hurry at last to the Holy Sepulchre. It is in the opposite direction
to that of the Dominicans, almost in the heart of Jerusalem through
narrow winding streets between walls as old as the Crusades, without
windows and without roofs. On the wet pavements and beneath a still
dark sky, circulate Oriental costumes,--Turks, Bedouins, or Jews, and
women draped like phantoms, Musulmans beneath dark veils and Christians
beneath white veils.
The city has remained Saracen. Vaguely I notice that we pass an
Oriental bazaar, where the stalls are occupied by merchants in
turbans; in the shadow of the roofed streets there slowly passes
a string of enormous camels, that obliges us to enter one of the
doors. Now, we must get out of the way for a peculiar and long defile
of Russian women, all sexagenarians at least, who walk rapidly
leaning on walking-sticks; old faded dresses, old parasols, old
_touloupes_ of fur, with faces of fatigue and suffering framed
in black handkerchiefs; a black and sorrowful _ensemble_ in the
midst of this Orient of colour. They walk rapidly with a movement at
once excited and exhausted, all hustling along without seeing anything,
like somnambulists, with anæstheticized eyes wide open in a celestial
dream. And hundreds of moujiks, having the same look of ecstasy follow
them; all of them old, sordid, with long grey beards and long grey hair
escaping from their felt hats; on their breasts many medals, indicating
that they are old soldiers. Having entered the holy city yesterday,
they are returning from their first visit to that sacred spot where I
am going in my turn; poor pilgrims who come here by the thousand, on
foot, sleeping out of doors in the rain or the snow, suffering with
hunger and dying on the way.
In proportion as you approach, the Oriental objects in the stalls give
place to objects of an obscure Christian piety: thousands of chaplets,
crosses, religious lamps, and images or icons. And the crowd is denser,
and other pilgrims, old moujiks and old matouchkas plant themselves to
buy cheap little wooden rosaries and cheap little crucifixes for two
sous, which they will carry from here as relics to be considered as
sacred for ever.
Finally, in an old and defaced wall resembling a rock, there opens a
rude door, very low and narrow, and, by a series of descending steps,
you arrive before a place jutting out from the high sombre walls, in
front of the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.
At this spot, it is customary to take off your hat, the very moment the
Holy Sepulchre appears; every one passes bareheaded even if he is only
going by on his way about Jerusalem. It is thronged with poor people
who beg by singing; pilgrims who pray; sellers of crosses and chaplets
who have their little booths on the ground upon the old and venerable
flag-stones. Upon the pavement and among the steps there rise the still
uprooted socles of columns that formally supported the basilicas, and
that were razed, like those of St. Stephen, from far back and doubtful
periods; everything is a collection of rubbish in this city which has
been subjected to twenty sieges and which every kind of fanaticism has
sacked.
The high walls, of reddish brown stone, forming the sides of this
place, are convents or chapels--and it is said fortresses also. In the
background, higher and more sombre than anything else rises that worn
out and broken mass, which is the façade of the Holy Sepulchre and
which has assumed the appearance and irregularities of a large rock; it
has two enormous doors of the Twelfth Century framed with singularly
archaic ornaments; one of them is walled up; the other is wide open
permitting you to see thousands of little flames in the shadowy
interior. Songs, cries and discordant lamentations, lugubrious to hear,
escape through it with the perfume of incense.
Passing through the door, you find yourself in the venerable shadow
of a kind of vestibule that reveals magnificent depths beyond, where
innumerable lamps are burning. Some Turkish guards, armed as if for
a massacre, occupy this entrance in a military fashion; seated like
sovereigns on a large divan, they watch the devotees passing this
place, which is always, from their point of view, the opprobrium of
Musulman Jerusalem and which the most savage of them have never ceased
to call El Komamah (ordure).
