Basilica of St Peter at Rome, and have, therefore, cotemporary similarity to support them. It is not impossible that a representation of the Cross planted upon this Golgotha may have given rise to the improbable supposition of later ages, that the actual foot-hole of the Cross was known and preserved; for the first mention of this hole occurs so late as the seventh century, in the work of Arculfus, and he only tells us that a great silver Cross was planted on the very spot where the original Cross once stood at the Crucifixion.

The reservoirs of water mentioned by the Bordeaux Pilgrim, may be traced in several places. Some of them have already occurred to us. That called the Well of Helena, at the north-western corner, still supplies the inhabitants of the Church. The so-called "Prison " and the place of the "Invention of the Cross," are each described as resembling ancient cisterns; and, lastly, there is actually an enormous reservoir (at Z Fig. 3,) still in existence close to the north side of the Portal of Constantine in the street of St Stephen, which now bears the name of the Treasury of Helena, and which Schultz (p. 61) declares to be the most ancient and remarkable cistern which he had seen in Jerusalem. Mr. Williams informs me that he conjectures the dimensions to be at least sixty by thirty feet; but being full of water, and only to be viewed by torchlight from a platform on one side, it is very difficult to measure or even estimate its magnitude. It must be nearly upon a level with the excavation that is now occupied by the Chapel of St Helena.

This chapel in my plan of the Basilica falls partly within and partly without, as if a crypt had once stood on its site, so contrived as to be accessible from within

the nave, and when once entered, to afford a passage under the atrium to the cavern where the Cross was discovered. The greater part of the sides of the chapel are certainly of rock, but I think it likely that an examination of the contiguous buildings on the north and east sides would show that similar excavations were originally extended in those directions, so as to connect this crypt with the cistern called the "Treasury of Helena."

There is no evidence to prove whether or no the cavern, at present shewn as the place of the Invention of the Cross, was the same in which that remarkable transaction took place. The historical evidence of the finding of the so-called three Crosses and Nails in the presence of St Helena and of Macarius, is so strong that it is impossible to doubt it. But it appears to me equally impossible to believe for an instant the genuineness of these relics, which, after all, were probably pieces of timber and iron-work belonging to foundations of some former structure, which, having been accidentally turned up in the course of the excavations, were promoted by the excited imagination of Helena to the high office which they immediately assumed. From the silence of Eusebius we may infer that he disbelieved their authenticity. However, they exercised so remarkable an influence upon the world, and especially upon church architecture, that their history is by no means to be lightly dismissed; for they were at once accepted by the Christian world as genuine, and venerated accordingly, to a degree which it is very difficult to believe or understand in our present state of feeling upon these subjects.

XI.

THE BUILDINGS OF THE SECOND PERIOD,

FROM A.D. 614 TO A.D. 1010.

THE Martyrium of Constantine, described in the last chapter, was utterly ruined by the Persians in the year 614 the buildings were set fire to, and studiously demolished; and we shall find reason to believe that, in the re-building, the original plan was considerably altered: partly from the want of funds, and partly from the changes which had taken place in the forms and arrangements of churches, and from the additional Holy Places which had accumulated round about the Sepulchre by the growing traditions of the spot. At all events, the description of the Martyrium by Eusebius is exceedingly different from the description of the buildings on the spot during the second period. The history of this period1 informs us that the credit of the restoration is principally due to Modestus, the Superior of the Monastery of Theodosius, who, as Eutychius in the tenth century, relates, "came to Jerusalem and constructed the Churches of the Resurrection, of the Sepulchre, of the Calvary, and of St Constantine, as they now exist." The buildings on this spot had now, therefore, acquired the character of a group of three distinct churches, (the Sepulchre being included within the Church of the Resurrection); and these churches were not architecturally connected or symmetrically disposed, whereas, in the original Martyrium of Constantine, as I have shewn, the entire site was occupied by a symmetrical mass of building.

Holy City, Vol. 1. pp. 303, 4.
VOL. II.

2 Eutychii Annales, Tom. 11. p. 219.

17

The best and most satisfactory account of the plan of the Churches at this period is in the work of Adamnanus', which contains a most minute description, leaving scarcely anything to desire; and which, in its abbreviated form by Bede, was so entirely accepted during the early part of the middle ages, that the pilgrims commonly refer to it as an apology for not extending their own accounts. This description, however, was extracted by the diligent cross-questioning of Adamnanus, Abbot of Columba in Iona, from Arculfus the Pilgrim, who paid him a visit, and it was by the Abbot written down in the form in which it was presented to the world; he also induced Arculfus to draw him a rough plan of the churches upon a waxen tablet.

1 Our principal authorities for the state of the buildings during this period are the above-cited Arculfus, (circa, A. D. 697,) Willibaldus, Bishop of Aicstadt, who was born at Southampton in the year 700, and made his pilgrimage in 765, the Pilgrim-monk Bernardus, A. D. 870; and Eutychius of Alexandria, who died in the year 940. The absurdly credulous Itinerary of Antoninus Placentinus appears to belong to the beginning of this period; but it is quite enough to say of this writer, that even the editors of the Acta Sanctorum are ashamed of the fables it contains, to which they apply the term "anile."

This plan is wanting in the greater number of the manuscripts both of Adamnanus and of the bridgement by Bede. In fact, I believe the copy of it which is to be found in Mabillon, (Acta Sanctorum, Ord. S. Ben'. Sæc. 3.

Part 11. p. 504) Adamnanus, and also in Quaresmius, is derived from Gretser's edition of Adamnanus, and he tells us that he took it from a Belgian manuscript. Gretser's text has been corrected by Mabillon from other and better manuscripts; but his copy of the diagram differs only from Gretser's in being more neatly drawn and with some differences of proportion; while Gretser's has much more the air of a fac-simile of the original. This original has probably suffered much dis tortion, from being the result of a series of copies from one manuscript to another; but it has a singular resemblance to the actual site when due allowance is made for the rough method of drawing, and the total want of scale. This Plan has been published so often, that I have not thought it worth while to reproduce it. Copies of it are engraved in the following works Quar

I shall now proceed to extract and translate from the tract of Adamnanus all that belongs to the churches on this site, omitting only his description of the Sepulchre itself, which I have already given in a previous section.

66

Of the Church of the Sepulchre of the Lord.

Concerning these things we diligently interrogated the holy Arculfus, and especially about the Sepulchre of the Lord, and the Church constructed above it, of which he delineated the form for me upon a waxen tablet. This great Church, all of stone, of wondrous rotundity on all sides, arising from its foundation in three walls, has a broad passage between each wall and the next. In three ingeniously constructed places of the middle wall three altars are disposed, one looking to the South, another to the North, and the third towards the West; and this round and lofty Church is sustained by twelve columns of wondrous magnitude, and it has eight doors or entrances formed by three walls erected in the intermediate spaces between the passages. Of these, four are turned to the South-East, and the other four to the North-East." Here follows the description of the Sepulchre already given in Section VII. above. And he then proceeds to say that there are 66 some things to be said concerning the buildings of the other sacred places."

terly Review, March, 1845, p. 355. Fergusson's Jerusalem, p. 149. Quaresmius, T. 11. p. 585. Acta Sanctorum, Ord. S. Ben1. Sæc. 111. p. 505. Gretseri Op. Ratis. 1734. T. IV.

p. 256. Lastly, Dr. Giles has given one which differs from this, in his edition of Bede, Vol. VI. p. 439. He found it in a manuscript in the Royal Library at Paris, No. 2321.