was rainy, following a rainy night. The rough-paved open alleys were
gutters of mud, the streets under arches (for there are shops in
subterranean constructions and old vaulted passages) were damper and
darker than usual; the whole city, with its narrow lanes, and thick
walls, and no sewers, was clammy and uncomfortable. We loitered for a
time in the dark and grave-like gold bazaars, where there is but a poor
display of attractions. Pilgrims from all lands were sopping about in
the streets; conspicuous among them were Persians wearing high,
conical frieze hats, and short-legged, big-calfed Russian peasant
women,—animated meal-bags.
We walked across to the Zion Gate, and mounting the city wall there—an
uneven and somewhat broken, but sightly promenade—followed it round to
its junction with the Temple wall, and to Robinson's Arch. Underneath
the wall by Zion Gate dwell, in low stone huts and burrows, a
considerable number of lepers, who form a horrid community by
themselves. These poor creatures, with toeless feet and fingerless
hands, came out of their dens and assailed us with piteous cries for
charity. What could be done? It was impossible to give to all. The
little we threw them they fought for, and the unsuccessful followed us
with whetted eagerness. We could do nothing but flee, and we climbed the
wall and ran down it, leaving Demetrius behind as a rear-guard. I
should have had more pity for them if they had not exhibited so
much maliciousness. They knew their power, and brought all their
loathsomeness after us, thinking that we would be forced to buy their
retreat. Two hideous old women followed us a long distance, and
when they became convinced that further howling and whining would be
fruitless, they suddenly changed tone and cursed us with healthful
vigor; having cursed us, they hobbled home to roost.
This part of the wall crosses what was once the Tyrophoan Valley, which
is now pretty much filled up; it ran between Mount Moriah, on which
the Temple stood, and Mount Zion. It was spanned in ancient times by a
bridge some three hundred and fifty feet long, resting on stone arches
whose piers must have been from one hundred to two hundred feet in
height; this connected the Temple platform with the top of the steep
side of Zion. It was on the Temple end of this bridge that Titus stood
and held parley with the Jews who refused to surrender Zion after the
loss of Moriah.
The exact locality of this interesting bridge was discovered by Dr.
Robinson. Just north of the southwest corner of the Harem wall (that
is, the Temple or Mount Moriah wall) he noticed three courses of huge
projecting stones, which upon careful inspection proved to be the
segment of an arch. The spring of the arch is so plainly to be seen now
that it is a wonder it remained so long unknown.
The Wailing Place of the Jews is on the west side of the Temple
enclosure, a little to the north of this arch; it is in a long, narrow
court formed by the walls of modern houses and the huge blocks of stone
of this part of the original wall. These stones are no doubt as old as
Solomon's Temple, and the Jews can here touch the very walls of the
platform of that sacred edifice.
Every Friday a remnant of the children of Israel comes here to weep and
wail. They bring their Scriptures, and leaning against the honey-combed
stone, facing it, read the Lamentations and the Psalms, in a wailing
voice, and occasionally cry aloud in a chorus of lamentation, weeping,
blowing their long noses with blue cotton handkerchiefs, and kissing
the stones. We were told that the smoothness of the stones in spots was
owing to centuries of osculation. The men stand together at one part of
the wall and the women at another. There were not more than twenty Jews
present as actors in the solemn ceremony the day we visited the spot,
and they did not wail much, merely reading the Scriptures in a mumbling
voice and swaying their bodies backward and forward. Still they formed
picturesque and even pathetic groups: venerable old men with long white
beards and hooked noses, clad in rags and shreds and patches in all
degrees of decadence; lank creatures of the tribe of Benjamin with the
corkscrew curls; and skinny old women shaking with weeping, real or
assumed.
Very likely these wailers were as poor and wretched as they appeared
to be, and their tears were the natural outcome of their grief over the
ruin of the Temple nearly two thousand years ago. I should be the last
one to doubt their enjoyment of this weekly bitter misery. But the
demonstration had somewhat the appearance of a set and show performance;
while it was going on, a shrewd Israelite went about with a box to
collect mites from the spectators. There were many more travellers.
there to see the wailing than there were Jews to wail. This also lent
an unfavorable aspect to the scene. I myself felt that if this were
genuine, I had no business to be there with my undisguised curiosity,
and if it were not genuine, it was the poorest spectacle that Jerusalem
offers to the tourist. Cook's party was there in force, this being
one of the things promised in the contract; and I soon found myself more
interested in Cook's pilgrims than in the others.
