hand-book says it had this repute as early as the second century. In
the year 327 the mother of Constantine built a church over it, and
this basilica still stands, and is the oldest specimen of Christian
architecture in existence, except perhaps the lower church of St.
Clement at Rome. It is the oldest basilica above ground retaining its
perfect ancient form. The main part of the church consists of a nave
and four aisles, separated by four rows of Corinthian marble columns,
tradition says, taken from the temple of Solomon. The walls were once
adorned with mosaics, but only fragments of them remain; the roof is
decayed and leaky, the pavement is broken. This part of the church is
wholly neglected, because it belongs to the several sects in common, and
is merely the arena for an occasional fight. The choir is separated from
the nave by a wall, and is divided into two chapels, one of the Greeks,
the other of the Armenians. The Grotto of the Nativity is underneath
these chapels, and each sect has a separate staircase of descent to it.
The Latin chapel is on the north side of this choir, and it also has a
stairway to the subterranean apartments.
Making an effort to believe that the stable of the inn in which Christ
was born was a small subterranean cave cut in the solid rock, we
descended a winding flight of stairs from the Latin chapel, with a monk
for our guide, and entered a labyrinth from which we did not emerge
until we reached the place of the nativity, and ascended into the Greek
chapel above it. We walked between glistening walls of rock, illuminated
by oil-lamps here and there, and in our exploration of the gloomy
passages and chambers, encountered shrines, pictures, and tombs of the
sainted. We saw, or were told that we saw, the spot to which St. Joseph
retired at the moment of the nativity, and also the place where the
twenty thousand children who were murdered by the order of
Herod—a ghastly subject so well improved by the painters of the
Renaissance—are buried. But there was one chamber, or rather vault,
that we entered with genuine emotion. This was the cell of Jerome,
hermit and scholar, whose writings have gained him the title of Father
of the Church.
At the close of the fourth century Bethlehem was chiefly famous as the
retreat of this holy student, and the fame of his learning and sanctity
drew to it from distant lands many faithful women, who renounced the
world and its pleasures, and were content to sit at his feet and learn
the way of life. Among those who resigned, and, for his sake and the
cross, despised, the allurements and honors of the Roman world, was the
devout Paula, a Roman matron who traced her origin from Agamemnon, and
numbered the Scipios and Gracchi among her ancestors, while her husband,
Joxotius, deduced a no less royal lineage from Æneas. Her wealth
was sufficient to support the dignity of such a descent; among her
possessions, an item in her rent-roll, was the city of Nicopolis, which
Augustus built as a monument of the victory of Actium. By the advice and
in the company of Jerome, her spiritual guide, she abandoned Rome and
all her vast estates, and even her infant son, and retired to the holy
village of Bethlehem. The great Jerome, who wrote her biography, and
transmitted the story of her virtues to the most distant ages, bestowed
upon her the singular title of the Mother-in-law of God! She was buried
here, and we look upon her tomb with scarcely less interest than that
of Jerome himself, who also rests in this thrice holy ground. At the
beginning of the fifth century, when the Goths sacked Rome, a crowd of
the noble and the rich, escaping with nothing saved from the wreck but
life and honor, attracted also by the reputation of Jerome, appeared as
beggars in the streets of this humble village. No doubt they thronged to
the cell of the venerable father.
There is, I suppose, no doubt that this is the study in which he
composed many of his more important treatises. It is a vaulted chamber,
about twenty feet square by nine feet high. There is in Venice a
picture of the study of Jerome, painted by Carpaccio, which represents
a delightful apartment; the saint is seen in his study, in a rich
négligé robe; at the side of his desk are musical instruments,
music-stands, and sheets of music, as if he were accustomed to give
soirées; on the chimney-piece are Greek vases and other objects of
virtu, and in the middle of the room is a poodle-dog of the most worldly
and useless of the canine breed. The artist should have seen the real
study of the hermit,—a grim, unornamented vault, in which he passed
his days in mortifications of the body, hearing always ringing in his
ears, in his disordered mental and physical condition, the last trump of
judgment.
