It appears that the _santa casa_, before taking up its definite position, halted near Recanati, upon a property belonging to two brothers who for eight months disputed its possession. In order to bring about a reconciliation between them, and chiefly, no doubt, because they were unwilling to leave this sanctuary at the mercy of these two jealous rivals, the angels bore it off once more, and finally deposited it in a field belonging to a poor widow of the name of Loreta--whence the denomination Our Lady of Loreta. Here may still be seen the _santa casa_, just as it came from Nazareth, but not as it was decorated, endowed, and enriched by the sumptuous devotion of the Middle Ages. Its treasures, valued at several million francs, already much diminished by the religious wars brought about by the great Western schism, ceased to accumulate in the sixteenth century during the struggle of the Church against Protestantism, and they were almost all carried off in 1796 by the pillaging armies of the French Republic. Nevertheless the fervour of the pilgrims was not in the least abated, and the splendid church in which the _santa casa_ was as it were enshrined, was too small to contain all the votive offerings brought thither from every part of the world. The popes had granted numerous indulgences to those who made this pilgrimage, which was the most celebrated as well as the most frequented of any outside Rome. The legend of the pilgrimages, as marvellous in Spain as it was in Italy, always associated the worship of St. James with that of the Holy Virgin. After the ascension of our Lord and the descent of the Holy Ghost, Santiago the Iberian--St. James, as we call him--bid adieu to his elder brother St. John the Evangelist, and afterwards went to ask the Virgin for her blessing. She said to him, “Dear son, since thou hast chosen Spain, the country which I love best of all European lands, to preach the Gospel, take care to found there a church dedicated to me, in the town where you convert the greatest number of heathen.” Santiago then left Jerusalem, and crossing the Mediterranean, arrived at Tarragona, where, despite all his efforts, he only succeeded in converting eight persons. [Illustration: Fig. 295.--Our Lady of Mountserrat, with a Spanish Inscription signifying “Celestial abode of Our Lady of Mountserrat.”--This mountain derives its name from its rocks being shaped like the teeth of a saw (_sierra_, saw). This symbolical saw is seen in the hands of the Infant Jesus.--Reduced Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the Sixteenth Century, belonging to M. Bertin, publisher, of Paris.]