Oh! the unexpected and imperishable impression when you enter here for
the first time. A maze of sombre sanctuaries, of all periods and of all
aspects connected by openings, doors and superb columns,--and also by
little gloomy doors, air-holes and cavernous hollowings. Some of these
are elevated like high tribunals, where you perceive, in the remote
distance, groups of women in long veils; others are subterranean, where
you are jostled by shadows, between walls of rock that have remained
intact, dripping and black.--All this, in a twilight where a few rays
of light fall and accentuate the surrounding darkness; all this, starry
with an infinite number of little flames in lamps of silver and gold,
hanging from the vaults by the thousand.--And everywhere a crowd moving
about confusedly as if at Babel, or quite stationary, seeming to be
grouped by nationalities around the golden tabernacles where somebody
is officiating.
Psalmody, lamentations and joyful songs fill the high vaults, or echo
in the sepulchral depths below; the nasal melopœia of the Greeks cut
through by the howlings of the Copts. And, in all these voices, an
exaltation of tears and prayers which produce dissonance and which
unite them; the whole effect becoming I know not what strange thing
that makes this place like a great wail from mankind and the supreme
cry of distress before death.
The rotunda with a very high cupola, which you enter first and which
allows you to divine between its columns the obscure chaos of the
other sanctuaries, is occupied in the centre by the great marble kiosk,
of a luxury that is half barbaric and overcharged with silver lamps,
that encloses the stone of the sepulchre. All around this very sacred
kiosk, the crowd surges or stands still: on the one side hundreds of
moujiks and matouchkas are kneeling on the flag-stones; on the other,
the women of Jerusalem, standing up, in long white veils--groups of
ancient virgins, one would, say, in the dreamlike shadow; elsewhere
Abyssinians and turbaned Arabs prostrated with foreheads to the earth;
Turks with sabre in hand; people of all communions and all languages.
You do not stay long in this habitation of the Holy Sepulchre, which
is really the very heart of this mass of basilicas and chapels, people
pass by one by one; lowering your head you enter it by a very little
door of marble carved and festooned; the sepulchre is within, encased
in marble and surrounded by gold icons and gold lamps. There entered
at the same time as I did a Russian soldier, a poor old woman in rags,
an Oriental woman in rich brocade; all kissed the cover of the tomb
and wept. And others followed, and others eternally follow, to touch,
embrace and wet with tears these same stones.
There is no plan of unity in this collection of churches and chapels
which crowd close around this very holy kiosk; there are some large
ones that are marvellously sumptuous and some little ones that are
humble and primitive, crumbling away with age in these sinister nooks
dug out of the natural rock and dark as night. And, here and there,
the rock of Calvary, left bare, appears in the midst of richness and
archaic gold work. The contrast is strange between so many collected
treasures,--icons of gold, crosses of gold and lamps of gold,--and the
rags of the pilgrims and the decay of the walls and the pillars, worn,
corroded, shapeless and greasy from the rubbing of so many human
bodies.
All the altars and all the different confessionals are so mingled here
that it results in a continual displacing of priests and processions;
they cleave through the crowds, carrying remonstrances and preceded
by armed Janizaries who knock upon the resonant flag-stones with the
hilts of their halberds. Make room! here are some Latins who pass in
golden chasubles. Make room again! here is the Syrian bishop with a
long white beard under a black _cagoule_, who issues from his
little subterranean chapel. Then here are some Greeks still Byzantine
in adornment, and Abyssinians with black faces. Quickly, quickly they
walk by in their sumptuous vestments whilst before them the silver
censers swung by children knock against the crowd which is thrown
into confusion and separates. In this human sea there is a continuous
rumbling and an incessant noise of psalmody and sacred bells. Almost
everywhere it is so dark that in order to walk about, it is necessary
to have a candle in your hand, and, beneath the high columns and in the
dark corridors thousands of little flames follow or cross each other.
Men praying in a loud voice, weeping and sobbing, run from one chapel
to another, here to kiss the rock where the Cross was planted, there
to prostrate themselves where Mary and Magdalen wept; some priests,
crouching in the shadows, beckon to you to lead you through the
funereal little doors in the holes of the tombs; old women with wild
eyes and tears running down their cheeks come up from the subterranean
blackness to kiss the stones of the sepulchres.