The Scripture read and wailed this day was the fifty-first Psalm of
David. If you turn to it (you may have already discovered that the
covert purpose of these desultory notes is to compel you to read your
Bible), you will see that it expresses David's penitence in the matter
of Bathsheba.
III.—HOLY PLACES OP THE HOLY CITY.
THE sojourner in Jerusalem falls into the habit of dropping in at the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre nearly every afternoon. It is the centre
of attraction. There the pilgrims all resort; there one sees, in a day,
many races, and the costumes of strange and distant peoples; there one
sees the various worship of the many Christian sects. There are always
processions making the round of the holy places, sect following
sect, with swinging censers, each fumigating away the effect of its
predecessor.
The central body of the church, answering to the nave, as the rotunda,
which contains the Holy Sepulchre, answers to choir and apse, is the
Greek chapel, and the most magnificent in the building. The portion of
the church set apart to the Latins, opening also out of the rotunda,
is merely a small chapel. The Armenians have still more contracted
accommodations, and the poor Copts enjoy a mere closet, but it is in a
sacred spot, being attached to the west end of the sepulchre itself.
On the western side of the rotunda we passed through the bare and
apparently uncared-for chapel of the Syrians, and entered, through a low
door, into a small grotto hewn in the rock. Lighted candles revealed to
us some tombs, little pits cut in the rock, two in the side-wall and two
in the floor. We had a guide who knew every sacred spot in the city,
a man who never failed to satisfy the curiosity of the most credulous
tourist.
“Whose tombs are these?” we asked.
“That is the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that beside it is the
tomb of Nicodemus.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know? You ask me how I know. Have n't I always lived in
Jerusalem? I was born here.”
“Then perhaps you can tell us, if this tomb belonged to Joseph of
Arimathea and this to Nicodemus, whose is this third one?”
“O yes, that other,” replied the guide, with only a moment's
paralysis of his invention, “that is the tomb of Arimathea himself.”
One afternoon at four, service was going on in the Greek chapel, which
shone with silver and blazed with tapers, and was crowded with pilgrims,
principally Russians of both sexes, many of whom had made a painful
pilgrimage of more than two thousand miles on foot merely to prostrate
themselves in this revered place. A Russian bishop and a priest, in
the resplendent robes of their office, were intoning the service
responsively. In the very centre of this chapel is a round hole covered
with a grating, and tapers are generally burning about it. All the
pilgrims kneeled there, and kissed the grating and adored the hole. I
had the curiosity to push my way through the throng in order to see the
object of devotion, but I could discover nothing. It is, however, an
important spot: it is the centre of the earth; though why Christians
should worship the centre of the earth I do not know. The Armenians have
in their chapel also a spot that they say is the real centre; that makes
three that we know of, for everybody understands that there is one in
the Kaaba at Mecca.
We sat down upon a stone bench near the entrance of the chapel, where we
could observe the passing streams of people, and were greatly diverted
by a blithe and comical beggar who had stationed himself on the pavement
there to intercept the Greek charity of the worshippers when they passed
into the rotunda. He was a diminutive man with distorted limbs; he
wore a peaked red cap, and dragged himself over the pavement, or rather
skipped and flopped about on it like a devil-fish on land. Never was
seen in a beggar such vivacity and imperturbable good-humor, with so
much deviltry in his dancing eyes.
As we appeared to him to occupy a neutral position as to him and his
victims, he soon took us into his confidence and let us see his mode
of operations. He said (to our guide) that he was a Greek from
Damascus,—O yes, a Christian, a pilgrim, who always came down here at
this season, which was his harvest-time. He hoped (with a wicked wink)
that his devotion would be rewarded.
It was very entertaining to see him watch the people coming out, and
select his victims, whom he would indicate to us by a motion of his head
as he hopped towards them. He appeared to rely more upon the poor and
simple than upon the rich, and he was more successful with the former.
