The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

SAINT STEPHEN

Among the earlier sites, that of the stoning of Stephen has also been variously placed at different times. The worship of saints developed in the fifth century, and the tomb of St. Stephen was supposed to have been found, in 415 A. D., at Caphar Gamala, a village which retains its old name still, about 20 Roman miles south-west of Jerusalem. The empress Eudocia, returning after her first visit to the Holy City, brought back to Constantinople the chains of St. Peter, and the right arm of St. Stephen, with the portrait of the Virgin said to have been painted by St. Luke. She retired later to Jerusalem, where she lived sixteen years and died about 460 A. D. She is said to have built a church of St. Stephen at the site of his martyrdom by stoning, outside the North or “Galilee” Gate; but in 530 A. D. a stone was shown on Sion with which he was said to have been slain, and by the twelfth century he was believed to have been there buried. The Crusaders found the church of Eudocia (where she was buried) in ruins, and the North Gate was still called St. Stephen’s down to about 1200 A. D., though about 1160 A. D. the site of the martyrdom is shifted to the west side of the town. It first appears in its present position, outside the East Gate, in the old map of about 1308 A. D. A Greek text has recently been found at this site, bearing the words “This is the gate of the Lord, the righteous shall (enter in). Holy Stephen pray for (us).” But this slab may have been transferred from the ancient site outside the North Gate.[37]

LATIN SITES

Many new Latin sites were created by the Crusaders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chapels then built have been carefully planned and described by Dr. Tobler, Comte M. de Vogüé, and Herr Schick, architect to the German Emperor and the Sultan, who for so many years was an untiring student of Jerusalem. In a few cases the churches mentioned—such of those as St. Agnes and St. Giles—are not yet identified. On Sion, St. Mark, St. Thomas, St. George, and St. James the Less, with the Chapel of the Three Maries, still exist. In the centre of the town, St. Mary Latin, St. Mary Magna, and—north of the Holy Sepulchre—St. Chariton, are now known. On the north-east were St. Anne, St. Mary Magdalene, and—at the Ecce Homo Arch—the church of the “Rest” of Mary. The “Stables of Solomon” are never noticed before the twelfth century, when the “Oak of Rogel” was pointed out where a sacred tree still stands at Siloam, being supposed to be the place where Isaiah was sawn asunder. The “Gate Dolorous” was then the name of that leading from Antonia, and the “School of the Virgin” was the title given to the “Dome of the Roll,” at the south-west corner of the platform of the Dome of the Rock. The “House of Uriah” was then supposed to have been near David’s palace and tower, and the old tank near the Jaffa Gate still bears the name of “Bathsheba’s Bath”; but in the sixteenth century this house was shown at the south-west corner of the Hebrew city, and the bath was transferred to the Birket es Sulṭân. The altar of the Temple is said to have been converted into a sundial by the Saracens,[38] and a block of masonry, south of the Dome of the Rock, was still pointed out in 1874 as the place where a sundial had stood. Finally, the fig tree cursed by Christ was shown at the bend of the road near Bethany; and the place where He “descended from the ass” near Bethphage—a site said even by Bernard the Wise to be marked by a marble slab in 867 A. D.—was to be found in a small chapel, where a block of stone has been recovered, with mediæval Latin texts, and frescoes representing the raising of Lazarus, the fetching of the ass, and a third subject.[39]

After the massacre of the Christians in 1244 A. D., the Franciscans were allowed by the Sulṭân of Egypt to return to Jerusalem, and they alone—for about five centuries—represented Latin Christianity in Palestine. The Latin churches were in ruins, and were either appropriated by Greeks and Armenians, or in other cases were turned into mosques. The Franciscan monastery of St. Saviour was in the north-west corner of the city, where the Latin Patriarchate now is. The friars were the guides of pilgrims after the fall of Acre in 1291 A. D., but they were only able to show sites outside the city, or in the streets, with exception of those in the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral, which, by treaty, was reserved to Christians. This seems to have been the reason why the sites in the Via Dolorosa—which are unnoticed before 1300 A. D.—came to be established. The capital of a pillar has been found, on which the legend of St. Veronica and the “holy handkerchief” is represented,[40] which may be as old as the twelfth century. The Chapel of the “Spasm” of the Virgin, with its mosaic floor, has also been recovered at the point where the Via Dolorosa turns south,[41] and this station is mentioned in the fourteenth century[42]; but only eight stations are noticed in the sixteenth century out of fourteen now shown by the Latins.[43] The “Stone of Unction,” west of Calvary, is first noticed by Ludolph of Suchem, about 1330 A. D., as a Latin site, and “Herod’s House”—still extant, near the “red minaret” in the north-east of the town—is mentioned by Sir John Maundeville in 1342 A. D. Two footprints of Christ continued to be here shown down to the present century, and this place was still known in 1846, but has now ceased to be reckoned among the sacred sites.[44] The place where Christ wept for Jerusalem on Olivet, and the ancient tomb in the Hinnom Valley (probably that of Ananus), which was converted into a chapel with a frescoed roof and called the “Retreat of the Apostles,”[45] seem to be first noticed by Zuallardo in 1586 A. D., as are also the “House of Dives” and the “House of the Pharisee,” in the Via Dolorosa.

LATER SITES

Detailed study of the traditional sites, fixed by the Oriental and Roman Churches, thus serves to show that none of them go back to the earlier years of the fourth century saving those of the Ascension, St. Sion, Calvary, and the Holy Sepulchre. The statements of the pilgrims prove to us that the remainder, as a whole, were vague and shifting identifications, on which no reliance can be placed. We learn from the Gospel (Luke xxiv. 50) that our Lord led His disciples out “as far as to Bethany,” and He is not said to have ascended from the summit of Olivet. The site of Calvary was considered to require defence even in the fourth century, because it was within the city. There is a gap of three hundred years, which is not bridged by any ancient allusion even, separating the first notice of these older sites from the time of the Crucifixion. Pious opinions, sanctioned by Popes and Patriarchs, became fixed traditions as time went on, and the number of the sites constantly increased, while Greeks and Latins showed rival “vestigia” in rival shrines. Relics were perhaps often meant only to be regarded as representations of objects connected with the Passion; but, in the dark age of Gothic ignorance, the belief in miracles wrought by bones of the saints infected Christianity with all the superstitions which the illiterate converts brought in from paganism. The first Christians were intent on the future rather than on the past, and the Gospels themselves say nothing definite as to the position of Calvary or of the new tomb in the garden. The pilgrims devoutly believed that they had kissed the true Cross and the actual footprints of Christ, and knew little of the earlier history of the sites where they gave alms and received indulgences. But it is necessary, in endeavouring to ascertain the truth, to distinguish between their beliefs and their accounts of existing buildings, and we must found our study of the history of Jerusalem on existing monuments and inscriptions, and as far as possible on contemporary statements—on science, not on legend—even if such examination of facts leads us to discard as improbable sites which have so long been sacred to Christians; while we must also admit that certainty and finality are still impossible, in cases where the actual evidence is meagre. The account here given of the traditions will serve to show that they have not been disregarded as an element in the study of various questions of historical importance.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER I

[1] H. Rix, “Tent and Testament,” 1907, p. v.

[2] The views of Thrupp were revived in 1880 by Dr. Robertson Smith, who has been followed by Dr. Sayce and Dr. G. A. Smith. The untenable character of this theory has, once more, been ably shown by the Rev. Selah Merrill quite recently.