EASTER IN JERUSALEM
At no time in the whole year is the Holy City so interesting as during
Easter Week. Jerusalem seems always filled to overflowing, but during
Holy Week it is crowded and jammed with people for days and nights on end
to a degree that it is impossible to describe.
I had the good fortune to be here during the most remarkable Easter that
Jerusalem ever had, when by a curious coincidence the calendars of the
various sects fixed the holy feasts on the same days, and the Jewish
Passover and the Mohammedan festival of Nebu Musa, or the pilgrimage from
the Mosque of Omar to the tomb of Moses, came during Easter Week. These
celebrations packed the narrow, vaulted, winding streets of Jerusalem
with a jam of crushed and crushing humanity. They filled the monasteries
which surround the walls with tens of thousands of pilgrims, and clothed
the Holy City in a greater variety of colours than were in the coat which
Jacob gave to his favourite son Joseph.
The walls of Jerusalem enclose an area of not more than three hundred
acres of ground, made up of hill and hollow, all filled with the
flat-roofed box-like houses. There is no regularity in the city. The
streets wind in and out and up and down, now becoming narrow, murky
tunnels, and now roofed with the blue sky of Palestine. They are so
narrow that through most of them no wheeled vehicle can go, and standing
in the middle of many of them you can touch the walls on both sides with
your outstretched hands. It is in such streets that the thousands move to
and fro at Easter.
[Illustration: Grandfather and grandson—and both are followers of the
ancient profession of begging. Under Turkish taxation the Palestinians
were reduced to such dire poverty that asking alms is considered no
disgrace]
[Illustration: Where Christ rested when carrying the Cross to Calvary
pilgrims now stop to pray in the Via Dolorosa]
I doubt whether there is a town of five hundred population in the United
States which is built upon three hundred acres of land. Here there are
over one hundred times that many people, and the Easter visitors swell
the number to as many more. During Holy Week the bulk of this mass of
humanity crowds into the section of the city surrounding the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre. There seem to be scores of thousands of worshippers
in an area less than that of a city block, and the two or three narrow
streets leading to the sanctuary become so crowded that Moslem soldiers
must be constantly on guard to keep them in order. The gay colours of
the clothes of the Orient turn the streets into a flowing mass of broken
rainbows, and the jabber of a score of languages makes a noise quite as
remarkable as that heard at the Tower of Babel.
Let me show you David Street as it looked to me the day after Palm
Sunday. David Street is the narrow way leading from Jaffa Gate down
into the city. It is about ten feet wide, and we go through it into the
Christian Street, which, by a second turn, brings us to the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre. At the top is the Tower of David, a square stone
structure one hundred feet high, a part of which was in existence before
the Christian Era. In the large square in front of this is the vegetable
market of Jerusalem, where pedlars from Bethlehem and elsewhere sit on
the stones with their baskets about them. Standing with our backs to the
tower, as far as we can see, we look upon a moving mass of pilgrims and
natives of all ages and colours and costumes.
Twenty different nations are represented in the faces which look toward
us. Here is an Ethiopian priest, in a tall black cap and a long black
gown, whose black eyes are set in features as shiny as oiled ebony. He
is one of the Abyssinian fathers and has his place in the ceremonies at
Easter. That mahogany-faced man in a yellow gown is a Persian, and the
fierce-looking Ishmaelite behind him, in a blanket of black-and-white
stripes, his bronzed face crowned by a yellow silk handkerchief, is a
Bedouin; he is of the Moslem faith, and is on his way to worship at the
mosque. Behind him comes a woman in a white sheet. Her features are
covered with a yellow gauze cloth with red leaves printed upon it; she is
the wife of a Mohammedan merchant, and her face is not to be seen outside
the harem. That slender, black-eyed girl, with the dark roses in her
cheeks, is the daughter of a Polish Jew. Her cap is black, and, like all
of her sisters, she wears a little silk flowered shawl.
Some of the prettiest women in the world are peddling vegetables about
you. As you note their complexions you can hardly realize that they live
under the fierce sun of the tropics. Their skins are as fair as the
cheeks of the girls of Dublin, and their regular features would make them
beauties in America. They wear high caps bound round with silver coins,
row after row rising up from their foreheads against a background of
black velvet.
Here is a crowd of Russian peasants. The honest bronzed faces of the
women look out under the brown handkerchiefs tied about their heads in
place of bonnets, and their short dresses of cheap cotton or wool come
half way down over their high-topped boots. The men have tall fur caps,
and their coats are made with skirts as full as the petticoats of the
women. The faces of both sexes are strong, with honesty and industry
showing in every line. They cross themselves as two Greek priests pass
them.
Let us push our way through the crowd. That tall soldier in red fez and
European uniform breaks the way for us. We pass good-natured Moslems and
Jews; we are jostled by Bedouin girls in gypsy dress, and by Bethlehem
shepherds clad in sheep-skins. Going by the market women squatting at
the turning, we follow the crowd and pass on to the entrance of one of
the tunnel-like bazaars. Leaving this, we turn into another arch at the
right, and diving through vaulted, twisting caves of stores, we go down
some steps, past the money-changers, who sit at the street corners with
little glass-covered boxes of gold and silver coins before them. Brushing
by dozens of beggars we arrive at last in the court in front of the great
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Now we are in the heart of the Jerusalem of
Easter.
