Note 60 — BOOK XV. (continued 3)

Among the marvellous accounts to which the destruction of the Christian colonies in Syria gave birth, history has preserved the following:—“In the year 1291, the house of the holy Virgin at Nazareth, in which she conceived the Son of God, was transported by angels to the top of a little mountain in Dalmatia, on the shore of the Adriatic Sea: three years afterwards it was transported to another shore of the same sea, in a wood which belonged to a widow named Loretto. There have been since built upon this spot a small city and a magnificent church, which still preserve the name of this widow.”