Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin

by Walter Besant; Edward Henry Palmer

The doctors of the Church protested, but in vain. Indeed, they often went themselves. St. Porphyry, afterwards Bishop of Gaza, was one of those who went. He had betaken himself to the Thebaid at the age of twenty, to become a hermit. There, after five years of austerities, he became seized with an irresistible desire to see Jerusalem. Afflicted with a painful disorder, and hardly able to hold himself upright, he managed to crawl across the deserts to the city; as soon as he arrived there, he sent his companion back to Thessalonica, his native place, with injunctions to sell all that he had and distribute the proceeds among the faithful. And then he laid himself down to die. Mark departed; what was his astonishment, on returning, his mission accomplished, to find his friend restored to health? Porphyry went no more to the Thebaid, probably but a dull place at best, even for a hermit, and betaking himself to a handicraft, he preached the Gospel and became a bishop. St. Jerome himself, in spite of his protests, went to Palestine, accompanied by Eusebius of Cremona. The voice of calumny had attacked Jerome in revenge for his exposure of the sins and follies of the day, and he was pleased to leave Rome. The two future saints landed at Antioch, and after seeing Jerusalem went on to Bethlehem, and thence to the Thebaid, where they solaced themselves with admiring the austerities of the self-tormentors, the hermits there. Returning thence to Bethlehem, they resolved on selling their property and forming a monastery in that town. This they accomplished by the assistance of Paula and Eudoxia, two noble ladies, mother and daughter, who followed them to Palestine, and passed their lives like Jerome himself, under a rigid rule of prayer and labour. Paula died in Bethlehem. Her daughter and Jerome, less happy, were turned out of their peaceful retreat by a band of Arabs, bribed, we are told, by the heretics in Jerusalem, who burned and pillaged the monastic houses, dispersed the monks and nuns, and drove the venerable Jerome, then past the age of seventy years, to a bed from which he never rose again.

The story of the pilgrimage of Paula is useful because it shows that the multiplication of the sacred sites was not due entirely to the invention of later times. At Cæsarea she saw the house of Cornelius the centurion, turned into a church; and here, also, was the house of Saint Philip, and the chambers of his four virgin daughters, prophetesses; on Mount Zion she saw the column where our Lord was scourged, still stained with His blood, and supporting the gallery of a church; she saw, too, the place where the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles; at Bethphage they showed her the sepulchre of Lazarus, and the house of Mary and Martha; on Mount Ephraim she saw the tombs of Joshua and Eleazar; at Shechem the well of Jacob, and the tombs of the twelve patriarchs, and at Samaria the tombs of Elisha and John the Baptist. Hither were brought those possessed with devils, that they might be exorcised, and Paula herself was an eye-witness of the miraculous cure effected. With regard to miracles, indeed, Antoninus Martyr, to whose testimony on the site of the church of the Holy Sepulchre we have referred in another place,[^[41]] relates many which he himself pretends to have seen. If you bring oil near the true cross, he says, it will boil of its own accord, and must be quickly removed, or it will all escape; at certain times a star from heaven rests on the cross. He tells us, too, that there is on Sinai an idol, fixed there by the infidels, in white marble, which on days of ceremony changes colour and becomes quite black.

[41]. See [Appendix].

The impending fall of the empire, and the invasion of the hordes of barbarians, proved but a slight check to the swarms of pilgrims. For the barbarians, finding that these unarmed men and women were completely harmless, respected their helplessness and allowed them to pass unmolested. When, as happened shortly after their settlement in Italy and the West, they were gradually themselves brought within the pale of the Christian faith, they made laws which enforced the protection and privileges of pilgrims. These laws were not, it is true, always obeyed.

