THE HOLY PLACES. IT has been the object of the foregoing Chapters to represent the connection between the topography of Pales- The Holy tine and the historical events of the Old and New Places. Testament. There remains another interest-in every way inferior, but still living and powerful-that which attaches to what are technically called "the Holy Places." By this term are meant not the scenes of sacred events, taken generally, but such special localities as the Greek or Latin Church, or both conjointly, have selected as objects of pilgrimage. Of course, the historical scenes and the sanctuaries will sometimes coincide. But this is by no means universal. Some scenes which the whole Christian world would naturally regard as most sacred, are almost wholly neglected by the mass of pilgrims properly so called. Others, which rank high in the estimation of local and ecclesiastical tradition, are probably unknown beyond the immediate sphere of those who worship in them. And the most important are so slightly connected with the actual thread of the Sacred History, and, if ever so genuine, would throw so little light upon it, that the whole subject is best reserved for a consideration distinct from that which has been bestowed on the general geography of the Holy Land. But they have an interest of their own; they have been for ages objects of a reverence which still diverts some and alienates others from the greater centres of local instruction which the Holy Land contains. They caused the greatest event of the middle ages-the Crusades; and, indirectly, invited Columbus to the discovery of the New World. They FF exhibit within a narrow compass, the feuds between the Greek and Latin Churches, which have rent Christendom asunder, which overthrew the Byzantine Empire, and which in our own time have once more involved Europe in a terrible war. Of these places there are twelve preeminent above the rest; thus apportioned amongst the several communities which in any sense share the Christian belief:-1. Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem (common). 2. Church of the Annunciation at Nazareth (Latin). 3. Church of Jacob's Well at Nablous (destroyed). 4. Church at Cana (Greek). 5. Church of St. Peter at Tiberias (Latin). 6. Church of the Presentation at Jerusalem (Mussulman). 7. Church of the Flagellation (Latin). 8. Grotto of Gethsemane (Latin). 9. Tomb of the Virgin (common). 10. Church of the Ascension (Mussulman). 11. Church of the Apostles or of the Last Supper' (Mussulman). 12. Church of the Holy Sepulchre (common)'. But, as some of those have been long deserted, and others depend for their support entirely on the greater sanctuaries in their neighbourhood, I shall confine myself to those which exist in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem'. BETHLE- I. Whether from its being usually the first seen by travellers, or from its own intrinsic solemnity, there is probably none which produces so great an impression at first sight as the Convent of the Nativity at Bethlehem. It is an enormous pile of buildings, extending along the ridge of the hill from west to east, and consisting of the Church of the Nativity, with the three convents, Latin, Greek, and Armenian, abutting respectively upon its north-eastern, south-eastern, and south-western extremities. Externally there is nothing to command attention beyond its size-the more imposing from The Church the meanness and smallness of the village, which of Helena. hangs as it were on its western skirts. In the Church I have given these spots as they are mentioned in the slight but candid and perspicuous treatise of the Abbé Michon, Solution Nouvelle de la Question des Lieux Saintes. 1853. Of these the third has been long since abandoned as a resort of pilgrims, and its site (see Chapter V.) depends not on any ecclesiastical tradition, but on the unchanging features of the whole of the locality. The other lesser localities shall be noticed in passing. Tobler has shown that a great part of the Church of Helena has been superseded by the successive edifices of Justinian and Emanuel Comnenus (Bethlehem, p. 104, 105). But there seems no sufficient reason to dispute the antiquity of the nave. itself the only portion of peculiar interest is the nave-common to all the sects, and for that very reason deserted, bare, discrowned, but in all probability the most ancient monument of Christian architecture in the world. It is all that now remains of the Basilica, built by Helena herself, the prototype of those built by her Imperial son at Jerusalem, beside the Holy Sepulchre and at Rome, over the graves of St. Paul and of St. Peter. The long double lines of Corinthian pillars; the faded mosaics, dimly visible on the walls above, as in the two Churches of St. Apollinaris at Ravenna; the rough ceiling of beams of cedar from Lebanon, still preserve the outlines of the Church, once' blazing with gold and marble; in which Baldwin was crowned, and which received its latest repairs from our own Edward IV. 2. From this, the only interesting portion of the upper church, we descend to the subterranean vault, over The Grotto which, and for which, the whole structure was of the Naerected. At the entrance of a long winding passage, tivity. excavated out of the limestone rock of which the hill of Bethlehem is composed, the pilgrim finds himself in an irregular chapel, dimly lighted with silver lamps, and containing two small recesses, nearly opposite each other. In the northernmost of these is a marble slab, which marks the supposed spot of the Nativity, with the rays of the silver star, sent from Vienna in 1852, to supply the place of that which the Greekstruly or falsely-were