so the difficulty is disposed of by a very summary process. The Greek of the Onomasticon, supported as it is by the literal translation of the Latin of St Jerome, is pronounced "at best a mere assertion-[as all the statements in the Onomasticon necessarily are]-without any detail or circumstantial evidence by which to test its credibility, and just such an expression as any meddling monk or commentator, copying the book after the first Crusade, might easily alter, supposing it to be a mistake, if he found it so completely at variance with the known locality of the place as it then stood." In other words, the notice of Eusebius and St Jerome agrees entirely with the present sites, but not at all with Mr Fergusson's theory of Mount Sion and the Sepulchre; therefore, without the authority of a single MS., and in defiance of all rules of historical criticism, the passage is to be set aside as an interpolation. It is enough to stateI cannot be expected to refute-such an argument. Thus much for the site. Then for the Sepulchre itself. It was, according to Eusebius, a "rock standing out erect and alone upon a level grounds," as the present Monument does, but as the Sakhrah neither does nor ever did; and it was dressed up with columns and other adornments, (according to the received custom of the Romans 6), which could not have been applied to the rough unshapen rock in the Mosk of Omar, sunk as it is in the very pavement. But the historian's notice of the buildings about the ⚫ Essay, p. 90. * See Theophania as cited above, PP. 78, 79. * Abundant examples of the style of ornament employed in Roman Se pulchres, will be cited by Professor Willis. For the adornment of the Sepulchre, see Eusebius, Vita Constantini, Lib. III. cap. xxxiv. Sacred Cave, does not less strongly militate against Fergusson's views. We need not go beyond the pro læum, which he places at the Golden Gate'. could he fail to see that Eusebius, in the very sa short chapter in which he describes that gateway, marks that it opened upon the very middle of the w market-place, as must have been the case with propylæum of the ancient Basilica, (supposing it to h stood East of the present Sepulchre, and the mod bazaars to occupy the position of the ancient mar -while the Golden Gate opens upon a narrow ri above the deep Valley of Jehoshaphat? And when to all this it is added, that we have evidence whatever that Constantine built any Chu over the Holy Sepulchre, but rather the express to mony of Eusebius to the contrary, it will be gran that Mr Fergusson has slender support indeed from pages of Eusebius. Besides the adornment of the C already mentioned, nothing more was then done to Sepulchre, except that the open court in which it st was paved with marble and a peridrome of colu carried round it on three sides. On the fourth s i. e. on the East, was the Basilica. When then we told that the Church of the Anastasis, with its ceiling, as erected by Constantine fifteen centuries. 1 Essay, p. 99. 2 Vita Constantini, Lib. 111. cap. xxxix. ἐπὶ πᾶσιν αἱ αὔλειοι πύλαι μεθ ̓ ἃς ἐπ ̓ αὐτῆς μέσης πλατείας ἀγορᾶς τὰ τοῦ παντὸς προπύλαια. The passage in the Laudes Constantini is not irreconcilable with this ; τῆς ̔Εβραίων βασιλικῆς ἑστίας ἐν μέσῳ, κατ' αὐτὸ δὴ τὸ σωτήριον μαρτύριον οἶκον πλουσίως κατεκόσμει. cap. ix. p. 630. 3 Vita Con. cap. xxxv. Af scribing the adornment of the Sep itself, he proceeds: Aiéßaive d'é παμμεγέθη χώρον, εἰς καθαρὸν ἀναπεπταμένον· ὃν δὴ λίθος λα κατεστρωμένος ἐπ ̓ ἐδάφους ἐ μακροῖς περιδρόμοις στοῶν ἐκ τρ που περιεχόμενον. is standing to this hour, it is not surely unreasonable to require some evidence that this Emperor did erect a Church over or around the Sepulchre; and if no such evidence can be adduced, however admirably the architecture may suit that period, the "startling fact" becomes pure fiction. The Bordeaux Pilgrim, coeval with Eusebius, meets with no better treatment at Mr Fergusson's hands. In passing from the part of Mount Sion occupied by the palace of David and the only one of seven synagogues that had escaped desolation, to the gate of Neapolis, the Pilgrim had Golgotha on the left and the