Reconstructing Catholic Expansion

Abstract

This chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. It begins by recapitulating the three entry points for analysis that have been tested in this book: beginning with anchoring ideals, looking for actual patterns, and finding late expressions. These strategies have been applied here to historically examine miraculous data to determine what happened in the remote past. Now they will be brought to bear to reconstruct Loreto's origins. Taken seriously as historical proof, the prototype miracle of Loreto illuminates how Catholicism moved and continues to move. The chapter concludes by comparing the construction of Loreto's mythohistory and today's Wikipedia entries, which is illuminating both for the similarities and differences that rise to the fore.