). Between 2017 and 2021, I researched replicas throughout Europe and in colonial territories. What I initially thought would be a group of 50-60 replicas ballooned into a massive undertaking: my current tally is well over 300. Thus, I am keenly aware of the popularity of this cult, and am eager to share information about what was once a near-ubiquitous Catholic practice of structural replication.
What makes the original Loretan House significant that led to the widespread installation of replicas across Europe?
The Santa Casa di Loreto was recreated in so many territories because of its devotional importance, but also for its symbolic relevance. The relic object is credited by Catholics as the Holy House of the Virgin Mary, the home of Mary’s ancestors (and immediate family: her parents Anne and Joachim), as well as the site of the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit entered her womb. In this respect, the Santa Casa acts as a synecdoche for the Virgin’s own body, as another vessel invested with the Holy Spirit (just as the Holy Sepulchre and its replicas represent Christ). To add to its relevance, supposedly the house later became one of the first meeting places of the apostles following Christ’s death and resurrection. Ergo, the Santa Casa is lauded as the first church of the faith.
European Catholics claimed the Santa Casa as the home of the Virgin and the paleo-Christian ‘first church’, which flew miraculously to the eastern coast of Italy in the 1290s at the request of the Virgin. Miracle narratives aside, the cult site at Loreto evolved across the 15th century, transforming from a small regional cult center focused on an image of the Virgin and Child, into the perceived Home of the Virgin in the latter half of the century. Its subsequent replication does not appear until the 16th century, for example in Sacri Monti sites like the replica at Varallo from the 1530s, and then in select, more circumstantial representation into the 1620s before the explosion of more accurate replicas following a craze in print media in the 1630s-1640s. This proliferation coincides with the era of Catholic posturing and reframing against Protestant media intended to undercut the Catholic Church (for example, British Protestants were quick to publish diatribes against the Santa Casa). Thus, to build a local replica was also a declaration of faith.
Can you describe your process for analyzing the materiality and form of the Santa Casa replicas? What sources were important to your research?
Print media quickly became a driving force of this research. No truly ‘accurate’ replicas (for example, of comparable in dimension, internal decorations or wear, even similar Marian imagery) appear in shrines dedicated to the Santa Casa or Madonna di Loreto before the 17th-century proliferation of printed imagery. The earliest prints and engravings appear to be anonymously produced, and what survives implies a potentially longer history of standardization that has since been lost. In short, the sophistication and complexity of images seemingly materializing spontaneously in the 1640s hint at a longer iconographic evolution lost from the cult site’s early ephemera.
What fascinates me about this research topic is the adherence and enshrinement of signs of tactile wear associated with the Santa Casa original, in the form of lost frescoed surfaces, uneven rows of stone or brick, and discoloration included in the replicas. To this level of detail, local additions of graffiti and added votive adornments illustrate how the replica became part of the local fabric of devotion—the Santa Casa’s recreation increasingly diverged from its archetype, with new levels of local meaning appended to its surfaces. It is important to remember that this replica, with its local encrustations (to borrow a concept from Megan Holmes) was the better-known version of the cult relic for local devotees than the original in far off Loreto. Local replicas created new standards, forging networks of information regionally that would be incorporated into subsequent local recreations.
Could you tell us about the iconographic representations of the Santa Casa? What role did the physicality of these objects play in early modern religious experience?
Again, I defer to the early 17th-century print media detailing the iconography of the Holy House as the primary resource for specific iconography. I am amazed at the level of specificity in the replicas borne of these prints. For example, details like massive cracks created in physical brick, as in the replica in the Loreto convent in the Hradčany district in Prague (built 1626-1631, renovated 1664-1673), or with painted and incised plaster, as at Kloster Aldersbach in Germany (completed 1739). These added characteristics express the intrinsic value placed in these documentary traits. But these facets of the Holy House, circulated widely via print, do not necessarily represent the Santa Casa in Loreto proper—some details come from other replicas (like the influential replica on the island of San Clemente in Venice, completed in 1646), or are elaborations expressed only in the prints themselves: additional cracks and fissures seemingly meant to express age that do not appear in Loreto. These details then became enfolded into the relic’s regional iconographies, influencing subsequent replicas.
