But now as to the church of the Santa Casa itself. It stands near the centre of the town, in a piazza which pos- sesses other architectural attractions, the chief pf which are the governor's palace, built from the designs of Bra- mante, and a fine bronze statue of ]iope Sixtus V. The grcfu central door of the church is surmounted by a splendid bronze statue of the Madonna; and in the in-
terior are three magnificent bronze doors filled with bas- reliefs, representing tlie principal events of scriptural and ecclesiastical history. The celebrated Holy House stands within. It is a small brick house, with on.e door and one window, originally of rude material and con- struction, but now, from the devotion of successive gen- erations, a marvel of art and of costliness. It is entirely cased with white marble, exquisitely sciUptured, after Bramante's designs, by Sansovino, Bandinelli, Giovanni Bolognese, and other eminent artists. The subjects of the bas-reliefs are all taken from the history of the Vir- gin Mary in relation to the mj'Stery of the incarnation, as the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, with the exception of three on the eastern side, which are mainly devoted to the legend of the Holy House itself and of its translation. The rest of the interior of the church is rich with bas-reliefs, mosaics, frescoes, paint- ings, and carvings in bronze. Of this material, the finest work is the font, which is a master-piece of art. The Holy House having been at all times an object of devout veneration, its treasury of votive offerings is one of the richest in the Western world. It suffered severely in the French occupation of 1796, but it has since re- ceived numerous and most costly accessions. Each of the innumerable gold and silver lamps kept burning at the shrine is endowed to the amount of several tliou- sand dollars to seciu-e their being always kept burning. The remainder of the wax candles and oil (of which some 14,000 jiounds are burned annually) is sold as pos- sessing sanative virtues, which are also supposed to ac- company the use or even the handling of household vessels belonging to the shrine. As many as 40,000 masses have been said there in one year, which also adds greatly to the income. Popes Julius II, Sixtus V, and Innocent XII attached indulgences to the pilgrim- ages and pra3-ers offered here, but nevertheless the num- ber of pilgrims, which was said in IGOO to have reached 200,000 per annum, fell in the last century to 40,000, and in our own day remains at this number. The fres- coes of the church are among the finest to be found in the world. The name it took from Laureta, a lady on whose estate the Santa Casa remained for a while.
The historj' of this shrine has been critically examined by P. P. Bergerius, and in 1619 by Prof.Vernegger, of Strasburg. Its principal champions were Jesuits ; among them we would mention Turrianus, Canisius, and Baro- nius. Imitations of the Santa Casa have been erected in some places, as at Prague, near Augsburg, etc., and, in turn, became shrines. — Herzog, Real-Enajklop. viii, 489.
Loria (orLuria) Isaac (by the Jews i"iX [Lion'], the initials of pn:Ji "^-l ■'T32"rX), a noted rabbi and great expounder of tlie Cabala (q. v.), was born at Jeru- salem in 1534, of a German-Jewish family. His father having died when he was a child, he was cared for by a rich uncle, and was dedicated to the study of the Tal- mud at Cairo, ^^'hen twenty-four years of age he was considered one of the greatest Talmudists of that place. Unfortunately, however, Loria became an ardent ad- mirer of the mystical writings of the Jews, and espe- cially enraptured with the Sohar (q. v.), one of the Cabalistic works. The hermit of Cairo was the first to bring the intricate and confused system of the Sohar into order, unity, and congruity ; he also made many vduable additions. A most remarkable feature of his views are the numerous divisions of his psychology, with its two sexes. Still, all these theories were, with him, only premises to lead on to a more important and practical branch in tlie Cabala, which he called the "world of perfection" (01am ha-Tikkun). He also held peculiar views on the fall of man. By reason of Adam's original sin, he hejd, the higher and the infernal souls, the good and the evil, came into confusion, and became intermixed with each other, a transmigration and sepa- ration of souls was thus a necessity. In addition to this lie teaches the Siiperfitatio. He pretended to have a full knowledge concerning the origin, relation, and rami-
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fication of souls; further, to possess the power and faculty to compel the spirits of the upper world to take their abode in the bodies of living men, in order to reveal to them what is going on in the upper world; further, to be able to read on every man's brow in which relation his soul stands to the higher worlds. In Cairo nobody interested himself in his mysticism, and he therefore emigrated in 1569 to Safet, the cabalistic Jerusalem, where the Cabala was esteemed as high as the Bible. His superior knowledge, facidties, and gifts gradually secured him the favor of the Cabalists, and Loria was soon surrounded by troops of young and old Cabalists, who came to listen to his new revelations. He subse- (juently formed a cabalistic commmiity, who lived to- gether apart from the non-Cabalists, and according to his prescriptions. After Loria's death (August, 1572), Vital Calabrese became his successor and gathered his productions, while another of his disciples, the Italian Israel Saruk, propagated his teachings in Europe. In- deed, it may be said that the influence of this Cabalist extended more or less over all the Jews of the globe, and many of them to this very day follow this great Jewish mystic in assigning to the Sohar equal value as to the Bible. It must be confessed, however, that by his influence he also called forth a revival in the Jewish communities everywhere, and a reaction in the phari- saic, lifeless prayers, while even upon the Christian the- osophy, mysticism, and exegetical studies his influence was considerable. See Griitz, Gesch. der Juclen, ix, 437 sq. ; X, 125; Jost, Gesch. d.Judenth. iii, 138,145; Flirst, Biblioth. Jud. ii, 257 sq.