We passed, groping our way along in this religious cellar, through a
winding, narrow passage in the rock, some twenty-five feet long, and
came into the place of places, the very Chapel of the Nativity. In this
low vault, thirty-eight feet long and eleven feet wide, hewn in the
rock, is an altar at one end. Before this altar—and we can see
everything with distinctness, for sixteen silver lamps are burning about
it—there is a marble slab in the pavement into which is let a silver
star, with this sentence round it: Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus
natus est. The guardian of this sacred spot was a Turkish soldier, who
stood there with his gun and fixed bayonet, an attitude which experience
has taught him is necessary to keep the peace among the Christians who
meet here. The altar is without furniture, and is draped by each sect
which uses it in turn. Near by is the chapel of the “manger,” but
the manger in which Christ was laid is in the church of Santa Maria
Maggiore in Rome.
There is in Bethlehem another ancient cave which is almost as famous as
that of the Nativity; it is called the Milk Grotto, and during all ages
of the Church a most marvellous virtue has attached to it; fragments of
the stone have been, and still continue to be, broken off and sent into
all Christian countries; women also make pilgrimages to it in faith. The
grotto is on the edge of the town overlooking the eastern ravines, and
is arranged as a show-place. In our walk thither a stately Bedawee, as
by accident, fell into our company, and acted as our cicerone. He was
desirous that we should know that he also was a man of the world and of
travel, and rated at its proper value this little corner of the earth.
He had served in the French army and taken part in many battles, and had
been in Paris and seen the tomb of the great emperor,—ah, there was a
man! As to this grotto, they say that the Virgin used to send to it for
milk,—many think so. As for him, he was a soldier, and did not much
give his mind to such things.
This grotto is an excavation in the chalky rock, and might be a very
good place to store milk, but for the popular prejudice in cities
against chalk and water. We entered it through the court of a private
house, and the damsel who admitted us also assured us that the Virgin
procured milk from it. The tradition is that the Virgin and Child were
concealed here for a time before the flight into Egypt; and ever since
then its stone has the miraculous power of increasing the flow of
the maternal breast. The early fathers encouraged this and the like
superstitions in the docile minds of their fair converts, and themselves
testified to the efficacy of this remarkable stone. These superstitions
belong rather to the Orient than to any form of religion. There is a
famous spring at Assiout in Egypt which was for centuries much resorted
to by ladies who desired offspring; and the Arabs on the Upper Nile
to-day, who wish for an heir male, resort to a plant which grows in
the remote desert, rare and difficult to find, the leaves of which are
“good for boys.” This grotto scarcely repays the visit, except for
the view one obtains of the wild country below it. When we bade good by
to the courtly Arab, we had too much delicacy to offer money to such
a gentleman and a soldier of the empire; a delicacy not shared by him,
however, for he let no false modesty hinder a request for a little
backsheesh for tobacco.
On our return, and at some distance from the gate, we diverged into a
lane, and sought, in a rocky field, the traditional well whose waters
David longed for when he was in the Cave of Adullam,—“O that one
would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by
the gate!” Howbeit, when the three mighty men had broken through the
Philistine guards and procured him the water, David would not drink that
which was brought at such a sacrifice. Two very comely Bethlehem girls
hastened at our approach to draw water from the well and gave us to
drink, with all the freedom of Oriental hospitality, in which there is
always an expectation of backsheesh. The water is at any rate very good,
and there is no reason why these pretty girls should not turn an honest
penny upon the strength of David's thirst, whether this be the
well whose water he desired or not. We were only too thankful that no
miraculous property is attributed to its waters. As we returned, we had
the evening light upon the gray walls and towers of the city, and were
able to invest it with something of its historical dignity.
The next excursion that we made from Jerusalem was so different from the
one to Bethlehem, that by way of contrast I put them together. It was to
the convent of Mar Saba, which lies in the wilderness towards the Dead
Sea, about two hours and a half from the city.
