The city of Jerusalem

by C. R. Conder

The announcement was received[415] with enthusiasm by Constantine, who wrote of the discovery as being miraculous, according to the copy of his letter given by Eusebius: “Truly that the evidence [gnórisma] of His most holy Passion, hidden of old under the earth for so many periods of years, should be anew manifested to the faithful ... is a prodigy defying all admiration.” For, as Eusebius says, “the awful and most holy witness [marturion] of the Saviour’s resurrection was discovered beyond all hope.” The letter goes on to declare the confirmation of the emperor’s belief by “all those supernatural events which daily occur to demonstrate the truth of the faith,” and it says that his “first wish now, and after having by God’s leave freed from the heavy load of impious idols the place holy from the first by God’s will, holier yet since it has thrown a vivid light on the Passion of the Saviour, my wish I say is to adorn this holy place by the construction of splendid buildings.” The rest of the letter gives directions for this purpose. It does not, however, enlighten us as to the reasons for selecting the site. The emperor, like his people at large, seems to have been quite satisfied to rest on the authority of Macarius.

THE SEPULCHRE

We are now more critical than men were in the fourth century; and besides all the difficulties (already noticed) in accepting this site as appropriate, there is another—namely, that the rock grave found by the bishop cannot apparently have been like that described in the Gospels. Our only contemporary witness is Eusebius, and the turgid language of his eulogy on Constantine gives us little accurate information. He died in 340 A. D., and Cyril wrote twenty years after the supposed discovery occurred.[416] He says that the stone still lay in his time beside the Holy Sepulchre, and that “the hollow place which was then at the door of the salutary tomb, and was hewn out of the rock itself as is customary here in the front of sepulchres, now appears not, the outer cave having been hewn away for the sake of the present adornment; for before the sepulchre was decorated by royal zeal there was a cave in the face of the rock; but where is the rock that has in it this hollow place?” We may echo these words to-day, and may well ask, Was there ever any such cave?

Quaresmius (writing in 1616 A. D.) preserves a letter from Father Boniface of Raguza, who was present in 1555 when the building over the Holy Sepulchre was repaired. We must accept his statement that, when the covering (of marble) was taken off, “the sepulchre of our Lord appeared in its original state hewn in the rock.” But he does not speak of there being any rock cave over it. On the contrary, there were walls decorated by two ancient frescoes of angels, together with a parchment bearing the name “Helena Magna” in Latin capitals, which was probably much later than her time. When the great basilica was first built, the rock was levelled sufficiently to form a flat floor for the great apse; but a little to the south-east the cliff supposed to be Calvary was allowed to stand up 15 feet above this floor, with the cavern of Golgotha beneath its flat summit. The rock face in which the door of the Jewish tomb, west of the Sepulchre, was cut stood up 6 feet above the floor, and it appears that the rock surface sloped gently eastwards, so that the existence of a cave at least 7 feet high, with rock above it, seems to have been impossible at the spot where the Holy Sepulchre itself was found. That grave must have been simply a rock-sunk tomb, covered probably by a large and heavy stone, and when the floor was levelled it stood up as a trough, with rock walls, about 2 feet above the pavement of the apse.

Such graves are not uncommon in Palestine, being sometimes single, sometimes three or more in a row, each covered by a hewn stone like the lid of a sarcophagus. I have described one group which I found in 1872 at Sepphoris, north of Nazareth; and in another case at Mithilia—a ruin not far off—a rock sarcophagus stands up alone on a rock which has been scarped on each side below it. At Umm el Buruk, in Gilead, there are other examples which I described in 1881, and this site is the ruin of a Roman town, with a Greek inscription stating that “Antonius Rufus” made something (apparently a tomb) “for himself at his own cost.”[417] There can be little doubt that graves of this kind belong to the Roman period, and they are neither Hebrew nor even Greco-Jewish. The “new tomb” in the garden was of the last-named class, with a loculus so placed in the cave that the two angels could be seen from the door sitting at the head and foot of the grave itself. Macarius cannot apparently have found such a tomb, but he discovered a rock-sunk grave which, as it was single and also near a Hebrew tomb, he rashly assumed to be the sepulchre which he hoped to find. He was not an archæologist, nor was he well acquainted with the topography of the ancient city which Hadrian had transformed into a modern town. We need not doubt that he was as honestly convinced about the matter as General Gordon was convinced about the “Garden Tomb.” But they both appear to have been misled by enthusiasm without knowledge, and they both created sacred sites which were eagerly adopted by those who accepted their authority.

