(5.) Arculf. A.D. 695.

Bishop Arculf, returning from pilgrimage to the Holy Land to his bishopric in France, was wrecked and cast away in the Hebrides, whither contrary winds had carried the vessel. He was hospitably received by Adamnanus, the Abbot of Iona, and beguiled the winter evenings by narrating his adventures in Palestine, and describing the sacred sites. The abbot wrote down his account, and sent copies of it to different parts of England. Bede gives an abridgment. Arculf also made a plan of the Church of the Sepulchre, which has come down to our times.

“The Church of the Holy Sepulchre ... is supported by twelve stone columns of extraordinary magnitude. In the middle space is a round grotto (tegurium) cut in the rock itself, about a foot and a half higher than a man of full stature, in which nine men could stand and pray.[[86]] The entrance of the grotto is on the east side; on the north side, within, is the tomb of our Lord, hewn out of the rock, seven feet in length, and raised three feet above the floor. Internally the stone of the rock remains in its original state, and still exhibits the mark of the workman’s tools. To this round church, which is called the Anastasis, that is, the Resurrection, adjoins on the right side the square church of the Virgin Mary, and to the east of this another church of great magnitude is built on the spot called in Hebrew Golgotha, from the roof of which there is hung by ropes a great brazen wheel with lamps....”

And in another place, “In that famous place where was formerly the splendidly-built temple, in the neighbourhood of the eastern wall, the Saracens have erected a quadrangular house of prayer, ... which house is able to contain about three thousand men at once.”

[86]. The cave of the Sakhra contains an area of five hundred square feet; certainly one could hardly expect a writer having this area in his mind to say that it could only contain nine men.

(6.) Willibald. A.D. 765.[[87]]

The Sepulchre had been cut out of the rock: and the rock itself stands out above the ground, and is square at the bottom and grows pointed at the top. On its summit is the Cross of the Sepulchre; and thereupon is built a beautiful house; and on the eastern side in that stone of the Sepulchre is a gate by which men enter within to pray; and there is within the couch on which lay the body of the Lord.

[87]. Given in Fergusson’s ‘Jerusalem,’ p. 160, and in Bonney’s ‘Holy Places,’ p. 23.

(7.) Bernhard the Wise. A.D. 807.
Bernhard[[88]] describes the group, as of “four churches connected together by walls, that is to say, one in the east, which has Mount Calvary: and one in the place in which the Cross of the Lord was found, which is called the Basilica of Constantine: another to the south, and a fourth to the west, in the middle of which is the sepulchre of the Lord.... Between these four churches is a Paradise without a roof, the walls of which shine with gold, and the pavement with precious marble. In the midst of it is an inclosure of four chains, which proceed from the aforesaid four churches, and in it said to be the centre of the world.”		 This account agrees with Arculf’s. It is difficult to fit these churches into the Haram Area. Building was always going on, which accounts for the difference between this story and that of Willibald’s.

[88]. Williams’ ‘Holy City,’ ii., 264.