In those good old days, when piety was measured by frugality in the use
of the bath, when the holy fathers praised most those hermits who washed
least, when it might perhaps be the boast of more than one virgin,
devoted to the ascetic life, that she had lived fifty-eight years during
which water had touched neither her hands, her face, her feet, nor any
part of her body, Palestine was, after Egypt, the favorite resort of
the fanatical, the unfortunate, and the lazy, who, gathered into
communities, or dwelling in solitary caves, offered to the barbarian
world a spectacle of superstition and abasement under the name of
Christianity. But of the swarm of hermits and monks who begged in the
cities and burrowed in the caves of the Holy Land in the fifth century,
no one may perhaps be spoken of with more respect than St. Sabas, who,
besides a reputation for sanctity, has left that of manliness and a
virile ability, which his self-mortifications did not extirpate. And of
all the monasteries of that period, that of Mar Saba is the only one in
Judæa which has preserved almost unbroken the type of that time. St.
Sabas was a Cappadocian who came to Palestine in search of a permanent
retreat, savage enough to satisfy his austere soul. He found it in a
cave in one of the wildest gorges in this most desolate of lands, a
ravine which opens into the mountains from the brook Kidron. The fame of
his zeal and piety attracted thousands to his neighborhood, so that at
one time there were almost as many hermits roosting about in the rocks
near him as there are inhabitants in the city of Jerusalem now. He was
once enabled to lead an army of monks to that city and chastise the
Monophysite heretics. His cave in the steep side of a rocky precipice
became the nucleus of his convent, which grew around it and attached
itself to the face of the rock as best it could. For the convent of Mar
Saba is not a building, nor a collection of buildings, so much as it is
a group of nests attached to the side of a precipice.
It was a bright Saturday afternoon that a young divinity student and I,
taking the volatile Demetrius with us for interpreter, rode out of
St. Stephen's gate, into Jehoshaphat, past the gray field of Jewish
graves, down through Tophet and the wild ravine of the Kidron.
It is unpleasant to interrupt the prosperous start of a pilgrimage by a
trifling incident, but at our first descent and the slightest tension on
the bridle-reins of my horse, they parted from the bit. This accident,
which might be serious in other lands, is of the sort that is
anticipated here, and I may say assured, by the forethought of the
owners of saddle-horses. Upon dismounting with as much haste as dignity,
I discovered that the reins had been fastened to the bit by a single
rotten string of cotton. Luckily the horse I rode was not an animal to
take advantage of the weakness of his toggery. He was a Syrian horse,
a light sorrel, and had no one of the good points of a horse except the
name and general shape. His walk was slow and reluctant, his trot a high
and non-progressive jolt, his gallop a large up-and-down agitation. To
his bridle of strings and shreds no martingale was attached; no horse in
Syria is subject to that restraint. When I pull the bit he sticks up
his nose; when I switch him he kicks. When I hold him in, he won't go;
when I let him loose, he goes on his nose. I dismount and look at him
with curiosity; I wonder all the journey what his forte is, but I never
discover. I conclude that he is like the emperor Honorius, whom Gibbon
stigmatizes as “without passions, and consequently without talents.”
Yet he was not so bad as the roads, and perhaps no horse would do much
better on these stony and broken foot-paths. This horse is not a model
(for anything but a clothes-horse), but from my observation I think that
great injustice has been done to Syrian horses by travellers, who have
only themselves to blame for accidents which bring the horses into
disrepute. Travellers are thrown from these steeds; it is a daily
occurrence; we heard continually that somebody had a fall from his horse
on his way to the Jordan, or to Mar Saba, or to Nablous, and was laid
up, and it was always in consequence of a vicious brute. The fact is
that excellent ministers of the gospel and doctors of divinity and
students of the same, who have never in their lives been on the back of
a horse in any other land, seem to think when they come here that the
holy air of Palestine will transform them into accomplished horsemen; or
perhaps they are emulous of Elisha, that they may go to heaven by means
of a fiery steed.