In black darkness, you descend to the chapel of Saint-Helena, by a wide
stairway of about thirty steps, worn, broken, dangerous as falling into
ruin and bordered with squatting spectres. In passing, our candles
illumined the vague motionless creatures, of the same colour as the
side of the rock, who are afflicted beggars, lunatics covered with
ulcers, sinister all of them, with their chins in their hands and long
hair falling over their faces.--Among these ghastly creatures, there is
a blind young man, with magnificent blonde curls enveloping him like a
mantle, who is as beautiful as the Christ whom he resembles.
Down below, the chapel of Saint-Helena, after that night, with its
two rows of phantoms that you have passed through, is illumined by
daylight, whose rays arrive pale and bluish through the loop-holes
of the vault. Assuredly this is one of the strangest places in all
that medley that calls itself the Holy Sepulchre; it is there that
one experiences in the most distressing manner, the sentiment of the
terrible Past.
It is silent when I arrive and it is empty, beneath the half dead gaze
of those phantoms that guard the stairway at the entrance; you hear
with difficulty the indistinct noise of bells and chants from above.
Behind the altar, still another stairway, bordered with the same
long-haired individuals, descends lower into a still darker night.
You would think this a heathen temple. Four enormous, dumpy pillars, of
a primitive Byzantine type and exceedingly heavy, sustain the surbased
cupola, from which hang ostrich eggs and a thousand uncouth pendants.
Remains of painting on the walls indicating saints with nimbuses of
gold in naïve and stiff attitudes are being effaced by the dampness and
ancient dust. Everything is decaying through neglect with the sweat of
water and saltpetre.
From the depths of the lower subterranean vaults suddenly ascend some
Abyssinian priests, who suggest the ancient Magi-Kings, issuing from
the bowels of the earth; black faces under large golden tiaras formed
like turbans, long robes of cloth of gold sprinkled with imaginary
red and blue flowers. Quickly, quickly, with that kind of excited
haste which is universal here, they cross the crypts of Saint-Helena
and mount towards the other sanctuaries by the big stairway in
ruins,--illuminated at first by the light falling from the loop-holes
of the vault, splendidly archaic in their golden robes in the midst of
the gnomes squatting against the walls,--then, they suddenly disappear
above in the distant shadows.
Some distance away, in the sanctuaries at the entrance and near the
kiosk of the Sepulchre, the rock of Calvary rises: it supports two
chapels to which you ascend by twenty stone steps and which are the
veritable place of prostrations and sobs for the crowd.
From the peristyle of these chapels, like an elevated balcony the view
commands a confused mass of tabernacles, a maze of churches, where the
hypnotized crowd moves about. The most splendid of the two is that of
the Greeks; under a nimbus of silver, as resplendent as a rainbow,
stand out in human grandeur the pale images of the three crucified
ones, Christ and the two thieves; the walls are hidden by icons of
silver, gold and precious stones. The altar is erected on the very
place of the crucifixion; under the retable a silver lattice lets you
see in the black rock the hole where the Cross was planted,--and it is
there that you walk on your knees, wetting these sombre stones with
tears and kisses, whilst a lulling noise of chants and prayers ascends
incessantly from the churches below.
And, for two thousand years, here it has ever been thus; under divers
forms, in the different basilicas, with interruptions of sieges,
battles, and massacres, but with renewals still more passionate and
universal, here the same concert of prayers, the same great chorus
of desperate supplications or triumphant thanksgiving have always
resounded.
They are somewhat idolatrous, these adorations, for those who say: “God
is a Spirit and those who adore Him should adore Him in spirit and in
truth.” But they are so human, they respond so well to our instincts
and our misery. Surely, the first Christians in the purely spiritual
flight of their faith, and when the teaching of the master was still
fresh in their souls, did not encumber themselves with magnificence,
symbols and images. Above all it was not terrestrial memories--the
place of a martyr and an empty sepulchre--that preoccupied them; their
Redeemer, they did not dream of seeking Him here, as they had seen
Him detached forever from transitory things and hovering above in the
serene light. But we--all of us, people of the West and North--are
some centuries nearer to simple barbarism than the ancient society out
of which the early Christians arose; in the Middle Ages, when the new
faith penetrated our forests, it overshadowed a thousand primitive
beliefs; let us acknowledge it is a small minority that is freed from
those accumulated traditions to come again to an evangelical cult in
spirit and in truth. And, moreover, when faith is extinguished in our
modern souls it is still by that so human veneration for places and
memories, that unbelievers like myself are affected with the touching
regret for the lost Saviour.