But he rarely, such was his insight, made a mistake. Whoever gave him
anything he thanked with the utmost empressement of manner; then he
crossed himself, and turned around and winked at us, his confederates.
When an elegantly dressed lady dropped the smallest of copper coins into
his cap, he let us know his opinion of her by a significant gesture
and a shrug of his shoulders. But no matter from whom he received it,
whenever he added a penny to his store the rascal chirped and laughed
and caressed himself. He was in the way of being trodden under foot by
the crowd; but his agility was extraordinary, and I should not have been
surprised at any moment if he had vaulted over the heads of the throng
and disappeared. If he failed to attract the attention of an eligible
pilgrim, he did not hesitate to give the skirt of his elect a jerk, for
which rudeness he would at once apologize with an indescribable grimace
and a joke.
When the crowd had passed, he slid himself into a corner, by a motion
such as that with which a fish suddenly darts to one side, and set
himself to empty his pocket into his cap and count his plunder, tossing
the pieces into the air and catching them with a chuckle, crossing
himself and hugging himself by turns. He had four francs and a half.
When he had finished counting his money he put it in a bag, and for a
moment his face assumed a grave and business-like expression. We thought
he would depart without demanding anything of us. But we were mistaken;
he had something in view that he no doubt felt would insure him a
liberal backsheesh. Wriggling near to us, he set his face into an
expression of demure humility, held out his cap, and said, in English,
each word falling from his lips as distinctly and unnaturally as if he
had been a wooden articulating machine,—
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest.”
The rascal's impiety lessened the charity which our intimacy with him
had intended, but he appeared entirely content, chirped, saluted with
gravity, and, with a flop, was gone from our sight.
At the moment, a procession of Franciscan monks swept by, chanting in
rich bass voices, and followed, as usual, by Latin pilgrims, making
the daily round of the holy places; after they had disappeared we could
still hear their voices and catch now and again the glimmer of their
tapers in the vast dark spaces.
Opposite the place where we were sitting is the Chapel of the
Apparition, a room not much more than twenty feet square; it is the
Latin chapel, and besides its contiguity to the sepulchre has some
specialties of its own. The chapel is probably eight hundred years old.
In the centre of the pavement is the spot upon which our Lord stood when
he appeared to the Virgin after the resurrection; near it a slab marks
the place where the three crosses were laid after they were dug up by
Helena, and where the one on which our Lord was crucified was identified
by the miracle that it worked in healing a sick man. South of the altar
is a niche in the wall, now covered over, but a round hole is left
in the covering. I saw pilgrims thrust a long stick into this hole,
withdraw it, and kiss the end. The stick had touched a fragment of the
porphyry column to which the Saviour was bound when he was scourged.
In the semicircle at the east end of the nave are several interesting
places: the prison where Christ was confined before his execution, a
chapel dedicated to the centurion who pierced the side of our Lord, and
the spot on which the vestments were divided. From thence we descend,
by a long flight of steps partly hewn in the rock, to a rude, crypt-like
chapel, in the heavy early Byzantine style, a damp, cheerless place,
called the Chapel of Helena. At the east end of it another flight of
steps leads down into what was formerly a cistern, but is now called the
Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. Here the cross was found, and at
one side of the steps stands the marble chair in which the mother of
Constantine sat while she superintended the digging. Nothing is wanting
that the most credulous pilgrim could wish to see; that is, nothing is
wanting in spots where things were. This chapel belongs to the Latins;
that of Helena to the Greeks; the Abyssinian convent is above both of
them.
On the south side of the church, near the entrance, is a dark room
called the Chapel of Adam, in which there is never more light than a
feeble taper can give. I groped my way into it often, in the hope of
finding something; perhaps it is purposely involved in an obscurity
typical of the origin of mankind. There is a tradition that Adam
was buried on Golgotha, but the only tomb in this chapel is that of
Melchizedek! The chapel formerly contained that of Godfrey de Bouillon,
elected the first king of Jerusalem in 1099, and of Baldwin, his
brother. We were shown the two-handed sword of Godfrey, with which he
clove a Saracen lengthwise into two equal parts, a genuine relic of a
heroic and barbarous age. At the end of this chapel a glimmering light
lets us see through a grating a crack in the rock made by the earthquake
at the crucifixion.
