Note XV. I have as strong objections to the service celebrated by the Franciscans on the evening of Good Friday, as to that of the Holy Fire. Like the latter, it gives rise to disputes, tumults, and serious disorders; and besides, there is in it an utter absence of decorum. Generally speaking, it has none of the impressive effect of a religious ceremony, but rather excites a feeling of the ridiculous, when it does not result in mourning for some fatal accident. How it is that the Franciscan fathers have not done away with it, or modified it, I cannot understand. To hold a service in a church to which persons of all sects are admitted, and to think that men's hearts can be reached by it, is an utter mistake. When no one is carried out of the building dead or wounded, they say with a satisfied air, "The service has passed off well;" little thinking of the exertions that are required to make it pass off well. A battalion of infantry is drawn up under arms in the square of the Sepulchre, and supplies the guards in the interior of the church; all the officers are employed to suppress any slight disturbance; the Governor betakes himself to the church to be ready in case of any serious outbreak: the French Consul is busy with preparations two days before, and on the evening of the service he and his employés are wearied out; the clergy are knocked about by the crowd; and all this passes off well.
They ought to remember the year in which human blood was shed on Mount Calvary; and how in 1861, had it not been for the energy of the French Consul, and the singular discretion and moderation of General Ducrot, of the French Corps d'Expédition in Syria, and his forty officers, the service certainly would not have passed off well.
Note XVI. The short street which connects the two churches of S. Mary the Great and S. Mary the Less was called, at the time of the Crusades, the street of Palms, because palm-branches were there sold to pilgrims. A similar traffic goes on at the present day, and on the same spot, during the feast of Palms; but palms being scarcer than formerly, olive-branches are generally substituted for them.
Note XVII. The original firman exists in the archives of the Franciscan Convent of S. Saviour at Jerusalem. Its exact date is not known, but may be placed between 1014 and 1023. See Boré, Question des Lieux Saints, 5.
Note XVIII. The direction of this street is clearly marked in a paper published by Sebastian Paoli (Cod. Diplom. I. p. 243), and reproduced by Schultz, Williams, and De Vogüé: "I, Amalric ... have given ... to the sacred Hospital at Jerusalem, and to the Church of S. Mary the Great, a certain street which was between the Hospital aforesaid and the Church of S. Mary the Great aforesaid, to which there is an entrance on the north from the Street of Palms, opposite the front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and on the south between the two aforesaid houses of the hospital and of St Mary the Less, which leads also below the buildings of the Hospital to the Street of the Patriarch's Baths...." June, 1174.