Oh! Christ, for whom all these crowds gather and weep; Christ, for whom
this poor old woman, prostrated near me, licks the pavement, leaning
against the flags her miserable heart whilst weeping delicious tears
of hope; Christ, who holds me, me also, in this place, like her, in
a vague, yet very sweet meditation. Oh if He was merely one of our
brothers in suffering, now vanished in death, may His memory be adored,
even so, for His long illusion of love, meeting again, and eternity.
And may this place be also blessed, this unique and strange place which
is called the Holy Sepulchre--even contestable, even fictitious if you
please--but whither, for fifteen centuries afflicted multitudes have
run, where hardened hearts have melted like the snows, and where now my
eyes are ready to veil themselves in a last rapture of prayer--very
illogical I know--but ineffable and infinite.
In the evening, at nightfall, after I have wandered for a long while
in the melancholy little streets, through the Saracen city, where the
crowns of fire of the Ramadan begin to flame around the minarets of the
mosques,--an attraction draws me slowly towards the Holy Sepulchre.
There reigns here a different darkness to that of the daytime; the rays
of white light have ceased to descend by the loop-holes of the vaults;
but the lamps that are lighted are more numerous, lamps of silver and
lamps of gold, and coloured lamps studding the darkness with little
flames of blue, red, or white. A kind of calm rests in this labyrinth
of high vaults, like a rest after the exhausting ardour of the day.
The noises are nothing more than the buzzing of prayers uttered very
low and upon the knee, only the murmurings in the sonorous caves,
where dominate the poor raucous voices of the moujiks, and, every
now and then their deep coughs. It is nearly time to close the doors
and the crowd has melted away; but some groups of people, prostrated
in the shadows with faces to the ground, are still kissing the holy
flag-stones.
LA GRANDE CHARTREUSE
WILLIAM BECKFORD
I rested a moment, and looking against the stout oaken gate, which
closed up the entrance to this unknown region, felt at my heart a
certain awe, that brought to my mind the sacred terror of those in
ancient days going to be admitted into the Eleusinian mysteries.
My guide gave two knocks; after a solemn pause, the gate was slowly
opened, and all our horses having passed through it, was again
carefully closed.
I now found myself in a narrow dell, surrounded on every side by peaks
of the mountains, rising almost beyond my sight, and shelving downwards
till their bases were hidden by the foam and spray of the water, over
which hung a thousand withered and distorted trees. The rocks seemed
crowding upon me, and, by their particular situation, threatened
to obstruct every ray of light; but, notwithstanding the menacing
appearance of the prospect, I still kept following my guide up a craggy
ascent, partly hewn through a rock, and bordered by the trunks of
ancient fir-trees, which formed a fantastic barrier, till we came to a
dreary and exposed promontory, impending directly over the dell.
The woods are here clothed with darkness, and the torrents rushing
with additional violence are lost in the gloom of the caverns below;
every object, as I looked downwards from my path, that hung midway
between the base and the summit of the cliff, was horrid and woeful.
The channel of the torrent sunk deep amidst frightful crags, and the
pale willows and wreathed roots spreading over it, answered my ideas
of those dismal abodes, where, according to the Druidical mythology,
the ghosts of conquered warriors were bound. I shivered whilst I was
regarding these regions of desolation, and, quickly lifting up my eyes
to vary the scene, I perceived a range of whitish cliffs glistening
with the light of the sun, to emerge from these melancholy forests.
On a fragment that projected over the chasm, and concealed for a moment
its terrors, I saw a cross, on which was written _Via coeli_. The
cliffs being the heaven to which I now aspired, we deserted the edge
of the precipice, and, ascending, came to a retired nook of the rocks,
in which several copious rills had worn irregular grottoes. Here we
reposed an instant, and were enlivened with a few sunbeams, piercing
the thickets and gilding the waters that bubbled from the rock, over
which hung another cross, inscribed with this short sentence, which
the situation rendered wonderfully pathetic, _O Spes unica!_ the
fervent exclamation of some wretch disgusted with the world whose only
consolation was found in this retirement.
