CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.

BY W. H. BARTLETT.

"THE monuments still extant within or without the city of Jerusalem," observes the facetious Fuller, are reducible to one of three ranks. 1. Certainly true, as the mountains compassing it, which are standards too great and too heavy for either time or warto remove. 2. Of a mixed nature; where the text is true, but superstition and fancy have commented on it. 3. Stark lies, without a rag of probability to hide their shame; where the believer is as foolish as the inventor impudent. We will bundle them together and let the reader sort them at his discretion; for it is as hard to fit the throats as to please the palates of men; and that will choke one man's belief which another will swallow as easily credible." An admirable analysis, and the concluding remark curiously borne out by the history of the different views successively entertained as to the genuineness of the site of the Holy Sepulchre. Received at first with implicit faith for ages, it was not until the middle of the last century that the voice of scepticism was openly heard to question it. Next followed Chateaubriand, a Catholic, with a most plausible defence, and Dr. Clarke, a Protestant, with an equally violent attack. In later years these parties were reversed; the Catholics taking a negative, and the Protestants an affirmative view of the question, till the arguments of Dr. Robinson in his "Biblical Researches" seemed by general consent to have demonstrably proved the falsity of the tradition. The Rev. Mr. Williams of Cambridge, ardently desirous of rescuing the early Church from the imputation of either error or imposture, defended the site anew; and from that time to the present, the controversy Las never slackened for a moment, and is now if possible more entangled than ever it was. So obscure, indeed, is the subject, so confident are the rival disputants, and so well balanced apparently their respective pretensions, that it is somewhat difficult in such a case not to avow one's self convinced, as Byron was, "by the last speaker." It would be cruel to inflict upon the general reader the details of this interminable controversy, and to give an intelligible outline of it without maps and plans would be impossible; notwithstanding, some principal points may be thus briefly stated.

church or oratory, and to the east of this a spacious basilica or church.

From this period the evidence of identity has been less traditional than monumental, no one hesitating to believe that the present church occupied the site of the original, until the very extraordinary theory lately started by Mr. Ferguson. According to this gentleman, the church of Constantine was not built here, but over the remarkable rock and cave in the "Haram generally supposed to be the enclosure of Solomon's temple, though the mosque is regarded by Mr. F. as having been beyond the limits both of the temple and of the city itself. Nor does he hesitate also to believe that this is the real Calvary; an opinion in which, we think, few will be found to agree with him. This round church of Constantine, as he says, still remains in the supposed "Mosque of Omar," but the basilica has been utterly destroyed-as, indeed, it is recorded to have been-by the impious visionary Hakem, although its portal, which he believes to be identical with the celebrated Golden Gate, is still standing. And it must indeed be admitted that there is very much in the architecture both of the Mosque and Golden Gate to justify the theory of their having been created by the Christians at this period. Mr. Ferguson further supposes that after the Saracens obtained possession of Jerusalem, they eventually deprived the Christians of the round church, which they covered with a dome, and ever after jealously excluded them from its precincts. In this dilemma, threatened with the destruction of that prestige which still continued to bring pilgrims to Jerusalem, they determined to erect another church, and substitute another sepulchre, instead of those whence they had been expelled. This is indeed a bold conjecture; yet, strange as it is, it is not altogether unsupported by at least plausible appearances, or parallel instances of imposture. The age was fertile in pious frauds, destitute of any spirit of inquiry, and we find other cases in Jerusalem in which tradition has shifted from its original seat in a manner equally surprising. Such, and so singular, are the various opinions entertained upon this very interesting but no less intricate subject.