charged with having stolen. In the southern recess, three steps deeper in the chapel, is the alleged stall, in which, according to the Latin tradition, was discovered the wooden manger or "præsepe," præsepe," now deposited in the magnificent Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, and there displayed under the auspices of the Pope, every Christmas-day. Let us pause for a moment in the dim vault, between those two recesses; let us dismiss the consideration of the lesser memorials which surround us on all sides-the altar of the Magi-of the Shepherds-of Joseph-of the Innocents-to which, probably, no one would now attach any other than an 1 Tobler, ibid. p. 110. Ibid. p. 112. See Chap. II. p. 139. imaginative importance, and ask what ground there is for believing or disbelieving the tradition which invites us to confine the awful associations of the village of Bethlehem within these rocky walls. Alone, of all the existing local traditions of Palestine, this one indisputably reaches beyond the time of Constantine. Already in the second century, "a cave near Bethlehem" was fixed upon as the place where, "there being no place in the village, where he could lodge', Joseph abode, and where accordingly Christ was born and laid in a manger.” And this seems to have been the constant tradition of the place, even amongst those who were not Christians, in the next generation', and to have been uniformly maintained in the Apocryphal Gospels, which have always exercised so powerful an influence over the popular belief of the humbler classes of the Christian world, both in the East and the West. It is perhaps invidious to remark on the deviations from the Gospel narrative, which tells us that the want of room was not in the village, but in the inn; and that the hardship was not that they were driven from the village to the inn, but from the inn to the manger. Such a deviation implies, perhaps, an independent origin of the local tradition, but not necessarily its falsehood. And if at Bethlehem the caves in the limestone rock, on which the village stands, were commonly used as elsewhere in Palestine for horses and cattle, the omission of all allusion to the cave in St. Luke's narrative would be, to a certain extent, explained. On the other hand, the general impression of the account in Justin is certainly different from that of St. Luke; and if (with the tradition which Justin seems to have followed, and which has unquestionably prevailed since the time of Jerome) we lay the scene of the Adoration of the Magi on the same spot, it is positively irreconcilable with the words of St. Matthew, that they came into the "house where the young child was." We must add to this the often-repeated Justin. Dial. cum Tryph. 78. 3 The Apocryphal Gospel of St. James, e. xviii, xix., and the Gospel of the Infancy, c. ii., iii., iv., represent Joseph as going at once to the cave; and confine all the subsequent events to the cave, which is described as outside the town. In the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, c. iv., the birth is described as taking place in the cave, and the manger as being outside the cave. The quotations and arguments are well summed up in Thilo's Codex Apocryphus, p. 382, 383. suspicion which Maundrell was the first to express, which attaches to the constant connection of the several localities of Palestine with grottoes and caves. However much it may be urged that, in a country like Palestine, natural excavations are unavoidably employed for purposes of dwelling, of sepulture, of rest, for which in Europe they never would be used, yet for this very reason there would be a disposition to attach events to them, if the real locality had been forgotten. If, for example, in the case now in question, the caravanserai or khan had been swept away in the convulsions of the Jewish war, and the inhabitants of Bethlehem had any wish to give a local habitation to the event which made their village illustrious, they would almost inevitably fix on a strongly-marked natural feature, such as the cave of the convent must, in its original aspect, have been'. And another motive leading to the same result transpires through the same passage of Justin which first mentions the tradition, namely the attempt to find a fulfilment of a fancied prediction of the Messiah's birth in the LXX translation of the words of Isaiah," He shall dwell on high; his place of defence shall be 'in a lofty cave of the strong rock'.'" One further objection to the identity of the whole scene must be mentioned in conclusion. During the troubled period of the invasion of Ibrahim Pasha the Arab population of Bethlehem took possession of the convent, and dismantled the whole of the recess of that gilding and marble which is the bane of so many sanctuaries, European and Asiatic. The native rock of the cave was disclosed; but also, it is said, an ancient sepulchre hewn in that very spot. It is possible, but very improbable, that a rock devoted to sepulchral purposes would have been employed by Jews, whose scruples on this subject are too well known to need comment, either as an inn or a stable. 1 See Chap. II. p. 150. The universal employment of caves for the scenes of sacred events excited surprise as early as the thirteenth century, and was then accounted for by the not unnatural hypothesis that the places so shown were the remains of buildings over which the ruins of subsequent ages had been accumulated. (Sanutus iii. c. 7.) But the early mention of the actual caves in the most celebrated instances shows that this is inadequate. 2 ἐν ὑψηλῷ σπηλαίῳ ἰσχυρᾶς πέτρας (Isa. xxxiii. 16). The English version translates it "the munitions of rocks." |