The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

TWO SCENES

Many scenes in modern Jerusalem rise before me in recalling the times when I lived within the walls, and passed so many days in the Temple enclosure, or in that grim church, defiled with blood, which some among us are glad to think of as not marking the new sepulchre without the city where the Prince of Peace was laid. But two scenes especially come back to mind. The first is that of the sleeping town before the gates were opened to admit the peasant women and their donkey-loads of cakes and vegetables. In the purple gloom the domes are beginning to shine, wet with the heavy dew, as the light spreads behind Olivet “as far as Hebron”—to quote the Mishnah. The silence is broken suddenly by the musical cry of the Muedhdhin on the minaret of a mosque—a long, rolling, and tremulous note, echoing all over Jerusalem, as he “testifies there is no God but God,” and calls to the faithful that “prayer is better than sleep.” The simple dignity of Islâm contrasts with the superstition, the hurried services, the tawdry magnificence of degraded Eastern churches, and we understand how it was that the reformed faith of Muḥammad conquered Asia. The second scene is that of the summer noon, which presents to us an epitome of the long history of the Holy City. The great Herodian tower of the upper city glares with tawny stone against the blue sky. The rough cobbles of the slippery market-place are crowded with chattering peasants. A few pious Moslems, unconscious of the world, are praying with their faces towards Mekkah on the steps of the Protestant bishop’s palace, where the town dogs also lie in summer, but go down to the covered bazaar when the winter rains and snow begin. The Armenian patriarch is being escorted, from St. James on Sion to the Holy Sepulchre, by a modest procession. A Moslem bier passes by, and men crowd round it to lend their shoulders for a few steps as a pious act. The little Pharisee, with his lovelocks and dirty gaberdine—or resplendent in his fur cap on the sabbath, just as Rembrandt drew his fathers—is jostled in the narrow street of David, yet holds his fingers on the pulses of the city life. Above the cries of the water-seller and the chinking of the brass sherbet-cups, the screams of women and the jangling of the metal plates that serve for bells in churches, rises one recurrent note from the blind beggar who wanders through the streets, forever calling aloud to the “everlasting God.” We might almost expect to see a Templar ride by, with his white gown and blood-red cross over the mail coat, or the page of some Frankish noble in stripes of yellow and crimson. But instead we witness the long procession of half-naked Dervish fanatics, with banners, on their way to the Ḥaram, and then to the “tomb of Moses” west of Jericho. They bear spears and swords, and are preceded by jesters with fox-tails or by a convict who has been tarred and covered with cotton wool—ancient survivals of pagan Saturnalia. The Jew, the Greek, the Copt, the Georgian, the Armenian, the Arab, and the Turk mingle with the modern European and with the Franciscan monk from Italy in the narrow lane; and black-veiled ladies with white cloaks, seated on crimson saddles high up on the white Damascene asses, are led to the shops, or to the lower fruit-market which glows with colour, its green and gold contrasting with the violet or rich brown robes of the merchants. The whole history of Jerusalem is represented by its crowd to-day.

RELICS

In endeavouring to follow that history we must no doubt give due attention to tradition, for tradition records the sincere beliefs of mankind. In cases where the Jew, the Christian, and the Moslem all honour the same site, it generally appears that we have the actual spot described, or casually noticed, in the Bible. But there are not many such sites in Palestine, except the tombs of the Hebrew patriarchs at Hebron, the grave of Rachel near Bethlehem, Jacob’s Well east of Shechem, and—in Jerusalem itself—the sites of Siloam and Olivet, of the Temple itself, and of Herod’s palace and tower. As to others, there is not a single existing site in the Holy City that is mentioned in connection with Christian history before the year 326 A. D., when Constantine’s mother adored the two footprints of Christ on Olivet. We may not charge the priests of the Catholic Church with “pious fraud,” for they were no doubt as sincere as those who of late have created a new site for the Sepulchre by enthusiasm without knowledge. There is something very pathetic in the story of men who came on foot from Gaul and Britain in early times, to fortify their faith by seeing for themselves the very places seen by their Lord, to be buried near Him, or to kiss the footprints and finger prints which they were shown on the rocks of Olivet, or in the Aksa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, where they are now preserved and visited by Moslems only. The adoration of relics is not peculiar to Christianity. It is an outcome of that intense longing for certainty and finality which is natural to all mankind. The Moslem and the Buddhist had from the first their relics as well as the Christian—nay, we go back to the days of Herodotus, when the footprints of Herakles was shown in Scythia, or of Pausanias who saw “Leda’s egg” in a temple. But however sincere the beliefs of the past may have been, we cannot but confess, when studying in detail the traditional topography of Jerusalem, that it has grown and changed just as the city itself has done, because of the succession of various ruling races, and because to Jew, Christian, and Moslem alike there has always been a Holy City here which they coveted, and for which they shed their blood.