For a while we had the company of the singing brook Kidron, flowing
clear over the stones; then we left the ravine and wound over rocky
steeps, which afforded us fine views of broken hills and interlacing
ridges, and when we again reached the valley the brook had disappeared
in the thirsty ground. The road is strewn, not paved, with stones,
and in many places hardly practicable for horses. Occasionally we
encountered flocks of goats and of long-wooled sheep feeding on the
scant grass of the hills, and tended by boys in the coarse brown and
striped garments of the country, which give a state-prison aspect to
most of the inhabitants,—but there was no other life, and no trees
offer relief to the hard landscape. But the way was now and then bright
with flowers, thickly carpeted with scarlet anemones, the Star of
Bethlehem, and tiny dandelions. Two hours from the city we passed
several camps of Bedaween, their brown low camel's-hair tents pitched
among the rocks and scarcely distinguishable in the sombre landscape.
About the tents were grouped camels and donkeys, and from them issued
and pursued us begging boys and girls. A lazy Bedawee appeared here
and there with a long gun, and we could imagine that this gloomy region
might be unsafe after nightfall; but no danger ever seems possible in
such bright sunshine and under a sky so blue and friendly.
When a half-hour from the convent, we turned to the right from the road
to the Dead Sea, and ascending a steep hill found ourselves riding along
the edge of a deep winding gorge; a brook flows at the bottom, and its
sides are sheer precipices of rock, generally parallel, but occasionally
widening into amphitheatres of the most fantastic rocky formation. It
is on one side of this narrow ravine that the convent is built, partly
excavated in the rock, partly resting on jutting ledges, and partly hung
out in the form of balconies,—buildings clinging to the steep side
like a comb of wild bees or wasps to a rock.
Our first note of approach to it was the sight of a square tower and
of the roofs of buildings below us. Descending from the road by several
short turns, and finally by two steep paved inclines, we came to a lofty
wall in which is a small iron door. As we could go no farther without
aid from within, Demetrius shouted, and soon we had a response from a
slit in the wall fifty feet above us to the left. We could see no one,
but the voice demanded who we were, and whether we had a pass. Above the
slit from which the angelic voice proceeded a stone projected, and in
this was an opening for letting down or drawing up articles. This habit
of caution in regard to who or what shall come into the convent is of
course a relic of the gone ages of tumult, but it is still necessary
as a safeguard against the wandering Bedaween, who would no doubt find
means to plunder the convent of its great wealth of gold, silver, and
jewels if they were not at all times rigorously excluded. The convent
with its walls and towers is still a fortress strong enough to resist
any irregular attempts of the wandering tribes. It is also necessary
to strictly guard the convent against women, who in these days of
speculation, if not scientific curiosity, often knock impatiently and
angrily at its gates, and who, if admitted, would in one gay and chatty
hour destroy the spell of holy seclusion which has been unbroken for one
thousand three hundred and ninety-two years. I know that sometimes it
seems an unjust ordination of Providence that a woman cannot be a
man, but I cannot join those who upbraid the monks of Mar Saba for
inhospitality because they refuse to admit women under any circumstances
into the precincts of the convent; if I do not sympathize with the
brothers, I can understand their adhesion to the last shred of man's
independence, which is only to be maintained by absolute exclusion of
the other sex. It is not necessary to revive the defamation of the early
Christian ages, that the devil appeared oftener to the hermit in the
form of a beautiful woman than in any other; but we may not regret that
there is still one spot on the face of the earth, if it is no bigger
than the sod upon which Noah's pioneer dove alighted, in which weak
men may be safe from the temptation, the criticism, and the curiosity
of the superior being. There is an airy tower on the rocks outside the
walls which women may occupy if they cannot restrain their desire to
lodge in this neighborhood, or if night overtakes them here on their
way from the Dead Sea; there Madame Pfeiffer, Miss Martineau, and other
famous travellers of their sex have found refuge, and I am sorry to say
abused their proximity to this retreat of shuddering man by estimating
the piety of its inmates according to their hospitality to women. So far
as I can learn, this convent of Mar Saba is now the only retreat left
on this broad earth for Man; and it seems to me only reasonable that it
should be respected by his generous and gentle, though inquisitive foe.
