Then they take us into a grotto back of the altar and up a staircase into the Virgin’s kitchen, which is only a small cave, and must have been a very poor sort of kitchen at best. The monks manifest much veneration for the Sacred Grotto, and pious people from Christian lands have made handsome donations for the support of the church at Nazareth. As the church stands over the site of the house of Mary, the “Doubter” demands to see the house. The guide tells him that it is gone, and while he is trying to make his statement understood, one of the English speaking monks puts in a word:
“You should understand,” he says, “that the house is at Loretta, in Italy, and that Loretto is called the Nazareth of Italy. It is the house that was here once, the real house of the Virgin Mary.”
“Yes, but how did it get there?” asked the “Doubter.”
“Who moved it, and how was it done? I don’t believe you could move one of these stone houses all the way to Italy.”
“Ah, there is the miracle, and I will tell you,” says the monk, and he begins to rattle away as though he had committed the story to memory from a guide book.
“The house stood here for hundreds of years, and then it happened that the Moslems defeated the Christians in battle, and threatened to destroy everything in Nazareth. They were camped in the plain, and sent an army up here. Just as the army came to the edge of the town, some angels came down and took the house away. They carried it to Europe, and set it down on a hill near Fiume, in Dalmatia, and then, when it was found that the place wasn’t safe, they took it away to Loretto, and there it is now.”
“Very strange,” says the “Doubter,” “very strange. And do they do this sort of thing often?”
“Not often,” replies the monk. “You see it was a miracle; and if they performed miracles every day they wouldn’t be miracles.”
The “Doubter” says he doesn’t believe a word of it, and turns away. The monk continues his account, and says:
“There can be no doubt that the house is in Italy, and that it was moved by a miracle. It was known to be there more than four hundred years ago, and the Pope, Leo X, told all about it in a papal bull, in the year 1518, and authenticated it so that there could be no chance for any body to disbelieve.”