Marian Paulaner song from Amberg & the Holy House of Loreto.

[Loreto] / [Holy House]. Marianisches Gesang der Rosen-Crantz Bruderschaft. Das gnaden bild Maria Laureta bey dennen Patrib[us] Paulanern zu Amberg. S.l. [Bavaria]: s.n., s.a. [18th century]. [16.9 x 9.6 cm], [2] ff., with full page etching. Stain along centerfold, marginal toning.

Unrecorded 18th-century German “Marian Song of the Confraternity of the Rosary,” presumably from the chapter at Amberg in Bavaria, given that the item is decorated with a full-page etching of “The Miraculous Image of Maria Loreto at the church of the Pauline Fathers in Amberg.”

The Amberg Paulanerkirche was completed in 1719 and deconsecrated in 1802. I have not been able to trace the present whereabouts of their miraculous painting of the miracle of the Holy House of Loreto, which, judging from our print, depicted the Madonna di Loreto hovering above the Holy House being carried by angels.

Sources indicate that the Paulinerkirche formerly was also home to a ‘replica’ of the Holy House: “Eine Loretokapelle, genau nach ihrem Vorbilde erbaut und eingerichtet, war mit der Kirche verbunden” (“A Loreto chapel, built and furnished exactly according to its model, was connected to the church”); A. M. Scheglmann, Geschichte der säkularisation im rechtsrheinischen Bayern: Die Säkularisation in den 1803 definitiv bayerisch gewesenen oder gewordenen Gebieten [1908], p. 771).

On the proliferation of replica Holy Houses across Europe (and beyond) see Erin Giffin’s excellent Early Modern Replicas of the Holy House of Loreto: Translating Space (2025).

The story of the Santa Casa ranks among the more unusual legends from the Middle Ages. The house in Nazareth—where the Virgin was born and Jesus later was conceived through the Holy Spirit—was carried in 1291 by angels to Tersatto (now Trsat, Croatia). In 1294, angels carried the House across the Adriatic to a grove near Ancona. It then was removed in 1295 to a hill near Recanati and then less than a year later to nearby Monte Prodo, not far from Loreto. In 1296 the Santa Casa was at last moved to its present location. It became one of the most popular pilgrimages sites in Christendom.

This item is not located by OCLC or KVK, nor have I encountered it in the literature on the Amberg Paulanerkirche or the Holy House.

*Karin Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World; Federico Bellini, ed., La basilica della Santa Casa di Loreto: La storia per immagini nell’età digitale.