صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

It is very curious and interesting, but at the same time most melancholy, to trace the process by which the cravings of the simpleminded and ignorant crowd of pilgrims to behold and to touch every spot where some event of the sacred narrative took place, led to a gradual accumulation of local appropriation, which has ended in a confident indication not only of every place where every historical event happened, but also of places connected with the parables, which we have no reason to believe were other than fables invented for our edification. A visit to the "House of the Rich Man," or a sight of the "Stone which the builders rejected," are very apt to excite the wrath and disgust of our better informed but somewhat hasty modern travellers, and lead them to denounce the Monks and Pilgrims of the middle ages as a pack of knaves or credulous fools, and the entire body of local tradition as a system of premeditated imposture, no one portion of which deserves the least credit.

This is an error in the opposite extreme, by which much valuable truth is rejected. It is, unfortunately, impossible to deny the credulity, or even the imposture in many cases; neither can we wonder at the disgust and indignation which must arise in the mind of every sincere and right-thinking person at the sight of such a

in another part of the city, and is no other than the present Mosque of Omar. But this theory is, in my opinion, perfectly untenable, although, if it were true, it would not very seriously interfere with the following dissertation. However, leaving the topographical part of the controversy in the hands of my friend the author of the Holy City, I

shall make a note of Mr Fergusson's statements as I proceed, and now shall merely express my regret that he should have permitted himself to fling abuse and contempt so unsparingly upon preceding authors. His hypothesis is certainly quite new, and nobody is likely to dispute the credit of it with him.

mass of absurdity and falsehood, and of mean and low passions and feelings, fostered into full activity in a land and in a city that ought to excite far different and holier feelings. But however difficult it may be to

separate the after-growth of credulity from the true original tradition around which it has accumulated, it must be remembered that it may have preserved to us the memory of the spot where some great and leading event took place; and, for example, I am not prepared to reject the traditional site of the Sepulchre, because I find close to it an altar absurdly pretending to mark the very place where the soldiers divided the vestments.

With respect to the Church which is the immediate object of this Essay, Robinson has well and calmly stated the difficulties that at first sight present themselves to the mind of a traveller. The place of our Lord's Crucifixion, as we are expressly informed, was without the gate of the ancient city, and yet nigh to the city'. The Sepulchre, we are likewise told, was nigh at hand, in a garden, in the place where Jesus was crucified?. It is not, therefore, without some feeling of wonder that a stranger unacquainted with the circumstances, on arriving in Jerusalem at the present day, is pointed to the place of Crucifixion and the Sepulchre in the midst of a modern city, and both beneath the same roof, This latter fact, however unexpected, might occasion less surprise; for the Sepulchre was nigh to Calvary. But beneath the same roof are further shewn... various other places said to have been connected with the history of the Crucifixion, most of which it must have

Heb. xiii. 12; John xix. 20. The same is also implied in John xix. 17 ;

Matt xxvii. 32.

2 John xix. 41, 42.

been difficult to identify, even after the lapse of only three centuries; and particularly so at the present day, after the desolation and numerous changes which the whole place has undergone."

The difficulty thus laid down with respect to the locality, is discussed in another part of this volume. The places, which are to this day so confidently and credulously pointed out within this Church, may be enumerated as follows: (1) the Holy Sepulchre. (2) The hole in the Rock in which the Cross was fixed. (3) The holes on each side in which the thieves' crosses were fixed. (4) The spot upon which the Crucifixion or actual nailing to the Cross took place, which the Latins assert to have been done previously to the elevation of the Cross. (5) The stone upon which the Body was laid after it was taken down from the Cross, and where it was wrapped in linen with spices. (6) The place where the soldiers divided the vestments. (7) The spot where the friends of our Lord stood afar off during the Crucifixion. (8) Where the women stood during the anointing of the Body, &c. (9) Where the women stood over against the Sepulchre. (10) Where our Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene as a gardener. (11) Where He appeared to the Virgin Mary. (12) The Prison in which He was detained while the preparations were making for the Crucifixion. (13) The place where the Crosses were discovered by Helena. (14) The place where she sat while the digging was proceeding for that purpose. side these places, which are distinguished by altars and especial chapels, or else by stones let into the pavement, there are some relics removed from other places,

Be

Bib. Res. Vol. 11 p. 64.

such as the column of Flagellation, of Mocking Some of the places above enumerated have no con with the Scripture narration, but belong to legenda dition, as Nos. 11 and 12. But it will appear course of the following history, that with the exc of (1) The Sepulchre, (2) the hole for the Cros (13) the place where the Crosses were found, n of the above sacred localities or stations are mer by any writer previous to the conquest of Jerusa the Crusaders, at the end of the eleventh centu the hole for the Cross appears for the first time narration of Arculfus in the ninth century; for this time we only hear of Golgotha (or Calvary neral terms, which, as Robinson has observed, is rally connected with the site of the Sepulchre place where the Crosses were found belongs to gend of their discovery, and thus, after all, w exception, the original tradition of the Sepulchr alone and separated by many centuries from the credulous rubbish which has so disgusted and modern travellers and writers, and which has induced them to seek arguments for the reje the Sepulchre itself. Many of the holy place tions probably arose from the medieval pra dramatising the sacred narratives, or presenti in the most palpable forms of representation senses of the ignorant crowd. We may ther gard such stations as having been at first es as memorials, or altars, for the purpose of f succession of leading events more certainly in mory, and that in time they came, by an easy t to be considered as having been placed upon spots upon which each event happened.

I will now proceed to the Architectural History of the Church, the investigation of which has formed the subject of Lectures that I have delivered at Cambridge and at the Royal Institution in London, at various times, but has been considerably matured by the information which these Lectures have procured for me from the kindness of many of my friends; and, amongst others, from the excellent author of the preceding pages, whose knowledge of the locality, and extensive researches into the literature of the subject, has been of great service to me. I have gladly, therefore, availed myself of his kind request that I will append these pages to his valuable history of the Holy City.

II.

CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE IN GENERAL.

THE buildings on this site have been repeatedly ruined and rebuilt, and otherwise altered from time to time; but the principal changes which we shall have to consider may be briefly recapitulated as follows1.

The first edifices that were erected to do honour to this place were those of Constantine, which were dedicated in the year 335. These were ruined in the Persian invasion of Chosroes, in 614, and restored by Modestus fifteen years afterwards. Jerusalem was taken by the Mahometans in 637; but the sacred buildings in question were not injured by them at that time. In 1010, they were, however, utterly and purposely de

The History of the Holy City in the previous volume has already detailed these events as they occurred, but of course mixed up with the general

narrative. My object in the following Essay requires that I should separate the history of this church entirely from the history of Jerusalem.

« السابقةمتابعة »