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half of the hood or porch supported partly on corbels and partly on a column, the lower part of which is enveloped in masonry; and the northern half of this porch is also walled up and concealed by a bridge which crosses the street at this point, connecting the two halves of the Greek convent. My section in Plate 3 exhibits its probable original arrangement.

This doorway is mentioned by Quaresmius (p. 370), and also by Edrisi, in whose time it was in use, and as he says, "The Church is lower than this door, and there is no descent to the lower part from this side; but on the north side is a door which is called the door of St Mary, leading to a staircase of thirty steps3." The exact position of the staircase I have not been able to discover; but it was plainly required for the purpose of affording access from below to the triforium, as well as to enable persons who came in at the upper west door from the street, to descend and enter the church at the door below.

The side aisle of the Rotunda has been already described as being concentric only in its western half; for the portions of this aisle immediately in contact with the straight wall which bounds the whole to the east, are of a square form, evidently contrived with respect to the

3 From the French translation of Edrisi by Jaubert, Paris, 1836. A north triforium door and staircase are mentioned by Bernardino, p. 36. Part of the triforium on the north was in later times fitted up for the use of the Latins, with four apartments, one of which contained an altar of St Didaeus; behind which were two rooms, one for the accommodation of pilgrims, and another which served as a sacristy in which they kept their tapestry,

lamps, and other matters of value for the service of the church. These particulars appear from the account of the fire in 1808. (See W. Turner's Journal of a Tour in the Levant, 1820. Vol. 11. p. 597.) The southern part was, and still is, enclosed to serve as the great church of the Armenians; and here the fire of 1808 began. There is a staircase (67) in the south-east corner of the aisle of the Rotunda, which leads to this Armenian church.

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chapels, which are erected both on the north and sou extremities of the aisle. On the north wall a door (1 opens to a single chapel, but from the south wall pr jects a range of three chapels (65, 62, 61), the access which from the Church is now blocked up, but it w formerly maintained by a door (66) in the south wall the aisle, exactly opposite to that in the north wall (1 which still leads to the north chapel.

This north Chapel is termed the Chapel of the V gin Mary of the Apparition', because the tradition of place is, that on this spot our Saviour appeared to mother after the Resurrection. The floor is three four steps higher than the pavement of the Rotun and it has a recess to the east which was furnished w an apse, previously to the late repairs, as shewn in Plan, but is now square, and in this recess is placed Altar, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and se as the High Altar of the Latins in this Church; for Greeks have possession of the real High Altar in Choir of the Crusaders. The apse was semicirc within, but polygonal without, in the usual form of Greek apses; and in fact this Chapel is mentioned Sæwulf in 1102; and being therefore in existence be the Crusaders began their buildings, was evidently work of Greek architects.

On each side of the above-mentioned Altar is pla a subordinate Altar, with a recess or niche in the above it. The niche over the northern side alta

1 Sacellum Sanctæ Mariæ Virginis de Apparitione (Quaresmius, p. 568). It is a quadrangular apartment, twentyone feet four inches broad, and twentyeight feet long, according to Mr Scoles,

exclusive of the altar recess, wh nine feet broad, and seven feet d

2 These recesses are about th high, and two wide. (Bernardi The side altars also recal Gre

said once to have contained a piece of the true cross3. The niche above the southern side-altar contains a portion of a column, nine inches in diameter, and about three feet high, of fine porphyry, which goes by the name of the Column of the Flagellation, professing to be a piece of the column to which our Saviour was bound and scourged by the order of Pilate'.

rangements, and were probably the usual side-tables of the Eastern ritual. In the middle of the chapel there is a round grey marble slab of three feet diameter, inserted in the pavement, to mark the traditional spot where the three crosses were laid after their discovery by St Helena, and where the miracle was wrought by which the true Cross was distinguished from the others. (Quaresmius, p. 383.)

* Quaresmius relates that this piece of the true Cross was left there by the Emperor Heraclius, when he brought back that relic from Persia, in the year 628, upon which occasion it was divided into pieces, and variously distributed, one of them being left at Jerusalem. But this piece was lost at the battle of Tiberias; and when Father Bonifacius found, as already related, a relic in the Sepulchre during its repair in 1555, which he fancied to be a piece of the true Cross, he deposited it in this niche, whence, as they say, it was stolen by the Armenians. At all events, it is not there now. (Quaresmius, pp. 383, 514.) The existence of the chapel is not mentioned before 1102; and the above-mentioned traditions concerning the deposit of the Cross here by Heraclius, the place where Helena caused the three crosses

to be laid after they were dug up, &c. ; are manifestly of subsequent invention, as well as the tale which Fabri tells, that this chapel stands on the site of a house in which the Virgin took refuge after the Crucifixion. (Vol. I. p. 286.)

