Note XII. William of Tyre refers to a place where our Lord's body is said to have been embalmed (Book VIII. Chap. 3. See Note VI.).
Sanutus, who wrote in the fourteenth century, speaks of this place, but puts it in the middle of the choir of the Greeks, far from that of which we are now speaking. (Liber Secretorum fidelium Crucis, lib. III. p. 14, cap. 8.)
Nicetas Choniata[902], a writer of the twelfth century, in his eighth book, relates that the stone on which Christ's body was embalmed, was to be seen in his time at Ephesus, whither the Emperor Manuel Comnenus had carried it on his own shoulders from the gate of Bucoleon to the chapel which was within the precincts of the palace, and that after the death of that emperor it was removed thence and placed in his tomb. Nicetas says that the stone is of a red hue; it seems more probable therefore that it had formed part of Calvary itself, or of some smooth rock near the sepulchre.
Note XIII. I quote the most important passages relating to the Holy Sepulchre, properly so called, which was carefully examined by the Abbé Mariti, before it was all covered over as it is at present.
"The Holy Sepulchre, placed at the centre of the building, is a block of stone, which forms part of the soil, so hewn as to be quite separate from the rest of the hill.
"In the terrace-roof of the Sepulchre holes have been ingeniously formed to let out the smoke from the lamps in the interior.
"The sacred grotto is divided into two parts; the first is the Chapel of the Angel; its eastern side, in which is the entrance-door, being built of materials prepared by human hands, while the rest forms part of the solid rock. There we saw a socle of stone, nearly square, embedded in the rock, at the length of a cubit and a half from the gate of the Holy Sepulchre, which is to the west of it: it served formerly as a support to the stone which used to close the entrance of the Sepulchre. Inside the Sepulchre is found a basin, hewn out with the chisel in the rock, of three cubits and a sixth in length; its height four cubits five soldi, in the middle; and on the sides, where it bends in forming a circular arc, three cubits five soldi. Its breadth from north to south is not equal throughout, being at the eastern end three cubits three soldi and one-third, and at the west two cubits sixteen soldi and two-thirds. The bench on which the Saviour's body was laid is three cubits and a third long, and about two cubits and a third broad, raised one cubit and one inch from the ground." (L'État présent de Jérusalem, p. 66.)
Note XIV. Before I give the description of the way in which the festival of the Holy Fire is celebrated, I will quote the account given of it in Abulfaragii (or Barhebræi) Chronicum Syriacum, Lips. 1789, 2 Vols. 4to. pp. 215-220.