struggles of the crusades took place. This siege by Godfrey de Bouillon is the first great incident in the history of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In this brief paper, I shall waive any further question as to the identity of the site, or of the transference of the building, remarking only that the There are few distinct notices of the sites of the cruci- destruction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulfixion and entombment of our Saviour in the gospels, and chre by Hakem, whether it stood here, or, as Mr. Ferbut one in the apostolic epistles. Nothing more is said guson supposes, in the Temple area, occurred long before on the subject than that those places were without the the siege of Jerusalem by Godfrey de Bouillon in 1099; city, and near to each other. Soon after the death of consequently, it is for the possession of the existing Christ, Jerusalem was destroyed by Titus, and long re-structure, built in this interval, that all the sanguinary mained in ruins. Subsequently, after an interval variously estimated at about fifty years, the Christians returned, and it would be surely but natural that they should seek out again and hold in reverence places consecrated by the most solemn associations. Probably they did so, but it may be reasonably doubted whether they may not have mistaken the true sites after the utter destruction of the city had either obliterated or disguised all but its imperishable landmarks. It is in the experience of every one how completely the appear ance of a district is changed by new streets and buildings, or by the pulling down of the old, and how difficult and often impossible it is to recognise a locality with which we were formerly so familiar. Here is the first break in the chain of identity, yet it hardly admits of a doubt that certain places were traditionally regarded as the true sites by the Christians at the time of Constantine, when, as is well known, Christianity became the established religion of the Roman empire, and it was the wish of that emperor to rescue the holy places from the neglect, or even profanation, to which they had been exposed by his Pagan predecessors. According to Eusebius, the contemporary historian of these transactions, the site had been covered over with earth, upon the removal of which it was discovered, and Constantine built over the sepulchre itself a round

VOL. VI.

In 1094, Peter the Hermit performed his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and being distressed at the cruelties to which both the resident Christians as well as pilgrims were exposed, stirred up on his return to Europe that mighty agitation which upheaved all Christendom, and rolled back the advancing tide of Mahommedan conquest. The first rude and ill-organised body of crusaders for the most part perished miserably; and it was not till after a series of the most perilous adventures that the remnant of the gallant band of Godfrey de Bouillon sat down, on the 7th June, 1099, before the walls of the Holy City. In the mean time the Turks, whose cruelties had originated the crusade, had been expelled from the city by Afdhal, vizier of the Fatamite Khalif, and its defence was entrusted to Emir Iftikar-ed-Dauleh, who had made every preparation in his power. It was first proposed by the Mahommedans to put all the Christians in the city to the sword, and to root up the very rock of the Holy Sepulchre; but fearful of reprisals, they contented themselves with expelling all able-bodied men. The city was now invested at every practicable point where not defended, as Josephus described it when besieged by Titus, by "impassable valleys." And now com

G

menced the "forty days of calamity and anguish," | frey and his brother Eustachius from the upper story of as Gibbon calls them, in which the siege of Jerusalem their tower, revived the dying embers of zeal. The was fulfilled. For five days the assault was kept up; all soldiers returned with vigour to the action, and the last the instruments of the ancient warfare were incessantly and successful struggle commenced. The valiant brothers plied; on the fifth day a tremendous onset took place, at the head of a chosen band, carried the wall, and the but, unfurnished with ladders and machines necessary besieged fled. It was on a Friday afternoon at three for scaling the walls, the valour of the Christian knights o'clock that the city was taken; and the chroniclers do was vainly wasted. At length some timber was brought not fail to remark, that it seemed to be divinely ordered, on the backs of camels from a considerable distance, that at the very hour and on the self-same day of the and the seasonable arrival of some Genoese vessels at week on which our Lord suffered for the salvation of the the Port of Jaffa, which hardly escaped the Egyptian world. fleet, revived the flagging spirits of the besiegers.

They came prepared," to use the language of Mr. Williams, from whom we have already borrowed, "with all necessary implements, and Raymond, whose funds alone were unexhausted, took them into his employ. "In four weeks the preparations were completed, and the day fixed for the assault. But in order to secure its success, it was resolved first to propitiate the Almighty by a general humiliation, and a reconciliation of the differences and animosities which existed between the princes and people. In long but peaceful array, with bare feet, the clergy in their priestly vestments chanting solemn litanies, they first proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where they were edified by sermons from Peter the Hermit and Anculphus, an eloquent friend of Count Robert of Normandy, exhorting them to endurance and other christian graces. They then visited the Church of Zion, where several were wounded from the walls, on which the enemy exposed and insulted the sacred symbol of our salvation. All was now ready.