This court is where the multitude stood to see the crucifixion of our
Lord. On the opposite side from the entrance, in a corner of the Church
of the Holy Sepulchre, is the Rock of Calvary, and the buildings which
surround it are the convents and monasteries of the various Christian
sects.
A stream of worshippers of all nations passes continuously among the
hordes of beggars and pedlars squatting on the stones. Here a young
Syrian is selling candles of all kinds and sizes, from tapers no bigger
than your little finger to great cylinders as thick as your arm, to
pilgrims who go to burn them before the altars within the sepulchre.
There is a rosary pedlar doing a rushing business. She is a Bethlehem
girl with two bushels of beads. They are made of olive wood and of the
pips of the olive itself, as well as of mother-of-pearl. All around you
are the characters of the Scriptures. Here is a dark-brown man whose
face reminds you of that of Judas in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.”
He is peddling little crosses of mother-of-pearl. Here is a woman with
a face as beautifully sad as that of Mary Magdalene, and there is an
old man selling pictures of the church dignitaries, whose patriarchal
beard and honest eyes make you think of Abraham. There are pedlars of
brass rings and glass bracelets from Hebron. The crier of drinks in bare
feet and blue gown, with his skin water bottle on his back, passes along
announcing his wares by clinking his two brass drinking-cups together.
The crowd moves on in a never-ending stream toward the door of the
church. It is the same, morning and evening, day in and day out.
Thousands upon thousands of footsteps have worn the flag stones to the
smoothness of marble, and on and on they come, year after year and
generation after generation. We enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
the church which these people believe covers the spot where Christ was
crucified and where His tomb is kept. It is the church that Constantine
built, the church for which the Crusaders fought, the shrine where the
religious of all Christendom would bow.
It is a vast building of yellow limestone rising out of and above a
jumble of houses in front of the court, with a dome a little smaller than
that of our Capitol at Washington. At one side a chapel rises above the
other parts of the structure to the second story, and the whole stands
upon hill and valley so that the chapel rests upon a rock high above the
level of the ground floor. This rock is supposed to be Calvary, upon
which stood the cross of Christ. Around the rotunda extends a series of
buildings, consisting of gaudily decorated churches and chapels of a
dozen different denominations and sects. A wide vaulted aisle runs around
between these and the rotunda into which they open.
Entering, we go through a high-arched door past a ledge cut into the wall
at the right where Mohammedan officers smoke long-stemmed water-pipes
while they sit with their legs crossed and direct the soldiers posted
here to keep the crowds in order. We go into a great square vestibule in
the centre of which, with rows of immense candles at its head and foot,
there lies under a long row of beautiful brass lamps a rectangular stone
of rose-coloured marble about eight feet long and four feet wide. It is
four inches above the floor, and around its edges burn the wax tapers of
worshippers. This is the Stone of Unction on which it is said the body of
the Lord was laid when it was anointed for burial.
Pilgrim after pilgrim walks forward and prostrates himself before it.
Each one gets down on his knees, and bows his head to the floor, then
leans over and kisses the stone. As we come closer we see that the
marble has been worn rough by the pressure of human lips. As we stand
and watch the earnest worshippers who pray before it, we cannot but be
impressed with their faith. An old peasant woman in black, who trembles
as she puts her long thin hands caressingly on the marble, bends over
and touches it again and again with her withered lips. A pretty boy of
ten crosses himself and kneels beside his Armenian mother while they go
through their devotions together. Another pilgrim lays his beads on the
slab, that they may be blessed by the contact, and crosses himself as he
rises. Now there kneels a family of Greeks, the men in the ballet-girl
costume of the Albanians, followed by a richly dressed lady who lays some
cakes of incense on the slab, and prays long before it. Behind her come
two Russian women with long strips of white linen in their hands. Waiting
until the crowd has partially thinned, they measure the stone with this
cloth, and cut it into strips of just the size of the slab. They rub
these strips over the stone, praying as they do so, for these are to be
their winding sheets, and they believe that, buried in them, they will
rest more easily in their graves. It is difficult to appreciate the
solemnity of the worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
There is superstition mixed with earnest, honest faith, as is so often
the case in the poor, weak human brain, even in those who lay claim to
greater intellectuality than these poor pilgrims.
These tens of thousands of pilgrims continue to pray as they rise from
the Stone of Unction, and then with bowed heads walk on into the great
rotunda of the church itself. Here in the very centre rises an oblong
marble structure about thirty feet high, twenty-five feet long, and
seventeen feet wide. The marble is yellow with age and the architecture
of the building is rude rather than artistic. This is the tomb of Christ.