4 Alta palmi tre e mezo, e di diametro un palmo. (Bern. p. 31).

5 A column, which was part of the structure of the Church at Mount Sion, is mentioned with the legend in question by St Jerome, by the Bordeaux Pilgrim, Arculfus, and others. It was broken by the Mohammedans, but the pieces are said to have been carefully collected about the year 1556, presented respectively to Pope Paul IV., Ferdinand the Emperor, Philip II. of Spain, and to the Venetian Republic, &c. &c. One fragment, however, was at the same time reserved at Jerusalem, and located in the niche where it is now to be seen. A rival column of flagellation is preserved at Rome, in the church of S. Praxede; but I must refer my readers to Quaresmius for a discussion of their respective claims to authenticity. Sæwulf, in 1120, immediately after the Crusaders' conquest, mentions a column of flagellation which was then placed between the Carcer Christi and the place of the Invention of the Cross.

The whole chapel of the Apparition is the chapel of the Latin convent of the Franciscan Friars, and is fitted up with seats as a choir for them. Their dwellings are immediately in contact with the northern and western sides of it, as the Plan shews. They took possession of this locality in 1257', but were not fully established until 1342, when permission for their residence was obtained of the Sultan, at the intercession of Robert, king of Sicily, and his queen. The Greeks had previously established themselves in the large church, of which they have retained their hold to the present time2.

But to return to the square vestibule of this chapel. On its East side was a small chapel of St Mary Magdalen, fitted up in what appears to have been originally a doorway (17), and has in the late repairs been made to return to that purpose. Next to this follows an arch (18), which opens to a long corridor (21) running Eastward and in contact with the North transept of the great Church, but evidently belonging to an earlier period, for it has pillars and arches on its Southern side, the spacing and arrangement of which are totally at variance with those of the greater building with which it is in contact. This appears at once by the plan, and there can be little doubt that this is the remains of a cloister which bounded the open area upon

1 Quaresmius, Lib. 1. p. 176.

2 Willibrandus ab Oldenburg, in 1211, found the Church with the Holy Sepulchre, and all that it contained, under the charge of four Syrian priests, who were not allowed to leave the walls, but were left unmolested by the Sara

cens, (p. 148, Leonis All. Opusc.) In fact, the whole City was under the rule of the Eastern Church, until the Latins wrested it from them at the time of the Crusaders' conquest, and when the lat ter were driven out, the Easterns resumed possession of the Holy places.

which the Crusaders' choir and central cupola was afterwards erected. This cloister leads to a small, low, dark apartment (23), wherein our Saviour is reported to have been confined during the preparations for the crucifixion, whence it is called the Prison of Christ. The earliest writer that notices this prison is Sawulf (A. D. 1102), who, enumerating the Holy Places which are to be seen in the atrium of the Church, mentions the "prison where our Lord was confined, according to the Syrian tradition ;" and the next is Epiphanius, a Syrian monk, whose description of the Holy Land is of uncertain date, but apparently about the end of the twelfth century. This prison however is not alluded to by any other authors of this period. In the sixteenth century and afterwards it becomes one of the ordinary stations. It is needless to add that there is not the slightest ground in Scripture, or even in probability, for supposing that such a prison was employed.

It is of an irregular form, nineteen feet long, and in width sixteen feet at the West end, and eighteen at the East. It is only eight feet in height3, is three steps below the level of the corridor1, has no window, and is described as being excavated in the rock:-I presume only the lower part of it, which, as Zuallardo tells us, seems to have been intended for a reservoir of water. Its roof is supported by two rude pillars which divide it into three aisles as it were, and an altar is fixed against its eastern wall.

The southern chapels, (65, 62, 61), which stand directly opposite to the Chapel of the Apparition, are in

La volta è alta da terra palmi undici. (Bern. 31.)
Cotovicus, p. 161.

VOL. II.

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