CONSTANTINE’S CHURCH

The result of fixing the site, which has now become traditional, was that a Christian church was built where a heathen temple had stood. This was the case also at Ba’albek, at Gerasa, possibly at Bethlehem, and in many other cases, such as the basilica of St. Clement at Rome. There is no doubt that Constantine’s sites were the same as now shown. Not only are they described as lying “north of Sion”—that is, of the upper city, which is so called by all the pilgrims—and also as being to the “left hand” of those who went north to the Nâblus Gate, while the east gates of the basilica opened on the market,[418] but we have now the mosaic map already described, which shows the position of Constantine’s great Church of the Resurrection, and enables us to understand the rather vague description by Eusebius.[419]

The sepulchre was first adorned by the chamber built over it. This stood in a great apse which had in its wall three smaller apses, one on the west, the others on the north and south. They still exist, though the apse has been converted into the rotunda. De Vogüé remarked that the north and south apses have their east sides tangential to the diameter of the great apse, which clearly shows that it was not originally built as a rotunda. His restoration of the whole cathedral has been proved to be the best of several suggestions by the discovery of the mosaic map. The apse had no roof, and the paved, pillared court round the sepulchre was open to the sky. East of this was a roofed basilica, like that still existing at Bethlehem, which was also founded by Constantine. The site of Calvary was in the south-west part of this basilica, which had a nave and aisles—probably four, as at Bethlehem—with a clerestory above, and a gilt ceiling. East of the basilica was an atrium, or entrance hall, and beyond this the pillared porch, with gates opening on the central pillared street of the city. To the south of the basilica was the great tank used as a baptistery, and still traceable. It was fed from reservoirs, of which the most important—now called “Helena’s Cistern”—is 66 feet deep, and measures 60 feet by 30 feet, being immediately east of Calvary. The total length of these buildings was 350 feet east and west, and the breadth 120 feet north and south.

One of the most remarkable ceremonies of the year was connected with the baptistery; and Cyril[420] describes how the christenings were carried out at Eastertide. In the evening before the Day of Resurrection the neophytes assembled in the dark porch—apparently by torch-light—and, turning to the west, renounced Satan and all the practices of pagan superstition. The women were separately assembled by deaconesses. Every neophyte was naked, and was anointed with oil from head to foot. They were led to the “holy pool,” and thrice descended its steps into the water, confessing their belief in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. They were then clothed in white, and the bishop confirmed them by the chrism, marking with the sign of the cross, in holy oil, the forehead, ears, nostrils, and breast of each new member of the Church, after which they partook of the Eucharist at the Easter Communion. The bishop preached to them, and St. Silvia says, “So loud are the voices of those applauding that they are heard outside the church.” This applause by congregations is also mentioned by Chrysostom. The other ceremonies—both daily and annual—including processions to Olivet and to Sion, which are described in some detail by St. Silvia, with the exhortations to pilgrims delivered in Greek, Syriac, and Latin, need not now detain us.

The oldest church in Jerusalem seems to have been that of “Holy Sion,” which the Crusaders rebuilt, and which is now the Nebi Dâûd Mosque, outside the south wall of the city. A small chapel may have been built here towards the close of the third century, and by the fifth it had come to be regarded as having been built by the apostles.[421] The Temple enclosure remained in ruins till the time of Justinian, but a basilica was also built by Constantine on the summit of Olivet, and the Pool of Siloam was surrounded by a cloister. The other traditional sites, including the Prætorium, the House of Caiaphas, and Bethesda, have been already sufficiently noticed.[422]