The annual ceremony of the Kindling of the Holy Fire took place May
4 in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. In Turkish days
it was the custom to provide a guard of not less than 600 soldiers in
order to keep the peace between the Greeks and Armenians, as disorders
almost invariably occurred. On this occasion there was no guard of
any kind other than the ordinary police, and the ceremony took place
without any sign of disturbance.
The ceremony of the Holy Fire--at which, it is held, flame
comes by a miracle from heaven to kindle the lamps of the Holy
Sepulchre--apparently began in the ninth century, and was formerly
attended by leading representatives of all the churches. These have
long ago withdrawn from it, and it is now attended by members of the
Greek and Armenian Churches, mostly ignorant pilgrims of Eastern
Christendom. Many enlightened members of the Greek Church discouraged
the ceremony, as the vast crowds of frenzied people attending it had to
be kept in some sort of order by Turkish soldiers. At the appointed
time a bright flame of burning wood appears through a hole in the
Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre; the rush to obtain this new fire is
overwhelming, and it is handed on from taper to taper until thousands
of lights appear. A mounted horseman takes a lighted torch to convey
the sacred fire to the lamp of the Greek Church in the convent at
Bethlehem. In 1834 hundreds of lives were lost in the violent pressure
of the unruly crowd.