We quitted this solitary cross to enter a thick forest of beech trees,
that screened in some measure the precipices on which they grew,
catching, however, every instant terrifying glimpses of the torrent
below. Streams gushed from every crevice in the cliffs, and falling
over the mossy roots and branches of the beech, hastened to join the
great torrent, athwart which I every now and then remarked certain
tottering bridges, and sometimes could distinguish a Carthusian
crossing over to his hermitage, that just peeped above the woody
labyrinths on the opposite shore.
It was now about ten o’clock, and my guide assured me I should soon
discover the convent. Upon this information I took new courage, and
continued my route on the edge of the rocks, till we struck into
another gloomy grove. After turning about it for some time, we entered
again into the glare of daylight, and saw a green valley skirted by
ridges of cliffs and sweeps of wood before us. Towards the farther end
of this inclosure, on a gentle acclivity, rose the revered turrets
of the Carthusians, which extend in a long line on the brow of the
hill; beyond them a woody amphitheatre majestically presents itself,
terminated by spires of rock and promontories lost among the clouds.
The roar of the torrent was now but faintly distinguishable, and all
the scenes of horror and confusion I had passed were succeeded by
a sacred and profound calm. I traversed the valley with a thousand
sensations I despair of describing, and stood before the gate of the
convent with as much awe as some novice or candidate newly arrived to
solicit the holy retirement of the order.
As admittance is more readily granted to the English than to almost any
other nation, it was not long before the gates opened, and whilst the
porter ordered our horses to the stable, we entered a court watered by
two fountains and built round with lofty edifices characterized by a
noble simplicity.
The interior portal opening discovered an arched aisle, extending
till the perspective nearly met, along which windows, but scantily
distributed between the pilasters, admitted a pale solemn light, just
sufficient to distinguish the objects with a picturesque uncertainty.
We had scarcely set our feet on the pavement when the monks began
to issue from an arch, about half-way down, and passing in a long
succession from their chapel, bowed reverently with much humility and
meekness, and dispersed in silence, leaving one of their body alone in
the aisle.
The father Coadjutor (for he only remained) advanced towards us with
great courtesy, and welcomed us in a manner which gave me far more
pleasure than all the frivolous salutations and effected greetings so
common in the world below. After asking us a few indifferent questions,
he called one of the lay brothers, who live in the convent under less
severe restrictions than the fathers whom they serve, and ordering him
to prepare our apartment, conducted us to a large square hall with
casement windows, and, what was more comfortable, an enormous chimney
whose hospitable hearth blazed with a fire of dry aromatic fir, on each
side of which were two doors that communicated with the neat little
cells destined for our bed-chambers.
Whilst he was placing us round the fire, a ceremony by no means
unimportant in the cold climate of these upper regions, a bell rang
which summoned him to prayers. After charging the lay brother to set
before us the best fare their desert afforded, he retired, and left us
at full liberty to examine our chambers.
The weather lowered, and the casements permitted very little light to
enter the apartment: but on the other side it was amply enlivened by
the gleams of the fire, that spread all over a certain comfortable air,
which even sunshine but rarely diffuses. Whilst the showers descended
with great violence, the lay brother and another of his companions
were placing an oval table, very neatly carved and covered with the
finest linen in the middle of the hall; and, before we had examined a
number of portraits which were hung in all the panels of the wainscot,
they called us to a dinner widely different from what might have been
expected in so dreary a situation. Our attendant friar was helping
us to some Burgundy, of the happiest growth and vintage, when the
Coadjutor returned, accompanied by two other fathers, the Secretary and
Procurator, whom he presented to us. You would have been both charmed
and surprised with the cheerful resignation that appeared in their
countenances, and with the easy turn of their conversation.
In the course of our conversation they asked me innumerable questions
about England, where formerly, they said, many monasteries had belonged
to their order; and principally that of Witham, which they had learnt
to be now in my possession.