The churches destroyed by Khosrau II. included (according to Eutychius, who, however, wrote three centuries later) the church of Gethsemane (or of the Virgin’s Tomb), and those of Constantine and Helena, with Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre. About sixty years after these were rebuilt, the Gaulish bishop Arculphus described the new churches to Adamnan, bishop of Iona, to which island he had been driven by a storm. Rough sketch-plans were also made by Adamnan from his accounts, representing the sites near the Holy Sepulchre, the square church of Holy Sion, and the round church on the summit of Olivet. Before these were in turn destroyed (in 1010 A. D.), they were also visited by St. Willibald in the eighth century, and by Bernard, “the wise monk,” in the ninth century. From these accounts,[444] and from existing remains, we may conclude that the new buildings were very inferior to those of Constantine’s time, but that they were on the same sites.
The chapel or chamber over the Holy Sepulchre was now apparently a round tugurium or “cabin,” without any ante-chamber. The great apse in which it stood was converted into a rotunda, and a circular wall, or fence, was built outside it. The central drum, supported on pillars, was roofless just as it was later. Three altars stood in the three small apses of the rotunda. The “cabin” was covered with marble slabs, and had a gold cross on its roof. The Calvary rock was enclosed in a second (square) chapel, which was separated by a porch from the small “Church of Constantine,” which in part replaced the old basilica proper. Under this was a rock-cut crypt reached by steps—as it still is—and shown as the place where the three crosses were found hidden by St. Helena. Besides these three churches there was a fourth to the south of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. It was dedicated to St. Mary, and is said to have been large and square. Its exact position is not very clear, and no remains survived the second destruction in 1010 A. D., unless it was on the site of the chapel afterwards built, and also dedicated to the Virgin, rather farther west than the position on the map of Adamnan. The open court, or “Paradise,” east of the rotunda was paved with marble, and the walls shone with gold. It was supposed to represent the garden in which the “new tomb” had been hewn in the rock.[445] In or near its centre was a pillar said to mark the “middle of the world,” which was proved by its casting no shadow at the summer solstice; but this, of course, was impossible. Four chains hung from this pillar, connecting the four churches to it (according to Bernard in 867 A. D.); on the north-east side of the Paradise was a wooden table on which alms were received; and south of this (between Calvary and the basilica) was a chamber where the silver cup of the Last Supper was shown.
CHURCHES OF MODESTUS
The only remains attributable to these buildings are those which have recently been found west of the old pillared street,[446] and east of the cave “Chapel of Helena,” together with the columns supporting the roof of the latter, and perhaps one capital which has been built into the wall of the Chapel of the Virgin south of the rotunda, and which the visitor passes (on his left) when going from Christian Street to the south entrance of the present cathedral. The capitals in the Chapel of Helena, with their heavy outline and basket-work ornament, are evidently Byzantine work of about the seventh century, and the capital of the built-in pillar is in the same style. The wall and gate recently described by Mr. Dickie may have belonged to the renovated basilica built by Modestus, and ancient masonry here appears to have been re-used, perhaps more than once. As this wall is not at right angles to the axis of the original basilica, it probably belonged to the detached building erected by Modestus, or to that which superseded it in 1028 A. D. The “Prison of Christ,” east of the rotunda, is not noticed in any account of the period when the buildings of Modestus were standing (622–1010 A. D.), and this with its arcade seems to have belonged to the third period of building to be described later.
Other churches which may have been rebuilt by Modestus include the “double church” of the Virgin’s Tomb (a subterranean chapel with a round roofless building over it), and the remarkable round church on the summit of Olivet. These, like the four churches above described, were rebuilt by the Franks in the twelfth century. The Armenian account (already noticed[447]) speaks of the Virgin’s Tomb as reached by two hundred and fifty steps, having above it a cupola on four marble columns covered with copper crosses. It also mentions St. Sion apparently as having a crypt, and a wooden cupola on which the Last Supper was painted. The Church of the Ascension was also roofless, and had apparently a central drum, supported on pillars and pierced by eight windows on the west side: these were glazed, and lamps were hung in them which could be seen shining by night from the city. A circular double cloister surrounded the drum, and in the centre was a bronze cylinder,[448] with a glazed door through which could be seen the rock marked by the two footprints of Christ. The pilgrims used to be admitted within, and carried away with them the dust lying on the rock. A strange superstition was also connected, in the eighth century, with two pillars which apparently stood in the east gate of the outer cloister; for St. Willibald says that “the man who can squeeze between the pillars and the wall becomes free from his sins.” The same superstition still clung to two pillars in the Aḳṣa Mosque as late as 1881 A. D.; for it was said by Moslems that any one who squeezed between them would go to heaven. In consequence, perhaps, of my having passed through them, an iron bar was placed across by order of the pasha to prevent this old custom being followed any more. It is a survival of the widespread peasant belief in the virtue of “passing through” holed stones, creeping under dolmens, or altars, or arches, which we find all over the world, from Ireland to China and Japan.
The works of Modestus had only been completed about a dozen years before the Moslem Conquest, and were the last carried out under Christian domination until the time of the first Crusade, though other churches were built in 1028 A. D., as will appear later. The gradual growth of Christian buildings in Jerusalem, down to the era of the downfall of Christian power in Palestine, has been described in the historical sequence of their construction to the time immediately preceding the triumph of Islâm.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER X
[410] “Apologeticus,” i. 37.
[411] “Catech. Lect.,” xix. 8, delivered in the new Church of the Anastasis in 348 A. D. Cyril was a semi-Arian.
[412] “Life of Constant.” (in Greek), iii. 25.