Historic buildings

by Unknown

You do not stay long in this habitation of the Holy Sepulchre, which is really the very heart of this mass of basilicas and chapels, people pass by one by one; lowering your head you enter it by a very little door of marble carved and festooned; the sepulchre is within, encased in marble and surrounded by gold icons and gold lamps. There entered at the same time as I did a Russian soldier, a poor old woman in rags, an Oriental woman in rich brocade; all kissed the cover of the tomb and wept. And others followed, and others eternally follow, to touch, embrace and wet with tears these same stones.

There is no plan of unity in this collection of churches and chapels which crowd close around this very holy kiosk; there are some large ones that are marvellously sumptuous and some little ones that are humble and primitive, crumbling away with age in these sinister nooks dug out of the natural rock and dark as night. And, here and there, the rock of Calvary, left bare, appears in the midst of richness and archaic gold work. The contrast is strange between so many collected treasures,—icons of gold, crosses of gold and lamps of gold,—and the rags of the pilgrims and the decay of the walls and the pillars, worn, corroded, shapeless and greasy from the rubbing of so many human bodies.

All the altars and all the different confessionals are so mingled here that it results in a continual displacing of priests and processions; they cleave through the crowds, carrying remonstrances and preceded by armed Janizaries who knock upon the resonant flag-stones with the hilts of their halberds. Make room! here are some Latins who pass in golden chasubles. Make room again! here is the Syrian bishop with a long white beard under a black cagoule, who issues from his little subterranean chapel. Then here are some Greeks still Byzantine in adornment, and Abyssinians with black faces. Quickly, quickly they walk by in their sumptuous vestments whilst before them the silver censers swung by children knock against the crowd which is thrown into confusion and separates. In this human sea there is a continuous rumbling and an incessant noise of psalmody and sacred bells. Almost everywhere it is so dark that in order to walk about, it is necessary to have a candle in your hand, and, beneath the high columns and in the dark corridors thousands of little flames follow or cross each other. Men praying in a loud voice, weeping and sobbing, run from one chapel to another, here to kiss the rock where the Cross was planted, there to prostrate themselves where Mary and Magdalen wept; some priests, crouching in the shadows, beckon to you to lead you through the funereal little doors in the holes of the tombs; old women with wild eyes and tears running down their cheeks come up from the subterranean blackness to kiss the stones of the sepulchres.

In black darkness, you descend to the chapel of Saint-Helena, by a wide stairway of about thirty steps, worn, broken, dangerous as falling into ruin and bordered with squatting spectres. In passing, our candles illumined the vague motionless creatures, of the same colour as the side of the rock, who are afflicted beggars, lunatics covered with ulcers, sinister all of them, with their chins in their hands and long hair falling over their faces.—Among these ghastly creatures, there is a blind young man, with magnificent blonde curls enveloping him like a mantle, who is as beautiful as the Christ whom he resembles.

Down below, the chapel of Saint-Helena, after that night, with its two rows of phantoms that you have passed through, is illumined by daylight, whose rays arrive pale and bluish through the loop-holes of the vault. Assuredly this is one of the strangest places in all that medley that calls itself the Holy Sepulchre; it is there that one experiences in the most distressing manner, the sentiment of the terrible Past.

It is silent when I arrive and it is empty, beneath the half dead gaze of those phantoms that guard the stairway at the entrance; you hear with difficulty the indistinct noise of bells and chants from above. Behind the altar, still another stairway, bordered with the same long-haired individuals, descends lower into a still darker night.

You would think this a heathen temple. Four enormous, dumpy pillars, of a primitive Byzantine type and exceedingly heavy, sustain the surbased cupola, from which hang ostrich eggs and a thousand uncouth pendants. Remains of painting on the walls indicating saints with nimbuses of gold in naïve and stiff attitudes are being effaced by the dampness and ancient dust. Everything is decaying through neglect with the sweat of water and saltpetre.

From the depths of the lower subterranean vaults suddenly ascend some Abyssinian priests, who suggest the ancient Magi-Kings, issuing from the bowels of the earth; black faces under large golden tiaras formed like turbans, long robes of cloth of gold sprinkled with imaginary red and blue flowers. Quickly, quickly, with that kind of excited haste which is universal here, they cross the crypts of Saint-Helena and mount towards the other sanctuaries by the big stairway in ruins,—illuminated at first by the light falling from the loop-holes of the vault, splendidly archaic in their golden robes in the midst of the gnomes squatting against the walls,—then, they suddenly disappear above in the distant shadows.

Some distance away, in the sanctuaries at the entrance and near the kiosk of the Sepulchre, the rock of Calvary rises: it supports two chapels to which you ascend by twenty stone steps and which are the veritable place of prostrations and sobs for the crowd.

From the peristyle of these chapels, like an elevated balcony the view commands a confused mass of tabernacles, a maze of churches, where the hypnotized crowd moves about. The most splendid of the two is that of the Greeks; under a nimbus of silver, as resplendent as a rainbow, stand out in human grandeur the pale images of the three crucified ones, Christ and the two thieves; the walls are hidden by icons of silver, gold and precious stones. The altar is erected on the very place of the crucifixion; under the retable a silver lattice lets you see in the black rock the hole where the Cross was planted,—and it is there that you walk on your knees, wetting these sombre stones with tears and kisses, whilst a lulling noise of chants and prayers ascends incessantly from the churches below.