It is more like a chapel than a tomb, and its fronts and sides are
covered with candles. Curious brass lamps, with glass globes of different
colours, hang like a frieze around its alabaster top, and between these
are oil paintings of scriptural scenes. In its front, in gold pillars
as tall as a man, are columns of painted wax each six inches thick and
twelve feet high. At the top of each of these a flame trembles.
At Easter there flows through its low door an endless stream of humanity.
We enter through a vestibule so dark that we can hardly see the features
of the people around us, and find the same kissing and praying going
on. Upon the column of marble about three feet high, standing in the
centre of the vestibule, thousands of kisses are pressed every day. Into
its top is set a piece of the stone which was rolled from the door of
Christ’s tomb. The stones walling the tomb are very thick, and the door
is so narrow that only one man can enter it at a time, and so low that
even boys bow their heads in going in. The space within is so small
that it will hold only four persons at once. It is dimly lighted with
candles, and a Greek priest in cap and gown is always on guard. At the
right of the room, set into the wall, there is a marble slab of purest
white resting upon another slab about four feet high and forming a box
or ledge. This box is supposed to have been the sepulchre of Christ, to
the people of the Christian world the holiest of the holy places of the
earth. The worshippers here pray and drop their tears, and men reverently
back their way out to give place to others. All of the Christian
sects claim a right to the tomb, and it is free of access to every
denomination.
The chapels of the various churches opening into the rotunda are
gorgeously decorated, and each sect has some relic of the Crucifixion
which people consider their especial charge and which they guard with
the greatest reverence. One chapel contains the stocks in which some of
the saints were imprisoned, and the chapel of the Syrians has the tomb
of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Arimathea. The Latins have the column
of the scourging. The Greeks, who have the finest chapel of all those
surrounding the rotunda, are first, both in wealth and power, in the
Church of the Sepulchre.
The Oriental Christians are very superstitious, and have implicit faith
in all the stories connected with the Sepulchre. They believe that the
ceremonies of Easter carry with them saving grace, and during this Holy
Week they are in a state of religious frenzy. The officers of the various
churches do all they can to increase this excitement, with the result
that there is a series of religious pageants in which each patriarch and
his bishops try to outshine the other churches in splendour and gorgeous
ceremonials. The competition is so great that at times the various sects
break out into unchristian fights, and once there was a riot in the Holy
Sepulchre in which more than three hundred pilgrims were suffocated or
trampled to death.
During the ceremonies of Easter, companies of soldiers are stationed in
the more holy places of Jerusalem, and several companies surround the
various patriarchs in their church exercises.
[Illustration: Waiting for the Holy Fire to come down from Heaven, a
“miracle” celebrated by the Greek Church during Easter Week. From the
candle mysteriously lighted inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre,
others are lighted in rapid succession]
[Illustration: The use of ladders to gather the olive crop has replaced
the old, wasteful method of beating the trees to shake off the fruit. The
olive grows best where its roots can find their way into the crevices of
a rock]
The celebrations begin with Palm Sunday. The patriarchs bless the palms
which are distributed by the thousands to the people. Every man, woman,
and child in Jerusalem seems to be waving palm branches, and the court
and Church of the Sepulchre are filled with green. The Greek Patriarch
and his bishops march three times around the grand aisle outside of the
rotunda of the church, bearing a cross of gold and preceded by clouds
of incense from urns carried by the bishops in gorgeous white brocaded
silk gowns covered with roses of red and gold. In the procession there
are a score or more of bishops with crosses of diamonds six inches long
upon their breasts, and with their long hair flowing from under their
high caps and down upon their shoulders. The Greek Patriarch, the central
figure of all of these celebrations and the head of the Greek Church in
Palestine and Arabia, carries the gold cross-like staff of his office. He
is dressed in the most gorgeous of gowns of cloth of gold and silver, and
upon his handsome gray head is his cap of high place—a great dome-like
tiara of silver and gold, fairly blazing with diamonds, emeralds, and
rubies, each of them worth a fortune.
Every day of Holy Week has its ceremonies, and between times the pilgrims
visit the spots made sacred by association with Christ’s life about
Jerusalem. They kiss the ground on which Stephen was stoned; they visit
the monastery which now stands on the floor of the house of Pontius
Pilate; they pray before Christ’s prison, and they hold services all
along the Via Dolorosa, kneeling and praying at the various stations.
The Easter festival itself is not so wonderful in comparison with the
services of the week. The day is ushered in with the ringing of bells.
The Russian pilgrims rush into each other’s arms and give the “kiss
of peace.” The Easter celebrations are more notable for the display
of fine vestments and gorgeous plate than for the excellence of the
music or unusual features in the ceremonies. The Latin churches hold
their services in front of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, the Latin
Patriarch officiating. There is a solemn high mass in front of the
Sepulchre, and after this the Patriarch and bishops, followed by the
crowd bearing lighted candles, march around the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre, chanting and offering up their prayers on the spots made
sacred by their association with the Saviour’s death and burial. The
ceremonies of the Greek Church come later, when all over the hills about
Jerusalem can be heard the voices of the people and the sound of the
bells pealing forth the song of the risen Saviour.