Palace of Pilate on the right. Now, taking the Palace of David and the Synagogue to mean, as is most probable, the Sepulchre of David and the Conaculum, and supposing the Neapolis gate of the Itinerary to be Nablouse or Damascus gate (and it is not easy to believe that it can be any other), then the notice of the Pilgrim exactly falls in with the actual sites. But granting all that Mr Fergusson assumes, which is not a little, they cannot be brought to agree with his theory; for although he has the whole disposing of all the sites indicated, he is sadly perplexed about this aforesaid gate, suggesting that it may be the Nablouse or Damascus Gate, or the gate of the New City,-i.e. the New Jerusalem of Eusebius, at the South of the Haram,—or of the New City of Josephus, far to the North of the Temple! It were surely much better at once to cut the knot, and " hesitatingly to reject the testimony of an anonymous ⚫ Itinerarium Hierosol. p. 594. Ed. Wesseling. For these three irreconcilable the- un ories, the choice of which is left to the reader, see Essay, pp. 92, 122. "Quo teneam vultus mutantem Protea nodo?" 7 pilgrim'," as is afterwards proposed: it is at least a venient method of disposing of "puzzling" passag this or in any other author. Of St Cyril's testimony I find no distinct not Mr Fergusson's pages, though he is an important wi as he could certainly remember the recovery o Sepulchre under Constantine. He wrote at a time the traces of a garden were still visible aroun Sacred Cave, and the particulars which he menti the position and character of the Rocky Cave, ar fectly intelligible of the existing Tomb, but not at the Sakhrah. The position he describes, as "not the ancient walls, but within the outer wall whi afterwards added3;"-as I have endeavoured to was the case with the present site, but certain with the supposititious one. "The Sepulchre," h "consisted originally of a double cave, of whi exterior was cut away for the sake of the present ment." The ante-chapel of the actual Sepulchre, the Chapel of the Angel, constructed of solid m shews how naturally an outer cave would cover th chamber; but I cannot comprehend how there ever have been an exterior cave to the rough the great Mosk, the surface of which rock still almost in its natural state. We come now to Antoninus Martyr, who with no more respect than his predecessors fr μένει καὶ τὰ λέιψανα. 3 See the Commentary o 14. in Catech. XIV. ix. p. 20 4 Catechesis, XIV. ix. p. 80. Fergusson. The date assigned to this Itinerary is the latter part of the 6th, or the commencement of the 7th century. The distances are commonly given in the paces of the writer, a convenient, but not very satisfactory mode of measurement, adopted alike by ancient and modern travellers, the result of which is utterly delusive, unless the author remembers to inform us of the value of his paces in known measures, which Antoninus has neglected to do. Mr Fergusson, however, has done it for him, assuming each pace (gressus) to be five feet, (two feet more, at least, than can be allowed to a man of ordinary stature,) and then argues that the distances of the Itinerary do not correspond with those of the present sites. Besides which, the numerals, as is so usual, having undergone some change, he adopts those that best serve his purpose, without the slightest reference to the authority of MSS. or the value of versions. It will afterwards be seen that the measurements, loose as they are, are not inconsistent with the existing localities. There is however one distance not stated in paces by this writer, strangely suppressed by Mr Fergusson, which proves incontestably that he could not be writing of the imaginary Golgotha within the precincts of the Haram. Having described the altar of Abraham, by the side of the rock of Golgotha, where it is still shewn, Antoninus proceeds to notice a crypt or cavern hard by, where might be heard the sound of flowing waters. He adds, that if you cast in an apple, or any > Essay, p. 126-129. The Itinerary is given in the Acta Sanctorum Maii, Tom. 11. p. x. in Præfatt. &c. Tom. 1. p. 354, et seqq. and in Ugolini &c. |