.
This city Cadytis is generally accepted as Jerusalem, which was called "holy," "Hakkodesh." The shekel was marked "Jerusalem Kedusha," a Syriac corruption of the Hebrew "Kodesh." Then the word Jerusalem was omitted, and "Kedusha" only used, which, being translated into Greek, became
as quoted by Herodotus.]
Against Jehoiakim, however, came Nebuchadnezzar, who ravaged the city more than once, and after a siege of two years, in the reign of Zedekiah, burned it down, took all the sacred vessels to Babylon with the two remaining tribes (the other ten were already in captivity); and now that the temple was destroyed, the city in ruins, and [{501}] the people all in bondage, it appeared as if the prediction of her prophets had already been accomplished. But a time of rejoicing was yet to come, and though the chosen people did writhe under Babylonish tyranny, and did hitting their harps on the willows, there was still a prophet of hope among them in the person of Daniel. This was the time alluded to in that beautiful psalm composed after their return, in allusion to an occasion when their persecutors had asked them tauntingly to sing one of their national songs for their amusement, the Hebrew words of which, if we may be allowed the expression, glitter with tears:
"By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down,
Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there, they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
And they that wasted us required of us mirth,
Saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song
In a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget her cunning;
If I do not remember thee,
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief Joy."
In the time of Cyrus their deliverance came; they were released from captivity, and there was a mighty "going up" to Jerusalem when the temple was rebuilt and the sacred vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had taken away were restored; money, too, was given them, and the works, after being interrupted for a time by difficulties, were resumed under Darius Hystaspes and completed. Some time afterward another large body of Jews came up to the holy city with Ezra, and the capital was once more active with busy life and once more became glorious.
Alexander the Great marched against the Jews, but was prevented from entering the city by the intercession of the high priest—a scene which found its parallel in after-times, when the aged Leo went to the camp of Attila, and by his entreaties diverted that semi-Christian barbarian from Rome. After the death of Alexander, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, surprised the Jews on their Sabbath day, when he knew they would not fight; he made an easy conquest, and carried off thousands of Jews into Egypt.
For a hundred years of comparative peace this fated city remained under the Ptolemies, when it fell into the hands of the Syrians. Antiochus Epiphanes, their king, after his Egyptian campaigns, finding his treasure-chest nearly empty, bethought him of sacking the temple of Jerusalem, marched his army upon the city, pillaged it, slew about forty thousand people, and sold as many more into slavery. He then endeavored to exterminate the ceremonial; a pagan altar was set up and sacrifice made to Jupiter. The Maccabaean revolution broke out, and the city was ultimately recovered by the hero, Judas Maccabaeus, when a new phase of priesthood was established, which we shall notice elsewhere. Things went on thus until about the year 60 B.C., when Pompey seized the city and massacred twelve thousand Jews in the temple courts. Thus it fell into the hands of the Romans, against whom it rebelled, and by whom ultimately, after the most terrible siege recorded in history, it was taken and subjected to violations over which the mind even now shudders; its temple was ransacked, violated, and burned, its priests butchered, pagan rites were celebrated in its holy place, its maidens were ravished, its palaces burned down, an unrestrained carnage was carried on, Jews were crucified on crosses as long as trees could be found to make them, and when the woods were exhausted they were slain in cold blood. Nearly a million of Jews are said to have fallen in this terrible conflict. For fifty years after there is no mention of Jerusalem in history. They kept themselves quiet, watching eagerly and stealthily for an opportunity of throwing off the hated Roman yoke. About the year 131 A-D., Adrian, to prevent any outbreak, ordered the city to be fortified. The Jews rebelled at once, but were so completely crushed by the [{502}] year 135 that this date has always been accepted as that of their final dispersion. The holy city was then made a Roman colony, the Jews were forbidden to enter into its walls under