The route was carefully laid down for the pilgrims by numerous Itineraries, the most important of which is that called the Itinerary of the Bordeaux Pilgrim. The author starts from Bordeaux, perhaps because it is his own city, perhaps because it was then the most considerable town in the West of Europe. He passes through France by Auch, Toulouse, Narbonne, thence to Beziers, Nîmes, and Arles. At Arles he turns northwards, and passes through Avignon, Orange, and Valence, when he again turns eastwards to Diez, Embrun and Briançon; thence he crosses the Alps and stops at Susa. In Italy he passes through the towns of Turin, Pavia, Milan (not because Milan was on his way, but because it would be a pity to lose the opportunity of seeing this splendid city), to Brescia, Verona, and Aquileia, a town subsequently destroyed by Attila, at the head of the Gulf of Trieste. Crossing the Italian Alps he arrives at the frontiers of the empire of the East. His course lies next through Illyria, Styria, and along the northern banks of the river Drave, which he leaves after a time and follows the course of the Save, to its confluence with the Danube at Belgrade. He now follows the Danube until he comes to the great Roman road, which leads him to Nissa. Thence, still by the road, to Philippopolis, Heraclia, and Constantinople. Across Asia Minor he passes through Nicomedia, Nicæa, across what is now Anatolia to Ancyra, thence to Tyana and Tarsus. From Tarsus he goes to Iskanderoon, thence to Antioch, Tortosa, Tripoli (along the Roman road which lay by the Syrian sea-board), Beyrout, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, and Cæsarea. Here he leaves the direct and shortest way to Jerusalem in order first to visit the Jordan and other places.

It is instructive to follow the route of the pilgrim, because this was doubtless the road taken by the hundreds who every year flocked to Jerusalem, and because, as we shall see, nearly the same road was subsequently taken by the Crusaders.

Palestine, during some centuries, enjoyed a period of profound peace, during which the sword was sheathed, and no voice of war, save that of a foray of Arabs, was heard in the land. Thither retreated all those who, like Saint Jerome, were indisposed altogether to quit the world, like the hermits of Egypt, but yet sought to find some quiet spot where they could study and worship undisturbed. Thither came the monks turned out of Africa by Genseric; and when Belisarius in his turn overcame the barbarians, thither were brought back the spoils of the Temple which Titus had taken from Jerusalem. Nor was the repose of the country seriously disturbed during the long interval between the revolt of Barcochebas and the invasion of the Persians under Chosroes. But after Heraclius had restored their city to the Christians, a worse enemy even than Chosroes was at hand, and when Caliph Omar became the master of Jerusalem, the quiet old days were gone for ever.

The Mohammedans were better masters than the Persians; they reverenced the name of Jesus, they spared the Church of the Sepulchre, they even promised to protect the Christians. But promises made by the caliph were not always observed by his fanatic soldiers. The Christians were pillaged and robbed; they were insulted and abused; they were forced to pay a heavy tribute; forbidden to appear on horseback, or to wear arms; obliged to wear a leathern girdle to denote their nation; nor were they even permitted to elect their own bishops and clergy.

The pilgrims did not, in consequence of these persecutions, become fewer. To the other excitements which called them to the Holy Land was now added the chance of martyrdom, and the records of the next two centuries are filled with stories of their sufferings, which appear to have been grossly exaggerated, at the hands of the Muslim masters of the city. If the pilgrim returned safely to his home, there was some comfort for his relations, deprived of the glory of having a martyr in the family, in being able to relate how he had been buffeted and spat upon. To this period belong the pilgrimages of Arnulphus and Antoninus. That of the former is valuable, inasmuch as not only his own account has been preserved, but even the map which he drew up from memory. Bede made use of his narrative, which was taken down by the abbot Adamnanus, who gave Arnulphus hospitality when he was shipwrecked in the Hebrides on his return.

So extensive was the desire to “pilgrimize,” so many people deserted their towns and villages, leaving their work undone and their families neglected, while disorders multiplied on the road, and virtue was subjected to so many more temptations on the way to the Holy Land than were encountered at home, that the Church, about the ninth century, interfered, and assumed the power to grant or to withhold the privilege of pilgrimage. The candidate had first to satisfy the bishop of his diocese of his moral character, that he went away with the full consent of his friends and relations, and that he was actuated by no motives of curiosity, indolence, or a desire to obtain in other lands a greater licence and freedom of action. If these points were not answered satisfactorily, permission was withheld; and if the applicant belonged to one of the monastic orders he found it far more difficult to obtain the required authority. For it had been only too well proved that in assuming the pilgrim’s robe the monks were often only embracing an opportunity to return to the world again. But when all was satisfactory, and the bishop satisfied as to the personal piety of the applicant, the Church dismissed him on his journey with a service and a benediction. He was solemnly invested with the scrip and staff, he put on the long woollen robe which formed the chief part of his dress, the clergy and his own friends accompanied him to the boundaries of his parish, and there, after giving him a letter or a passport which ensured him hospitality so long as he was in Christian countries, they sent him on his way.