The rocky sides of this chamber are not exactly in the direction of the cardinal points, and it appears to be a portion of a rock-chamber, of which the Eastern parts have been cut away, and intruded upon by the process of hewing away the face of the rocky cliff in the brow of which it was originally excavated. For, as the section of the Church shews (Plate 3), the rock rises high against the external wall at the West, and the present level of the floor has been obtained by sinking into the rock. Thus an important corroboration is afforded of the history of the present disposition of the Holy Sepulchre. For instead of supposing the cavern to have been originally formed in a little hillock of rock, as some imagine, the very nature of the ground at present shews that the rock, which now rises behind the Western wall of the Church, was once extended so much farther Eastward as to bring the natural brow of its cliff to the front of the Holy Sepulchre, which was thus naturally formed in the face of this cliff in the usual manner. The Sepulchre just described under the name of Joseph of Arimathæa, was possibly part of a catacomb with many apartments and vestibules like that of the Judges, and at all events its entrance was formed in the face of the cliff, South-west of the entrance of the Holy Sepulchre2. * I have already stated, that throughout this dissertation I have applied the term Holy Sepulchre to that which is exhibited under this name in the church, without intending to assume its identity with the Sepulchre of the Gospel narrative, which must principaily be determined by topographical considerations. To shew that the arrangements of this Sepulchre are not inconsistent with Sacred history, may afford some slight arguments in its favour, but it could hardly be supposed that those who first asserted this cave to be the genuine one, would have selected one which was at variance with the gospel account. From the sacred narrative, however, we gather that the true Sepulchre was an apartment hewn out of the rock, and not a mere grave in the rock; But as this question of the original form of the ground can hardly be made intelligible until the whole for the disciples are described as "entering into it," in a manner that shews the entrance to have been perfectly easy, when they were not hindered from going in by feelings of awe and reverence. But those who were 80 hindered were compelled to stoop, (John xx. 5, 11) in order to look in, whence we may either infer that the door was low, or that the stooping posture was necessary to allow the light to enter; but not that the cave was at a lower level than the entrance, for then the disciples would have been Isaid to have " gone down into" the Sepulchre, instead of simply "entering it," which is the phrase always used. The vision of angels "sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain," (John xx. 12) is sufficient to shew that the Sepulchre was of that form in which the body was laid parallel to the side of the apartment. Also it was, more probably, deposited upon a stone couch, than in a hollow soros, or sarcophagus. For as the linen clothes appear to have been folded and laid in the place where the body had been, they could hardly have been seen by the disciple, who merely stooped down and looked in at the door, (John xx. 5) if they had been placed at the bottom of a stone chest, but would easily have been seen, if lying upon a stone couch. The vision of angels sitting may be thought to contradict the arched recess above the stone couch; at all events this recess could not have been very low, but in many of these rock tombs it is sufficiently high to allow space for persons to sit, as for example, in the arches represented in the Tombs of the Judges. Plate 4. There is no allusion in the scripture to a vestibule or outer cave, but on the other hand there is nothing to contradict its existence, and the common arrangement of the Jewish sepulchres makes it probable that there was one. The cave in the Sakhrah under the dome of the Mosk of Omar, which Mr Fergusson supposes to have been the true Sepulchre, has no resemblance to any sepulchral chamber, either in Jerusalem or elsewhere. It is in form an irregular trapezium, the average height seven feet and superficial area about 600 feet. In the centre of the rocky pavement is a circular slab of marble which when struck returns a hollow sound, clearly indicating a well or excavation beneath, (Bartlett's Walks, p. 154) and there is a corresponding opening in its rocky roof. It is wholly below the surface, and the access to it by a flight of steps; there is no provision for the reception of a body either in the form of recess, or stone couch, or any other of the wonted indications of sepulchral purpose which characterise such chambers. But, on the contrary, the aperture in the roof corresponding to the other in the floor shew a purpose which it would be difficult to connect with a sepulchre, but which I shall endeavour to explain in the Essay on the Temple. It does not seem to have occurred to Mr Fergusson that sepulchral caverns have characteristic arrangements and forms that mark their destination, and Church, and especially Mount Calvary, has been described, I will reserve its fuller explanation for a separate section, and will now proceed to describe the group of buildings that surround the Sepulchre. VIII. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. I HAVE in the preceding sections entered at great length into the history and description of the Chapel of that therefore it is not enough to produce a mere hole in a rock, like that of the Sakhrah, which is not only deficient in any of the usual indications of such a purpose, but is even contradictory in many particulars to the examples of rock sepulchres with which it is sur rounded. Moreover, Mr Fergusson (Jerusalem, p. 88) asserts that the Evangelists all agree that those that came to look for the body of Christ, "looked down into the Sepulchre," and he marks these latter words as if he were quoting the exact words of holy writ, which I need hardly say is not the case. To stoop down," in order to look into an apartment is not necessarily to "look down into." Again, he says with equal recklessness, that in the modern building the tomb is several feet above the pavement of the Church, and if that pavement and the filling-up were removed they must have stood on tipte to have looked in. Bernardino's drawings, which appear to be this gentleman's authority, are partly in section and partly in elevation, and his wood-engraver by converting the outside into modern strict elevation and exaggerating the inside has contrived to raise the floor of the cave about two feet above the pavement of the Church; but Bernardino's figures (32, 33) represent the matter very differently. If the fact were so, it has no bearing upon the question, for the rough rock about the Sepulchre must have been so levelled as to change the relation of the outside to the floor of the chamber, which after all, like most of these sepulchres, was probably about the same level as the sill of the outer door. Mr Fergusson has thus utterly failed in shewing either the probability of the Sakhrah cave having been intended for a sepulchre, or in demonstrating the absurdity of supposing the so-called Holy Sepulchre to be other than an artificial construction. His opinions concerning the architecture of the Mosk of Omar, which he believes to be the church of Constantine, shall be considered in their proper place. I will only remark upon the total absurdity of locating a place of common execution and sepulture close under the walls and upon the same platform as the Sacred Temple of the Jews. the Holy Sepulchre. The buildings that are attached to and partly surround it, will be understood by a comparison of the plans (Plate 2), with the sections (Plate 3) which represent the Church as it appears to have remained from the expulsion of the Crusaders in 1187 to the fire of 1808, which I have termed the fourth period of the buildings. But it will be remembered that the Crusaders found the Rotunda and some other buildings already erected, and that their works consisted of additions to those which already existed, and in some necessary alterations. The works of the Crusaders are therefore distinguished from the earlier ones by a different and lighter tint on the Plan. The Holy Sepulchre (1, 2, Plate 2)1 stands in the midst of the Rotunda, which was about seventy-three feet in diameter, and the height of its walls about 1 The numbers which are introduced in parentheses in the text, are references to the plan, Plate 2. 2 The diameter of the central part is at present sixty-seven feet English, and the total interior diameter, measured from the walls of the surrounding aisle, is one hundred and twelve English feet. These are the measurements of Mr Scoles. The interior wall was so damaged by the fire of 1808 that it has been rebuilt, but this rebuilding appears to have consisted in a mere casing of the interior surface, retaining the old vaults and triforium around; hence the present diameter is less than the original one. But the diameter of the sideaisle was unaffected by the fire. Bernardino assigns 156 palms to this diameter (p. 33), and declares (p. 1) that he employs the "canna ordinaria" which is used in the kingdom of Naples. If 156 palms are equal to 112 English feet, it follows that his palm is equal to .718 English feet. The nearest value to this in the ordinary tables is the Roman canna d'architettura = .733 English feet, which appears to have been the measure employed by him. The difference is easily accounted for by the inaccuracy in the length of his measuring-rod. The scale which is engraved on his plate is wholly at variance with the measures stated in his text, and is clearly an engraver's blunder; but if a new scale be drawn, by dividing the diameter of the round church upon his plan into 100 palms, it will be found to correspond with all his measures. The diameter of the central rotunda is stated to be one hundred palms by Bernardino, that is, seventythree English feet. The diameter of the present one is only sixty-seven. If sixty-eight, so that probably the height and diameter were intended to be equal. The walls are divided in the usual manner into three stories, ground-floor, triforium, and clerestory. The number of piers on the ground-plan are eighteen, some of which are round pillars with capitals, bases, and pedestals, and the others simple square piers. These two different forms are disposed of as follows. On the North, the West, and the South, respectively, are placed a pair of square piers upon which rests an arch of a rather wider span than those that are interposed between them, and which are sustained by the pillars. The East is distinguished by a pair of larger and loftier piers of a more complex character, sustaining a wider arch (4) that rises into the triforium of the Church, and now serves as an arch of passage between the Rotunda and the Choir; which latter part was erected by the Cru we reduce Bernardino's measures to English, we find that the lower pillars stood on pedestals five feet high; and the pillars, including base and capital, were seventeen feet high. The entire height from the pavement to the floor of the triforium was thirty feet, and as the whole height of every upper story was three-quarters of the one below it, the triforium-space was twenty-two feet, and the clerestory-space sixteen feet; the total height from the pavement to the top of the wall was therefore about sixtyeight feet. The precept for making a superior order of columns one-quarter less in proportion than the inferior order, is borrowed from Vitruvius (1. 5. c. 1, and c. 7). Whence we may infer that the good father Bernardino only actually measured the lower story, which he gives in detail, and that he guessed at the height of the others by assuming them to have been erected upon a Vitruvian principle; a very common assumption with the architectural writers of his age. "I pilastri dunque della cupola maggiore sono alti da terra palmi sei e tre oncie. Le base due, le colonne sedici, e otto oncie, li capitelli quattro, e dieci oncie, e dalla superficie de capitelli insino alla cornice sono palmi nove, e tre oncie, la cornice è palmi due, talche in tutto son palmi quarant' uno, e de gl' altri ordini la quarta meno à proportione......la cupola è alta palmi cinquanta......e in tutto sono di altezza palmi cento quaranta quattro." p. 36. |