CHAPTER XIII
WASHING THE FEET OF THE APOSTLES
Two of the great sights of Easter in Jerusalem are the foot-washing on Holy Thursday and the “miracle” of the descent of holy fire from heaven on Easter Eve. During my visits to Jerusalem I have seen both ceremonies.
The washing takes place in the open air at the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Greek Patriarch washes the feet of twelve of his bishops in commemoration of the foot-washing of the apostles by Christ after the Last Supper.
By dawn of Holy Thursday, at the time I last saw this rite, the court was packed, and for hours before the ceremony began the streets were jammed with a crowd of Mohammedans and Christians, of Orientals and Occidentals, such as you will see nowhere else in the world. Many of the pilgrims slept in the court all night in order to be sure of places. In the centre of the court stood an oval rostrum about four feet above the stones. Around its floor ran an iron railing enclosing a space about eight feet wide and twelve feet long. Inside the railing and running around it were seats, and at the back a gold and white armchair cushioned with red satin. This stage was for the ceremony, and the chair the throne of the Patriarch. The other seats were for the bishops. Around this platform, to keep back the crowd, was a guard of soldiers, and back of these, in a solid mass, were the people.
From my seat on a housetop I looked with wonder at the twenty thousand people below. The steps leading to the chapel of Mount Calvary were filled with Mohammedan women in sheet-like gowns with veiled faces, and every niche and corner of the buildings surrounding the court was covered by Greek men and boys holding on to the walls as best they could. The ledges of the convent were filled with Syrians, and even the roof of the Sepulchre itself had its coping of picturesque humanity.
There was a stir in the crowd. I looked toward the door of the church. Preceded by two fierce-looking Syrian kavasses with swords at their sides and carrying silver-headed staffs, came the bishops and in their midst the stately figure of the Patriarch himself. The grand procession passed slowly and majestically through the mass of people. A wonderful silence succeeded the tumult as the bishops mounted the steps of the rostrum. The Patriarch took his seat on his chair of state and the twelve bishops arranged themselves on each side. They were fine-looking men, all of them, with their full silken beards and their gorgeous robes.
Presently a chanting solo was heard from the convent on the courtyard. There against the wall in an improvised pulpit above the heads of the multitude a Greek priest in black cap and gown stood with a gold-plated book open on a rack in front of him. His chant continued during the greater part of the proceedings. A priest brought to the rostrum a large golden pitcher in a basin of gold as big as a foot-bath and placed it in front of the Patriarch. As His Beatitude and the bishops rose, there was a waving of the crosses formed of candles, a passing of the hands this way and that, and a great deal of bowing, which was understood only by the Greeks and the Russians.
The Church of the Pater Noster, on the Mount of Olives, contains tablets of the Lord’s Prayer in thirty-two languages