pain of immediate death, the very name was altered to the pagan one of AElia Capitolina, a temple was erected on Mount Moriah to Jupiter Capitolinus, and Jerusalem was henceforth spoken of by this pagan name until the days of Constantine, when pilgrimages were rife, and the Christians began to turn their steps toward the city whose streets had been hallowed by the footsteps of Christ. Helena, the emperor's mother, wandered there in penitence, built a church on the site of the nativity, and agitated Christendom to its foundations by the announcement of the discovery of the true cross. Constantine then built a church on the site of the Holy Sepulcher, and at last the Jews were admitted once a year into the city of their glory to sing penitential psalms over their degradation. The sorrows of the place were not yet ended, for in the year 614 the Persians fell upon Jerusalem, and this time the Christians suffered, ninety thousand of whom were killed. Then it was retaken by the Romans, when the Emperor Heraclius marched in triumph through its streets with the real cross on his shoulders. In 637, however, it fell into the hands of Arabic Saracens, from whom the Turks took it in 1079. Then came that marvellous agitation of Europe, when she poured out her millions of devotees to drive the Saracen from the holy land; and in 1099 Godfrey de Bouillon was proclaimed King of Jerusalem by the victorious Crusaders. The Christians held it for eighty-eight years, when Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, wrested it from them in 1187, and they held it until the year 1517, when the Ottoman Turks seizing upon Jerusalem, made the twenty-first and last invasion which this devoted city has undergone, and in their hands it still remains.
In the very earliest ages of Christianity people begin to bend their steps toward Jerusalem and to write their travels. Some of these variations are extant, and the earliest is called "Itinerarium a Burdigala Hierusalem usque:" it was written by a Christian of Bordeaux, who went to the Holy Land in the year 333, about two years before the church of the Holy Sepulchre was consecrated by Constantine and his mother Helena. It is to be gleaned also from the works of the Greek fathers that pilgrimages to Jerusalem were becoming so frequent as to lead to many abuses. St. Porphyry, after living as a recluse in Egypt, went to the Holy Land, visited Jerusalem, and finally settled in the country as Bishop of Gaza. Toward the end of the fourth century (385), St. Eusebius of Cremona and St. Jerome went there and founded a monastery at Bethlehem. St. Paula also visited it about the same time. In the seventh century we have St. Antonius going there and telling us he admired the beauty of the Jewish women who lived at Nazareth. In the year 637, the taking of Jerusalem by the Saracens interrupted the the flow of visitors, but Areulf, a French bishop, went there toward the end of the century. In the early part of the eighth century the Anglo Saxons began to go there. Willibald, a relative of Boniface, paid a visit to Jerusalem in 724. Then the war with the Greeks interposed, and we do not hear much about the Holy Land until the end of the eighth century, when, through the friendship of Charlemagne with Haroun al Raschid, the Christians were once more allowed to go to the Holy Sepulcher. A monk, called Bernard Sapiens, went in 870, and wrote anon account of it. Then the celebrated Gerbert, who was afterward pope, under the title of Sylvester II., went to Jerusalem in 986, came back and wrote a work, in which he made the holy city mourn her misfortunes and woes, her wasted temples and violated sacred places; then he appealed to the whole Christian world to go and help her. France [{503}] and Italy began to move. The Saracens heard of this agitation, and interdicted the Christians in their dominions from worshipping, turned their temples into stables, and threw down the church of the Holy Sepulcher and others in the year 1008. At the tidings of this devastation Europe was aroused, and in fact we may fairly say that Gerbert's book of travel was the first spark that fired the conflagration of the Crusades. The first narrative we have of any pilgrim who followed the Crusades is by Saewulf, a Saxon, and a very interesting narration he has left; he went in the year 1102, was a monk of Malmesbury Monastery, and is mentioned by the renowned William of that abbey in his Gesta Pontificum. There are accounts also in the twelfth century by Benjamin of Tudela; in the fourteenth by Sir John Mandeville; in the fifteenth by Bertrandon de la Brocquière; and in the sixteenth by Henry Maundrell. [Footnote 152]
[Footnote 152: See Early Travels in Palestine, An interesting collection of itineraries and ancient visits to the Holy Land, by Mr. Thomas Wright.]