Regardless of the minutiae expressed between print and structural surface, the majority of Holy Houses, or Sante Case, prioritize structural inconsistencies and crumbling decorative details to represent the original. Unlike a Sacro Monte chapel, where a visitor walks conceptually through space and time to enter the Santa Casa at the moment of the Annunciation (see the 1530s replica at Varallo, and the even more exacting 1604-1605 iteration at the Sacro Monte di Varese), the freestanding replicas for the cult of the Santa Casa represent the contemporary structure. You are purposefully intended to feel the expanse of time between the Virgin’s life and your own, mark the many votive adornments appended to the structure over the centuries, and recognize the fragile and humble state of this first church of the faith. Such details conferred proto-archaeological proof on the cult, attesting to the house’s age and its miracle translation.
How did the spread of the Santa Casa cult object and its replicas vary across different regions and cultures? Were there distinct regional variations in the iconography? And what evolutionary characteristics of Marian piety did you find?
The variation in Santa Casa replication reveals the networks of cultural exchange disseminating ideas about the cult object, and who had access to what information and when. First of all, multiple religious communities propelled Santa Casa replication: the Jesuits are best known in the Americas, but the Benedictines, Dominicans, and Capuchins were the principal disseminators of the cult in Austria; the Franciscans dominated in Croatia and Italy, while they, together with the Jesuits and Capuchins, propelled the cult in Germany; the Carmelites built replicas in Hungary; while the Cistercians popularized the cult in Poland. Honestly, there are more orders involved—these are just some of the principal actors disseminating and caretaking regional replicas.
Second, the types of Sante Case produced regionally reveal what information was in circulation. For example, the replica on the island of San Clemente in the Laguna of Venice indirectly influenced replicas built in re-Catholicized territories of Bohemia and Moravia (modern Poland and the northern Czech Republic), most likely by virtue of the Venetian structure’s popularity in print. I assert that prints of this replica first made in Venice were cast even farther afield by printing houses copying the Venetian precedent, for example in Paris, France, where idiosyncrasies of the Venetian structure were mistaken as the Loretan archetype (see Adam Philippon’s Le veritable plan et pourtrait de la maison Miraculeuse de la S.te Vierge ainsy quelle se voit à present à Lorette, 1649). To be clear, I do not believe this was maliciously done—artists trusted in the authority of their local replica to create prints of the ‘Santa Casa,’ and then these prints became authorial references in subsequent printing houses, which subsequently introduced the Venetian version into new spaces. Likewise, local replicas tend to lean heavily on pre-existing regional iterations, thus regional standards took the Holy House in new directions. This is particularly poignant in the case of colonial replicas: the first replicas in Peru, for example, were the likeliest models for subsequent constructions in the broader Viceroyalty, extending into modern Brazil and Paraguay.
As for variations in Marian imagery, Sante Case were not by default built only for images of the Loretan Madonna: these structures often housed, or were built within the complexes of, locally prized iterations of Mary. For example, the Madonna della Cintura was given pride of place on the internal altar wall of the Santa Casa replica at Arona (1592-1613), meanwhile the Madonna dell’Albera (or Albara) was appended to the exterior of the replica in Brescia (1647-1658, renovated 1662-1685), over the Gabriel Window and just behind the church’s high altar where most masses took place. The diversity of Madonne involved has impressed upon me how accurately Wilhelm Gumppenberg summarized the landscape of Marian cults in his Atlas Marianus (Munich, 1657). The author explains that though visually and materially diverse, the many iterations of Mary are intrinsically one in the same. As the Virgin’s Home, the Santa Casa is the repository for them all, as depicted in Gumppenberg’s frontispiece first executed by Mattäus Küsel, where the Virgin and Child fly seated on a Santa Casa composed of Marian icons. Following this logic, the diverse iterations of the Santa Casa itself reinforce this interpretation of Mary: though distinct, they all function in service of the Virgin as her Holy House.
What function did these early modern replicas play at the local level? Did they attract a specific community? What was their relationship to the Catholic Church? And did the Santa Casa replicas offer an alternative form of engagement with Mary and/or God?