"Alas! the soldiers of the Cross were little mindful of His precepts and the example of His dying prayer for his murderers. Humanity shudders, and religion revolts at the frightful carnage committed under His banner by these inhuman butchers, flushed with victory, thirsting for blood, and wholly devoted to its terrible work. The two generals, advancing from opposite quarters, met in the middle of the city, leaving the ensanguined streets behind them so thickly strewn with the mangled corpses of their victims as to be almost impassable, the miserable fugitives being intercepted between the two detachments. Such as escaped immediate death fled to the court of the Temple, and a few to the castle of David. The former became the next object of attack. Tancred was the first to enter; and while his soldiers were busy with carnage he was occupied with rapine, and pillaged the vast riches of the mosque of Omar. The arrival of the other generals consummated the tragedy. The marble platform of the sacred building was deluged ancle-deep with blood, and the mangled limbs of the slaughtered floated on its crimson tide, and the grim aspect of the conquerors, smeared from head to foot with human gore, was not less dreadful than the havoc in which they were engaged. Ten thousand of the enemy are said to have fallen in this confined space; the number slain in the city was not to be estimated.

"At dawn of day the assault commenced: the soldiers of the cross, animated by one spirit, proposed to themselves one of two alternatives-victory or martyrdom. Even the aged and the sick, women and children, took part in the fight. The machines were moved towards the walls under cover of a discharge of stones from engines and slings, but a deep fosse before the outworks impeded the operations of the besiegers, and the stout defence of the Moslems occasioned them considerable loss. The fosse was with difficulty filled, the castles advanced to the outworks, and a deadly struggle ensued. The shock of the assailants' missiles was broken by sacks of straw and chaff, or beams and ropes sus-having laid aside their weapons, washed their hands and pended from the walls. The castles were fired by means of brands attached to darts composed of sulphur, pitch, and oil, with other combustibles, and the flames were scarcely extinguished by streams of precious water. Huge masses of stone hurled from the battlements crushed the legs of the engines, and the soldiers by whom they were manned were thrown headlong to the earth. Meanwhile, the catapults on the wall discharged incessant showers of shot with wonderful precision and effect.

"Night parted the combatants; but though exhausted with the toils of the day, neither party could devote it to repose. The crusaders, apprehensive for the safety of their engines, prepared with so much labour, and on which their success depended, watched anxiously for the morning to renew the assault, while the garrison, no less fearful of a night attack, paced the walls and guarded the gates, and the elders passing through the streets of the city, exhorted and encouraged the people to vigilance and bravery.

"At length the anxious night, worse than the toilsome day, gave place to the dawn of the memorable 15th of July. The battle raged as on the preceding day, and in addition to the usual arts of war, the Moslems called to their aid the charms of sorcery. One very large and destructive engine of the Franks had done terrible execution; the incantations of two witches were to disarm it of its power while engaged with their spells on the wall, three girls of their company were struck by a mass from the same engine, and fell lifeless from the walls. At length, after seven hours' hard fighting, the courage of the dispirited besiegers began to flag, when a timely apparition on Mount Olivet, distinctly seen by Duke God

"The transition in the events of this day fills, perhaps, the most striking page in the history of enthusiasm. When the arms of the conquerors were wearied, and their swords blunt, with slaughter; when guards had been stationed in the towers and at the gates, as a precaution against a sudden attack, the whole multitude changed their garments, and with bare feet, and groans and tears, the outward indications of a humble spirit and truly contrite heart, mingled with hymns and spiritual songs of praise, proceeded to the venerable places which their Saviour had deigned to sanctify and adorn by His presence, but especially to the scenes of His Passion and Resurrection, kissing and embracing each sacred memorial with indescribable fervour of devotion."

