In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

The church was open, and lighted at the altar end. I glided in with the other ghostly, hastily clad, and yawning pilgrims. The screen at the apse before the holy place, a mass of silver and gilding, sparkled in the candlelight; the cross above it gleamed like a revelation out of the gloom; but half of the church was in heavy shadow. From the penetralia came the sound of priestly chanting; in the wooden stalls along each side of the church stood, facing the altar, the black and motionless figures of the brothers. The pilgrims were crowding and jostling in at the door. A brother gave me a stall near the door, and I stood in it, as statue-like as I could, and became a brother for the time being.

At the left of the door stood a monk with impassive face; before him on a table were piles of wax tapers and a solitary lighted candle. Every pilgrim who entered bought a taper and paid two coppers for it. If he had not the change the monk gave him change, and the pilgrim carefully counted what he received and objected to any piece he thought not current. You may wake these people up any time of night, and find their perceptions about money unobscured. The seller never looked at the buyer, nor at anything except the tapers and the money.

The pilgrims were of all ages and grades; very old men, stout, middle-aged men, and young athletic fellows; there were Russians from all the provinces; Greeks from the isles, with long black locks and dark eyes, in fancy embroidered jackets and leggins, swarthy bandits and midnight pirates in appearance. But it tends to make anybody look like a pirate to wake him up at twelve o'clock at night, and haul him into the light with no time to comb his hair. I dare say that I may have appeared to these honest people like a Western land-pirate. And yet I should rather meet some of those Greeks in a lighted church than outside the walls at midnight.

Each pilgrim knelt and bowed himself, then lighted his taper and placed it on one of the tripods before the screen. In time the church was very fairly illuminated, and nearly filled with standing worshippers, bowing, crossing themselves, and responding to the reading and chanting in low murmurs. The chanting was a very nasal intoning, usually slow, but now and then breaking into a lively gallop. The assemblage, quiet and respectful, but clad in all the vagaries of Oriental colors and rags, contained some faces that appeared very wild in the half-light. When the service had gone on half an hour, a priest came out with a tinkling censer and incensed carefully every nook and corner and person (even the vestibule, where some of the pilgrims slept, which needed it), until the church was filled with smoke and perfume. The performance went on for an hour or more, but I crept back to bed long before it was over, and fell to sleep on the drone of the intoning.

We were up before sunrise on Sunday morning. The pilgrims were already leaving for Jerusalem. There was no trace of the last night's revelry; everything was commonplace in the bright daylight. We were served with coffee, and then finished our exploration of the premises.

That which we had postponed as the most interesting sight was the cell of St. Sabas. It is a natural grotto in the rock, somewhat enlarged either by the saint or by his successors. When St. Sabas first came to this spot, he found a lion in possession. It was not the worst kind of a lion, but a sort of Judæan lion, one of those meek beasts over whom the ancient hermits had so much control. St. Sabas looked at the cave and at the lion, but the cave suited him better than the lion. The lion looked at the saint, and evidently knew what was passing in his mind. For the lions in those days were nearly as intelligent as anybody else. And then St. Sabas told the lion to go away, that he wanted that lodging for himself. And the lion, without a growl, put his tail down, and immediately went away. There is a picture of this interview still preserved at the convent, and any one can see that it is probable that such a lion as the artist has represented would move on when requested to do so.

In the cave is a little recess, the entrance to which is a small hole, a recess just large enough to accommodate a person in a sitting posture. In this place St. Sabas sat for seven years, without once coming out. That was before the present walls were built in front of the grotto, and he had some light,—he sat seven years on that hard stone, as long as the present French Assembly intends to sit. It was with him also a provisional sitting, in fact, a Septennate.

In the court-yard, as we were departing, were displayed articles to sell to the pious pilgrims: canes from the Jordan; crosses painted, and inlaid with cedar or olive wood, or some sort of Jordan timber; rude paintings of the sign-board order done by the monks, St. George and the Dragon being the favorite subject; hyperbolical pictures of the convent and the saint, stamped in black upon cotton cloth; and holy olive-oil in tin cans.

Perhaps the most taking article of merchandise offered was dates from the palm-tree that St. Sabas planted. These dates have no seeds. There was something appropriate about this; childless monks, seedless dates. One could understand that. But these dates were bought by the pilgrims to carry to their wives who desire but have not sons. By what reasoning the monks have convinced them that fruitless dates will be a cause of fruitfulness, I do not know.

We paid our tribute, climbed up the stairways and out the grim gate into the highway, and had a glorious ride in the fresh morning air, the way enlivened by wild-flowers, blue sky, Bedaween, and troops of returning pilgrims, and finally ennobled by the sight of Jerusalem itself, conspicuous on its hill.