The gloom of this mysterious chapel, which is haunted by the spectre
of that dim shadow of unreality, Melchizedek, prepared us to ascend to
Golgotha, above it. The chapels of Golgotha are supported partly upon
a rock which rises fifteen feet above the pavement of the church. The
first is that of the Elevation of the Cross, and belongs to the Greeks.
Under the altar at the east end is a hole in the marble which is over
the hole in the rock in which the cross stood; on either side of it
are the holes of the crosses of the two thieves. The altar is rich with
silver and gold and jewels. The chamber, when we entered it, was blazing
with light, and Latin monks were performing their adorations, with
chanting and swinging of incense, before the altar. A Greek priest stood
at one side, watching them, and there was plain contempt in his face.
The Greek priests are not wanting in fanaticism, but they never seem to
me to possess the faith of the Latin branch of the Catholic church. When
the Latins had gone, the Greek took us behind the altar, and showed us
another earthquake-rent in the rock.
Adjoining this chapel is the Latin Chapel of the Crucifixion, marking
the spot where Christ was nailed to the cross; from that we looked
through a window into an exterior room dedicated to the Sorrowing
Virgin, where she stood and beheld the crucifixion. Both these latter
rooms do not rest upon the rock, but upon artificial vaults, and of
course can mark the spots commemorated by them only in space.
Perhaps this sensation of being in the air, and of having no
standing-place even for tradition, added something to the strange
feeling that took possession of me; a mingled feeling that was no more
terror than is the apprehension that one experiences at a theatre from
the manufactured thunder behind the scenes. I suppose it arose
from cross currents meeting in the mind, the thought of the awful
significance of the events here represented and the sight of this
theatrical representation. The dreadful name, Golgotha, the gloom of
this part of the building,—a sort of mount of darkness, with its rent
rock and preternatural shadow,—the blazing contrast of the chapel
where the cross stood with the dark passages about it, the chanting and
flashing lights of pilgrims ever coming and going, the neighborhood of
the sepulchre itself, were well calculated to awaken an imagination the
least sensitive. And, so susceptible is the mind to the influence of
that mental electricity—if there is no better name for it—which
proceeds from a mass of minds having one thought (and is sometimes
called public opinion), be it true or false, that whatever one may
believe about the real location of the Holy Sepulchre, he cannot
witness, unmoved, the vast throng of pilgrims to these shrines,
representing as they do every section of the civilized and of the
uncivilized world into which a belief in the cross has penetrated. The
undoubted sincerity of the majority of the pilgrims who worship here
makes us for the time forget the hundred inventions which so often
allure and as often misdirect that worship.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre offers at all times a great spectacle,
and one always novel, in the striking ceremonies and the people who
assist at them. One of the most extraordinary, that of the Holy Fire, at
the Greek Easter, which is three weeks later than the Roman, and which
has been so often described, we did not see. I am not sure that we saw
even all the thirty-seven holy places and objects in the church. It may
not be unprofitable to set down those I can recall. They are,—
The Stone of Unction.
The spot where the Virgin Mary stood when the body of our Lord was
anointed.
The Holy Sepulchre.
The stone on which the angel sat.
The tombs of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
The well of Helena.
The stone marking the spot where Christ in the form of a gardener
appeared to Mary Magdalene.
The spot where Mary Magdalene stood.
The spot where our Lord appeared to the Virgin after his resurrection.
The place where the true cross, discovered by Helena, was laid, and
identified by a miracle.
The fragment of the Column of Flagellation.
The prison of our Lord.
The “Bonds of Christ,” a stone with two holes in it.
The place where the title on the cross was preserved.
The place of the division of the vestments.
The centre of the earth (Greek).
The centre of the earth (Armenian).
The altar of the centurion who pierced the body of Christ.
The altar of the penitent thief.
The Chapel of Helena.
The chair in which Helena sat when the cross was found.
The spot where the cross was found.