Such was the extraordinary scene that occurred at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Godfrey de Bouillon was now chosen the first Latin king of Jerusalem. Twenty canons were appointed to the church, while the Mosque of Omar was also appropriated to Christian worship under the title of "Templum Domini," the Temple of the Lord. Jerusalem was in the possession of the Latin knights for a period of eighty-eight years, when Saladin, three months after the battle of Tiberias, appeared before its walls. The consternation of the Christians was at first intense, their defence at length so desperate that even after having formed a breach in the wall, Saladin was induced to accept their offer of capitulation. At the price of ten gold byzants for every man, five for women, and one for children under seven years of age, the inhabitants were suffered to depart; a large number who were unable to obtain the ransom were reduced to slavery; but it is impossible not to contrast the mild and merciful proceedings of Saladin, with the atrocious butcheries of the soldiers of the Cross. Some time after the death of Saladin the walls of Jerusalem were entirely dismantled by his successors, and, by another revolution, the Franks again had possession of the city, on condition that they should not rebuild its walls; they began to do so, however, but were at length finally expelled. The

present walls of the city were built by the Ottoman | and unresolved; they waited for the troubling of the Sultan Suleiman, A.D. 1542.

Under the Ottoman sultans the different bodies of Christian monks have been allowed to retain possession of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and ever since the struggles among themselves for supremacy have been, if less sanguinary, at least no less obstinate, than even those of the Christians and Mahommedans. The old animosity between the Latin and Greek Churches is here brought into a focus, and its expression at times so violent, that the Turks themselves are obliged to keep the peace. "A Franciscan friar," says Mr. Wolff in his journal, "told us with great delight that he had given a sound bastinado to the Greek papas in the most Holy Sepulchre." Some English travellers were also witness to a desperate encounter between the rival bodies within the sacred walls. "The devil aids the Greeks," said the defeated Latins, "and you, Englishmen, who are our guests, stand by and see us beaten without offering to assist us?" "How can you expect it from us," was the reply, "when, if we are killed in your behalf, you will deny us Christian burial?" Such are the poor persecuted friars, over whom Chateaubriand has endeavoured to throw so poetical, so pious a halo! We shall now proceed to give a brief description of the building itself, and of the strange scenes of which it is annually witness. Of the principal front our engraving will convey so complete an idea, that verbal description is superfluous; the only remark we will make here is, that in the colums in the foreground, on the left hand, are manifest vestiges of prior construction, and that the dome is that over the round church which contains the sepulchre. On entering the portal, which is kept by a Turk, who demands a small sum from every visitor or pilgrim, the first object in the vestibule is the very stone on which the body of our Saviour was anointed, after his crucifixion; a few paces more, and we stand under the central dome of the church, replacing that destroyed by fire at the commencement of this century, not without strong suspicion of foul play on the part of the Armenian monks, disappointed in their struggle with the Greeks. In the centre of the building is the sepulchre itself, little resembling, however, the small gothic edifice formerly existing there, and certainly so very unlike what we should have expected to find, as to induce an involuntary scepticism.