Some few of the principal sites have remained always the same; others have been often shifted; and the number of sites has been increased continually from century to century. Most of the pilgrims, whether Christian or Moslem, were illiterate; and those who were better educated, and whose accounts were copied and re-copied more or less accurately, were often strangely ignorant of the Bible and of the history of Palestine. To the ordinary pilgrim the relics and the pictures were “books of the ignorant,” and strange superstitions—such as that of the crypt where “Solomon tortured demons”[3]—are mingled with the statements of the Gospels. The first record of a pilgrim visit is that of a traveller from Bordeaux in 333 A. D. He makes the curious mistakes of supposing the Transfiguration to have occurred on Olivet and David’s victory over Goliath near Jezreel. St. Silvia of Aquitaine, half a century later, accepts as genuine the forged correspondence between Christ and King Abgarus; and after the fifth century the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels—especially those concerning the Virgin Mary—form the foundation of traditional topography in many cases. In the Middle Ages the pilgrims are also influenced by the comments on the Gospels of Tertullian, Origen, and other Christian fathers, though the works of those fathers who wrote before 325 A. D. show no acquaintance with any Jerusalem sites. For these reasons it is evident that the traditions must be received with caution; and, as the pilgrim texts are only valuable in showing contemporary facts and beliefs, their accounts may be here summed up as far as regards traditional sites.

THE TRADITIONS

When Helena, the mother of Constantine, visited Palestine in 326 A. D., she was shown nothing at Jerusalem except the two footprints of Christ on Olivet.[4] The story of her discovery of the true Cross is not noticed till about a century later,[5] though as early as 348 A. D. St. Cyril of Jerusalem[6] speaks of fragments of the Cross as being distributed “piecemeal throughout the world.” The site of the Ascension is thus the first of all to be mentioned. A church was built by Constantine before 333 A. D. on the summit of Olivet, and the two footprints of the Saviour impressed in the rock continued to be shown down to the Middle Ages, though in 1342 A. D. only one was pointed out, just as at present.[7] Two other footprints of Christ were shown after the fifth century: one in the Church of St. Mary (now in the Aḳṣa Mosque), which is still shown by Moslems[8]; the other on the Ṣakhrah rock, which is now called “the noble footstep” of Muḥammad[9]; while the marks now called finger-prints of the Angel Gabriel, on this rock, were supposed to have been those of our Lord, as were others in the Cave of the Agony.[10] Yet later, in the sixteenth century, footmarks of Christ were also shown on the south-east side of the little bridge over the Kidron Valley.[11]

A fragment of the true Cross was adored by St. Paula and by St. Silvia, near Calvary, sixty years after the time of Helena’s visit; and St. Silvia was also shown the “title” once affixed to the same. About 530 A. D. the discovery of three crosses is mentioned as due to Helena. The fragment was taken by Chosroes II. to Persia, but recovered in 628 A. D., and removed to Constantinople with other relics in 634 A. D. As seen in St. Sophia by Arculphus, half a century later, there appear to have been three pieces, each less than 3 feet in length. In 1192 A. D. another fragment was believed to be in the keeping of the Syrian bishop of Lydda, besides that one which Saladin captured in 1187.[12] St. Silvia gives an extraordinary account of the precautions taken when pilgrims were allowed to kiss the original relic, due to the fact that a wretch had once bitten off a piece, which he tried to carry away in his mouth, probably meaning to sell it in Europe.[13]

“Solomon’s seal” and the “horn of David” were apparently the only other relics shown in the fourth century at the Anastasis Church,[14] but in the sixth we find described the onyx cup of the Last Supper, the lance and sponge used at the Crucifixion, and the crown of thorns. These also were removed by Heraclius to Constantinople with the Cross, and the crown of thorns was afterwards sent to St. Louis of France, who built for it the Sainte Chapelle. Yet in 867 A. D. Bernard the Wise was shown a crown of thorns hanging up in the Church of St. Sion,[15] while a silver chalice takes the place of the onyx cup in 680 A. D., and appears to have been also regarded as the original relic. The stone which the angel rolled away from the sepulchre is noticed even by Cyril and St. Paula, and is spoken of about 680 A. D. as broken in two. In the eighth century it had disappeared, and a square pointed stone was shown instead; yet a hundred years later the substitute was accepted as being the original.[16]

THE HOLY FIRE