The Chapel of the Mocking, with a fragment of the column upon which
Jesus sat when they crowned him with thorns.
The Chapel of the Elevation of the Cross.
The spot where the cross stood.
The spots where the crosses of the thieves stood.
The rent rock near the cross.
The spot where Christ was nailed to the cross.
The spot where the Virgin stood during the crucifixion.
The Chapel of Adam.
The tomb of Melchizedek.
The rent rock in the Chapel of Adam.
The spots where the tombs of Godfrey and Baldwin stood.
No, we did not see them all. Besides, there used to be a piece of the
cross in the Latin chapel; but the Armenians are accused of purloining
it. All travellers, I suppose, have seen the celebrated Iron Crown of
Lombardy, which is kept in the church at Monza, near Milan. It is all of
gold except the inner band, which is made of a nail of the cross brought
from Jerusalem by Helena. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has not all
the relics it might have, but it is as rich in them as any church of its
age.
A place in Jerusalem almost as interesting to Christians as the Holy
Sepulchre, and more interesting to antiquarians, is the Harem, or Temple
area, with its ancient substructions and its resplendent Saracenic
architecture. It is largely an open place, green with grass; it is clean
and wholesome, and the sun lies lovingly on it. There is no part of the
city where the traveller would so like to wander at will, to sit and
muse, to dream away the day on the walls overhanging the valley of the
Kidron, to recall at leisure all the wonderful story of its splendor and
its disaster. But admission to the area is had only by special permit.
Therefore the ordinary tourist goes not so much as he desires to the
site of the Temple that Solomon built, and of the porch where Jesus
walked and talked with his disciples. When he does go, he feels that he
treads upon firm historical ground.
We walked down the gutter (called street) of David; we did not enter
the Harem area by the Bab es-Silsileh (Gate of the Chain), but
turned northward and went in by the Bab el-Katanm (Gate of the
Cotton-Merchants), which is identified with the Beautiful Gate of the
Temple. Both these gates have twisted columns and are graceful examples
of Saracenic architecture. As soon as we entered the gate the splendor
of the area burst upon us; we passed instantly out of the sordid city
into a green plain, out of which—it could have been by a magic wand
only—had sprung the most charming creations in stone: minarets, domes,
colonnades, cloisters, pavilions, columns of all orders, horseshoe
arches and pointed arches, every joyous architectural thought expressed
in shining marble and brilliant color.
Our dragoman, Abd-el-Atti, did the honors of the place with the air of
proprietorship. For the first time in the Holy City he felt quite at
home, and appeared to be on the same terms with the Temple area that
he is with the tombs of the Pharaohs. The Christian antiquities are too
much for him, but his elastic mind expands readily to all the marvels
of the Moslem situation. The Moslems, indeed, consider that they have
a much better right to the Temple than the Christians, and Abd-el-Atti
acted as our cicerone in the precincts with all the delight of a boy and
with the enthusiasm of faith. It was not unpleasant to him, either,
to have us see that he was treated with consideration by the mosque
attendants and ulemas, and that he was well known and could pass readily
into the most reserved places. He had said his prayers that morning, at
twelve, in this mosque, a privilege only second to that of praying in
the mosque at Mecca, and was in high spirits, as one who had (if the
expression is allowable) got a little ahead in the matter of devotion.
Let me give in a few words, without any qualifications of doubt, what
seem to be the well-ascertained facts about this area. It is at present
a level piece of ground (in the nature of a platform, since it is
sustained on all sides by walls), a quadrilateral with its sides not
quite parallel, about fifteen hundred feet long by one thousand feet
broad. The northern third of it was covered by the Fortress of Antonia,
an ancient palace and fortress, rebuilt with great splendor by Herod.
The small remains of it in the northeast corner are now barracks.
This level piece of ground is nearly all artificial, either filled in or
built up on arches. The original ground (Mount Moriah) was a rocky hill,
the summit of which was the rock about which there has been so much
controversy. Near the centre of this ground, and upon a broad raised
platform, paved with marble, stands the celebrated mosque Kubbet
es-Sukhrah, “The Dome of the Rock.” It is built over the Sacred
Rock.