Resolved to fly: The Virgin of Loreto, the Jesuits & the miracle of portable Catholicism in the seventeenth-century Atlantic world

With its flying Madonna and Holy House, Italy's devotional complex of Loreto offers a magnificent allegory for early modern Catholicism. The Virgin Mary was on the move, headed westward with relic in tow. Jesuits strove to connect themselves with this alluring myth from the founding days of their Society. A legend in their own right, Jesuits quickly gained recognition for their organization, versatility and successful conversions of remote peoples. However, Jesuit diffusion of the Madonna of Loreto in the Americas in the seventeenth century shows a different side to their missionary efforts. Their portaging of the sacred was piecemeal and intensely personal. Lauretan devotion also took root in unexpected ways among Jesuit converts.;This dissertation chronicles how the Madonna of Loreto jumped the Atlantic in the late 1600s. My central question is: How was the Lauretan devotion transformed during the course of local encounters on both sides of ocean? I consider how an Italian devotion came to transcend not only continental and oceanic boundaries, but also national, imperial, and Jesuit networks. I focus on three portable components of the devotion that traveled and changed: the Holy House, the name "Loreto," and the Madonna statue. In tracking these, I reveal how Loreto was moving via pilgrimage, architectural replication, the litany, mission nomenclature, processions, invocations, and refugee displacement. The human agents behind this religious transfer include Jesuits such as Oratio Torsellino, Juan Maria Salvatierra, and Pierre-Joseph-Marie Chaumonot. Jesuits found partners in the devout Huron of Lorette (Canada), Moxos Indians of Loreto (Peru/Bolivia), Monqui of Loreto Concho (Baja California), and Dalmatians of Trsat (Croatia). Though these people resided far from Loreto's original shrine, they were the ones who made of Loreto a globally resonant devotion.;Overall, I call attention to a diverse, peripherally located cast of actors and set of Catholic practices. These were the forces that propelled the Loreto devotion out of Italy in the seventeenth century. Lauretan movement counters the old trope that Catholic (and Jesuit-led) expansion was centralized and hyper-regulated. I conclude instead that Catholicism spread through individual religiosity, independent initiative, and shared experiences of survival on the frontier.