Eusebius described the original as "a cave, evidently hewn out, a rock standing erect and alone on a level land, having only one cavern within it," which,' as Mr. Ferguson justly observes, 'while eminently descriptive of the singular rock with the cave under the dome of the Mosque of Omar, is certainly inapplicable to the present appearance of the tomb before us, which does not seem to be cut in the rock at all, but simply built up to contain a sarcophagus of white marble.' "Yet," according to the same Eusebius, "much labour was required to uncover the rock from the obstructions with which impious men had sought to bury it." This building is divided into two small sanctuaries, in the first of which is the stone on which the angels sat when they replied to the mourning women in the second the 'Sepulchre' or rather the sarcophagus itself. But these difficulties either occur not to the mass, or at least do not trouble their unhesitating convictions. "The floor of the rotunda," observes Carne, who was at Jerusalem at the time of the pilgrimage at Easter, "was to the observer of the human heart a rich and hourly treat." Here the pilgrims of all ranks stood or knelt, trembled or were bowed utterly, their eyes fixed intently on the Sepulchre; "the covering of all hearts was taken away, the rich and the poor were alike subdued as the infant; the proud man and the mighty man were as the moth; some beat their breasts, some wept passionately, others unconsciously, as the tears fall sometimes in sleep; as if their past life was opening like a long and dim reverie; many leaned on their staff, with clasped hands and pale faces, as if in pain

waters.'"

But the most amazing scene, the triumph of fanaticism, and the disgrace of Christianity, is the “miracle" of the "descent of the holy fire" at Easter, to operate which is the exclusive privilege of the Greeks. Among the many descriptions of this ceremony, incomparably the best is one published many years ago in the New Monthly Magazine, which we shall accordingly quote.

"On looking down from the gallery the whole circle of the building seemed paved with living heads, through which the central sacellum, or Chapel of the Sepulchre, rose up with a sort of grotesque magnificence; around it was left a passage of about three feet, for the principal performers in these sacred orgies. Five or six parties started off in succession, and ran, or danced, or staggered through their several exercises. All classes were now engaged, rich and poor, old and young. Boys were seen carrying the old, and the old carrying boys upon their naked shoulders. When fatigue obliged them to cede, at last, their place to others, they again formed into phalanx, and proceeded four or five abreast, in a sharp trot, to the Greek church, which is in the immediate vicinity of the Holy Sepulchre. Here a new scene of uproar ensued: no calculation had been made for the return of their predecessors, and parties meeting parties, like contending streams, they clashed against each other, and gave a great deal of trouble and some amusement, to their Turkish brethren. As the invocation went on,-for all this was meant to be a kind of prayer,— their piety became more intemperate and unruly loud and hideous Kyrie Eleisons-yells reiterated and applauded, in various languages, by the populace, burst forth upon every side around us. They leaped on each other's backs, tore down each other's dresses, and with their cheeks burning, and their eyes glaring with the frenzy, called out for the fire, the fire, to descend and save them! The pavement was soon covered with caps, and shreds of shirts and mantles; but, like the votaries of Baal, they called in vain-the fire had not yet descended. They were now joined by a reinforcement of Copts, who were received with shouts, and soon followed by the drums and cymbals of the Abyssinians. Next appeared the Arabs; their naked breasts, and tanned and savage faces, and uncouth screams of devotion, added grievously to the enthusiasm. At last, when the tumult seemed to have reached its climax, the Turkish governor, taking compassion on the multitude, suddenly entered with his suite, and took his seat by the side of the Kady, at the farther end of the Latin gallery. The moment his turban appeared above the balustrade, every one knew that heaven had relented; joy beamed in every countenance; the crowd and rush were excessive; every one tended to the orifice on the right side of the sepulchre. The Kady at last at the suggestion of the governor gave the signal with his rod.

"The preliminary ritual was now gone through, and the Archbishop having taken off his cope and mitre, and now and then glancing up at the Kady, broke the seals, and without any attendants entered the Chapel of the Sepulchre: this was the important moment of suspense, at least for the pilgrims; but those who know what a good understanding there is between them, might have already seen the miracle in the countenance of the governor. In a minute, or something less, the person who stood at the orifice already mentioned, drew forth a large torch or staff, with a grated receptacle at the end, blazing with the clearest fire. The fire was communicated in a similar manner, but a few seconds later, from the entry of the sepulchre, and in rear to the small attached chapel of the Copts. It is quite impossible to describe, with adequate effect, the scene which immediately followed; there were eight thousand pilgrims in the church; one universal shout rose simultaneously from the whole congregation.