The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto. Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World by Karin Vélez (review)

Reviewed by: The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto. Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World by Karin Vélez Antón M. Pazos The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto. Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World. By Karin Vélez (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, [2019]. Pp. xv, 292. $39.95. ISBN: 978-0-69-117400-6.) It is always very pleasant when an academic obligation, such as writing reviews, is transformed into intellectual satisfaction because the book being reviewed is excellent. That is what happens in this case. Karin Velez's book is superb in every way. It is well written, well organized, makes thorough use of the numerous archives consulted, has a very extensive, multilingual and very well selected bibliography, and a historical approach that combines technique with common sense. The book is divided into eight chapters: 1, "Introduction," explaining how the book should be read and how to read a miracle; 2, "Deconstructing a Miracle," explaining the different ways of doing so; 3, "First Authors,"; 4, "Accidental Pilgrims," about some significant and peculiar pilgrims; 5, "Holy House Builders," about the replicas of the Holy House in the world; 6, "Anonymous Renovators of Icons," on the worldwide expansion of the devotion; 7, "Counters, Namers, and Processers," on the uses of Loreto, especially in Spanish America; and 8, "Reconstructing Catholic Expansion," on the past and present significance of this Marian devotion. Two chapters that especially interested me were 4 and 7. In chapter 4 Vélez gives a perfect definition of pilgrimage: "Unlike tourism, pilgrimage did not simply involve traveling to see a famous place to satisfy one's curiosity about its ritual of spiritual cleansing. To this end, a pilgrim was expected to prepare his or her soul before and throughout the journey" (77). And she treats the pilgrimage from a strictly historical point of view, without the anthropological contaminations so frequent in current historiography. The section she devotes to Ignatius, a Catholic Huron Indian, is exceptionally attractive and opens a panorama very different from other studies, since it presents the perfectly natural integration of the Indian tribes of Canada into Catholicism. The life of Ignatius is full of adventures motivated by the Indian wars, fomented by the English, and, at the same time, it draws some personal virtues of this Catholic Huron that would probably allow him to be a candidate for a process of canonization. In chapter 7 she dismantles, without intending it directly, but with great historical sense, some interpretations that try to explain everything through resistances and deceptions, appropriations of spaces, American Indian crypto-idolatry in the Catholic processions, or similar conflicts, that many times only reflect the prejudices of the authors and the presentist sense of their historical vision. As an example, although others could be cited, the author's analysis of the plan for Loreto's festivities by an Indian confraternity and the initial rejection of the plan by the Jesuit Durán (221–24). But the Jesuit's resistance to the splendor of the procession had nothing to do with the suspicion of idolatrous manifestations camouflaged in the parade, on the contrary: "Durán's perspective also differs from prevalent interpretations [End Page 159] by modern scholars of colonial religious processions who approach rituals like this Cuzco procession as declarations of cultural occupation." The book is very rich in content and very suggestive, and, as a bonus, it is very well edited, something rare nowadays, which is a credit to Princeton University Press. I think it is a book that will be profitably used in any course on religious history, social history, or pilgrimage history, and that every reader will be enriched by the wealth of historical information it contains, with the added advantage that the author "finds both her teaching and research meet around the question of how the past must be reinvented and reframed to remain useful to the present," as her profile at Macalester College indicates. Antón M. Pazos Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Santiago de Compostela Copyright © 2024 The Catholic University of America Press

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