This is a challenging question to answer because information regarding uses for Santa Casa replicas is sporadic at best, and primarily anecdotal. We are dependent mostly on surviving church records and personal diaries to reconstruct trends in use. In general, the replicas served as a place for private contemplation—an immersive chapel space in which one could feel particularly connected with and protected by the Virgin—and a site for ritual masses, but only for a select few, given the structure’s limitations (Sante Case are typically 9.5 by 4 meters internally). Space is often provided outside of internally-constructed replicas for larger masses. The amount of votive and tactile engagement with the original and its replicas reinforces this personal dimension. Such gifts included painted or metal votive plaques, ephemeral offerings like crutches and veils, and ostentatious offerings like crowns and textiles.
In eastern Europe, Sante Case tend to become political and dynastic symbols. In re-Catholicized territories, replicas like the one in Slaný, in the Czech Republic (1658), were built into once Protestant spaces (originally, the church was Utraquist), effectively filling the now-empty interior of the decimated local community. In many ways, the Catholic rulers taking charge of Bohemian and Moravian territories looked to the Habsburg dynasty as model Loretan devotees. The Austrian Habsburgs would bury the hearts of their lineage in a chapel underneath their own Santa Casa replica in the nave of the Augustinerkirche at the Hofburg Palace (built 1624, destroyed 1784) for over a hundred years. A similar practice of Habsburg burial was resurrected at the replica in Muri, Switzerland (1694-1698), in the 20th century. This Austrian Habsburg devotion to the Santa Casa would incite the construction of the rare, early replica at the Royal Convent of the Descalzas Reales in Madrid, Spain (circa 1600), in a country that otherwise did not gravitate towards the Loretan Madonna.
It is important to remember that the Loretan structure and its replicas were a symbol of the Virgin herself, much like the Holy Sepulchre and its recreations represented Christ. To have your own Santa Casa di Loreto declared your belief in miracles, as if the home of the Virgin Mary had picked up again and landed in your local community. This invigorating sense of intimacy with the Virgin via proto-archaeological means represents the Catholic counternarrative to the Protestant rebukes against the Church.
Were there any surprising discoveries in your research?
The surprise was the sheer number of replicas. I honestly thought that 60 replicas would be an astounding find when I began this project. Now, with over 300 replicas and still climbing, I have every expectation that there are more replicas yet to be discovered.
To that end, I would also add that I was surprised how long the cult of the Santa Casa remained popular in the Catholic world, and some of the ramifications of its more recent history. First of all, I had no idea when I started that replicas were still being constructed as late as the early 19th century. And then, in my most contemporary research, I found that the cult was incorporated into Mussolini’s fascist vision of Italy in the 1920s. A surviving Luce news reel from 1922 documents biplanes receiving blessings as they fly over the Marian shrine at Loreto (dated 5-8 September, 1922, accessible online in the Archivio Luce: M019104). The association with aviation would lead to the shrine’s involvement in political propaganda during WWII, some of which was exported explicitly to the United States in the form of English postcards. This permanently tainted the shrine by association and helps explain, in part, the cult’s disappearance from our ‘living memory’.
Above all, what’s one thing you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope readers recognize from this project the expansive use of replicas in Catholic cult space, and the value of looking to anonymous ephemera as well as sculptural and/or architectural facets of early modern culture. I think there is a lot to be gained from close examinations of these spaces. In many ways, the book just scratches at the surface of a much deeper, and more expansive, history of early modern replication and regional cult practice. I hope this project will inspire new scholars to delve deeper into this corpus, identify more avenues to illuminate the rich history of these replicas, and engage with the process of early modern information transfer more broadly.
Finally, can we look forward to any other projects that you’re working on?
I’m working now on a printmaker closely associated with the Loretan cult named Giacomo Lauro. Based in Rome (active 1583-1630s), he is best known for his engravings of classical antiquity (specifically, his book the Antiquae Urbis Splendor, 1612-1613). My project focuses instead on his religious prints, and to the vast network of patrons that the artist cultivated throughout his career. These connections are documented in dedicatory inscriptions on the prints themselves, but also through letters sent by the artist soliciting commissions, and responses received by Giacomo Lauro that he transcribed into his Liber Amicorum, or friendship signature book, kept in his workshop in Rome. By placing the prints in dialogue with his correspondences and connections, this project aims to explore the networks of an enterprising artist, and how religious media propelled cross-cultural relationships in 17th-century Rome.
Erin Giffin is Visiting Assistant Professor at Hamilton College, USA.