After further parley with Demetrius and a considerable interval, we
heard a bell ring, and in a few moments the iron door opened, and we
entered, stepping our horses carefully over the stone threshold, and
showing our pass from the Jerusalem Patriarch to an attendant, and came
into a sort of stable hewn in the rock. Here we abandoned our horses,
and were taken in charge by a monk whom the bell had summoned from
below. He conducted us down several long flights of zigzag stairs in the
rock, amid hanging buildings and cells, until we came to what appears
to be a broad ledge in the precipice, and found ourselves in the central
part of this singular hive, that is, in a small court, with cells and
rocks on one side and the convent church, which overhangs the precipice,
on the other. Beside the church and also at another side of the court
are buildings in which pilgrims are lodged, and in the centre of
the court is the tomb of St. Sabas himself. Here our passports were
examined, and we were assigned a cheerful and airy room looking upon the
court and tomb.
One of the brothers soon brought us coffee, and the promptness of this
hospitality augured well for the remainder of our fare; relying upon the
reputation of the convent for good cheer, we had brought nothing with
us, not so much as a biscuit. Judge of our disgust, then, at hearing the
following dialogue between Demetrius and the Greek monk.
“What time can the gentlemen dine?”
“Any time they like.”
“What have you for dinner?”
“Nothing.”
“You can give us no dinner?”
“To be sure not. It is fast.”
“But we have n't a morsel, we shall starve.”
“Perhaps I can find a little bread.”
“Nothing else?”
“We have very good raisins.”
“Well,” we interposed, “kill us a chicken, give us a few oysters,
stewed or broiled, we are not particular.” This levity, which was born
of desperation, for the jolting ride from Jerusalem had indisposed us to
keep a fast, especially a fast established by a church the orthodoxy of
whose creed we had strong reasons to doubt, did not affect the monk. He
replied, “Chicken! it is impossible.” We shrunk our requisition to
eggs.
“If I can find an egg, I will see.” And the brother departed, with
carte blanche from us to squeeze his entire establishment.
Alas, fasting is not in Mar Saba what it is in New England, where an
appointed fast-day is hailed as an opportunity to forego lunch in order
to have an extraordinary appetite for a better dinner than usual!
The tomb of St. Sabas, the central worship of this hive, is a little
plastered hut in the middle of the court; the interior is decorated with
pictures in the Byzantine style, and a lamp is always burning there. As
we stood at the tomb we heard voices chanting, and, turning towards the
rock, we saw a door from which the sound came. Pushing it open, we were
admitted into a large chapel, excavated in the rock. The service of
vespers was in progress, and a band of Russian pilgrims were chanting in
rich bass voices, producing more melody than I had ever heard in a Greek
church. The excavation extends some distance into the hill; we were
shown the cells of St. John of Damascus and other hermits, and at the
end a charnel-house piled full of the bones of men. In the dim light
their skulls grinned at us in a horrid familiarity; in that ghastly
jocularity which a skull always puts on, with a kind of mocking
commentary upon the strong chant of the pilgrims, which reverberated
in all the recesses of the gloomy cave,—fresh, hearty voices, such
as these skulls have heard (if they can hear) for many centuries. The
pilgrims come, and chant, and depart, generation after generation; the
bones and skulls of the fourteen thousand martyrs in this charnel-bin
enjoy a sort of repulsive immortality. The monk, who was our guide,
appeared to care no more for the remains of the martyrs than for the
presence of the pilgrims. In visiting such storehouses one cannot but
be struck by the light familiarity with the relics and insignia of death
which the monks have acquired.
This St. John of Damascus, whose remains repose here, was a fiery
character in his day, and favored by a special miracle before he became
a saint. He so distinguished himself by his invectives against Leo and
Constantine and other iconoclast emperors at Constantinople who, in the
eighth century, attempted to extirpate image-worship from the Catholic
church, that he was sentenced to lose his right hand. The story is that
it was instantly restored by the Virgin Mary. It is worthy of note that
the superstitious Orient more readily gave up idolatry or image-worship
under the Moslems than under the Christians.