The Holy Land and Syria

by Frank G. Carpenter

There is a rosary pedlar doing a rushing business. She is a Bethlehem girl with two bushels of beads. They are made of olive wood and of the pips of the olive itself, as well as of mother-of-pearl. All around you are the characters of the Scriptures. Here is a dark-brown man whose face reminds you of that of Judas in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” He is peddling little crosses of mother-of-pearl. Here is a woman with a face as beautifully sad as that of Mary Magdalene, and there is an old man selling pictures of the church dignitaries, whose patriarchal beard and honest eyes make you think of Abraham. There are pedlars of brass rings and glass bracelets from Hebron. The crier of drinks in bare feet and blue gown, with his skin water bottle on his back, passes along announcing his wares by clinking his two brass drinking-cups together.

The crowd moves on in a never-ending stream toward the door of the church. It is the same, morning and evening, day in and day out. Thousands upon thousands of footsteps have worn the flag stones to the smoothness of marble, and on and on they come, year after year and generation after generation. We enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church which these people believe covers the spot where Christ was crucified and where His tomb is kept. It is the church that Constantine built, the church for which the Crusaders fought, the shrine where the religious of all Christendom would bow.

It is a vast building of yellow limestone rising out of and above a jumble of houses in front of the court, with a dome a little smaller than that of our Capitol at Washington. At one side a chapel rises above the other parts of the structure to the second story, and the whole stands upon hill and valley so that the chapel rests upon a rock high above the level of the ground floor. This rock is supposed to be Calvary, upon which stood the cross of Christ. Around the rotunda extends a series of buildings, consisting of gaudily decorated churches and chapels of a dozen different denominations and sects. A wide vaulted aisle runs around between these and the rotunda into which they open.

Entering, we go through a high-arched door past a ledge cut into the wall at the right where Mohammedan officers smoke long-stemmed water-pipes while they sit with their legs crossed and direct the soldiers posted here to keep the crowds in order. We go into a great square vestibule in the centre of which, with rows of immense candles at its head and foot, there lies under a long row of beautiful brass lamps a rectangular stone of rose-coloured marble about eight feet long and four feet wide. It is four inches above the floor, and around its edges burn the wax tapers of worshippers. This is the Stone of Unction on which it is said the body of the Lord was laid when it was anointed for burial.

Pilgrim after pilgrim walks forward and prostrates himself before it. Each one gets down on his knees, and bows his head to the floor, then leans over and kisses the stone. As we come closer we see that the marble has been worn rough by the pressure of human lips. As we stand and watch the earnest worshippers who pray before it, we cannot but be impressed with their faith. An old peasant woman in black, who trembles as she puts her long thin hands caressingly on the marble, bends over and touches it again and again with her withered lips. A pretty boy of ten crosses himself and kneels beside his Armenian mother while they go through their devotions together. Another pilgrim lays his beads on the slab, that they may be blessed by the contact, and crosses himself as he rises. Now there kneels a family of Greeks, the men in the ballet-girl costume of the Albanians, followed by a richly dressed lady who lays some cakes of incense on the slab, and prays long before it. Behind her come two Russian women with long strips of white linen in their hands. Waiting until the crowd has partially thinned, they measure the stone with this cloth, and cut it into strips of just the size of the slab. They rub these strips over the stone, praying as they do so, for these are to be their winding sheets, and they believe that, buried in them, they will rest more easily in their graves. It is difficult to appreciate the solemnity of the worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

There is superstition mixed with earnest, honest faith, as is so often the case in the poor, weak human brain, even in those who lay claim to greater intellectuality than these poor pilgrims.

These tens of thousands of pilgrims continue to pray as they rise from the Stone of Unction, and then with bowed heads walk on into the great rotunda of the church itself. Here in the very centre rises an oblong marble structure about thirty feet high, twenty-five feet long, and seventeen feet wide. The marble is yellow with age and the architecture of the building is rude rather than artistic. This is the tomb of Christ. It is more like a chapel than a tomb, and its fronts and sides are covered with candles. Curious brass lamps, with glass globes of different colours, hang like a frieze around its alabaster top, and between these are oil paintings of scriptural scenes. In its front, in gold pillars as tall as a man, are columns of painted wax each six inches thick and twelve feet high. At the top of each of these a flame trembles.

At Easter there flows through its low door an endless stream of humanity. We enter through a vestibule so dark that we can hardly see the features of the people around us, and find the same kissing and praying going on. Upon the column of marble about three feet high, standing in the centre of the vestibule, thousands of kisses are pressed every day. Into its top is set a piece of the stone which was rolled from the door of Christ’s tomb. The stones walling the tomb are very thick, and the door is so narrow that only one man can enter it at a time, and so low that even boys bow their heads in going in. The space within is so small that it will hold only four persons at once. It is dimly lighted with candles, and a Greek priest in cap and gown is always on guard. At the right of the room, set into the wall, there is a marble slab of purest white resting upon another slab about four feet high and forming a box or ledge. This box is supposed to have been the sepulchre of Christ, to the people of the Christian world the holiest of the holy places of the earth. The worshippers here pray and drop their tears, and men reverently back their way out to give place to others. All of the Christian sects claim a right to the tomb, and it is free of access to every denomination.

The chapels of the various churches opening into the rotunda are gorgeously decorated, and each sect has some relic of the Crucifixion which people consider their especial charge and which they guard with the greatest reverence. One chapel contains the stocks in which some of the saints were imprisoned, and the chapel of the Syrians has the tomb of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Arimathea. The Latins have the column of the scourging. The Greeks, who have the finest chapel of all those surrounding the rotunda, are first, both in wealth and power, in the Church of the Sepulchre.