THE ruins of the Augustinian Convent of the Holy Sepulchre are of great interest. The remains which exist in situ are the north-west and south-east corners of the great cloister, the greater part of the Refectory on the south side of this cloister, and the undercrofts of the Dormitory on its north side. At the south-west corner of the cloister some portions of the vaulting may also be observed.

De Vogüé was led into a strange fancy of identifying the remains of the cloister, with its pointed arches and clumsy egg-shaped ornaments, with the work of the fourth century—a strange error for an architectural student to commit.

Plans and details of the existing remains and of the general design of the cloister are shown in figs. 29, 30 and 31.

The Order of Canons Regular of St Augustine, founded in the eleventh century, obeyed a rule which was almost identical with that of St Benedict, and as a consequence the arrangements of the convent enclosure followed the usual regular plan of a western monastery. The very exceptional nature of the site occasioned a slight divergence from the more usual monastic plan in as far as affected the relative positions of the different portions. During the twelfth century the cloister-garth of a monastery was more usually built against one side of the nave of a great church, but in the present instance the circular form of the Anastasis and the nature of the site in the midst of a crowded city obliged the placing of the conventional buildings around the east end of the new choir of the church.

EUSEBIUS, Bishop of Cæsarea, who flourished in the early part of the fourth century, is the first writer who gives a clear and intelligible account of the Holy Sepulchre after the events recorded in the Gospel. It is to be hoped that in the new discoveries constantly being made in Egypt, some references in Christian documents may be found throwing additional light upon this most interesting subject; nothing, however, of an earlier date than the middle of the fourth century seems to have been found up to the present.

The finding of the Holy Sepulchre is described by the Bishop of Cæsarea as a simple operation. We are given to understand that the site was well known, and the presence of the pagan temple built to desecrate it was sufficient to indicate its exact position. Eusebius seems to have been present at its discovery when a boy; he speaks as an eye-witness.

The temple, already venerable after, as it is supposed, 200 years of heathen use, was first pulled down; then the podium or platform was completely cleared away, and the materials and earth carried to a considerable distance, adding possibly to the enormous accumulations in the Tyropœon valley. Roman temples in Syria were frequently erected on more or less artificial mounds, as, for instance, Baalbek, the greatest of them all. The Holy Sepulchre when laid bare by the removal of the temple podium seems to have astonished the explorers by its intact condition.

CŒNACULUM.—This very venerable shrine, known in the Middle Ages as “Mater Ecclesiarum” on account of its being considered the house of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the place wherein the first Eucharist was celebrated by Christ Himself, is doubtless a “Holy Site” of the primitive period, if not of the Apostolic age. It is mentioned by Theodosius, De Terra Sancta, of the sixth century. Also at the end of the seventh century:—

Bernard the Wise (867) speaks of the church on Sion where the Virgin died as being called the Church of St Simeon, where our Lord washed the feet of the disciples, and where was suspended His crown of thorns.

Benjamin of Tudela's famous story of the discovery of the treasure caves or tomb of King David somewhere on the slopes of Mount Sion is, in all probability, associated with the church in question. A restoration of the building seems to have been in progress, and we have a contemporary description of this building by John of Wurzburg.

THE traditional site of the crucifixion and entombment of our Lord occupies a plot of land which is apparently bounded on the south and east by remains of the city defences, which are certainly much older than the fourth century.

In describing these remains of walls of a remote age, it must be remembered that they cannot be precisely identified either in age or use, because they are without any architectural features. The methods of masonry construction adopted in the Levant have remained remarkably unchanged throughout the ages. The huge stones with a simple drafted edge, leaving the face in the rough, are common to the primitive builders of the “Haram area” (site of the Jewish Temple) as much as to the Crusading masons of thousands of years later. Also the method of building the city walls at different periods has remained practically the same, the masonry tending to become a little smaller in cases where rebuilding has taken place and the stones have been reshaped to fit their new positions.

On the south side of the site a considerable length of the city wall lies buried beneath the accumulations of débris and the later buildings covering the area known during the past few centuries as the “Muristan.” It was traced by Schick and others during the various alterations which have been carried out by the Germans and Greeks during the past quarter of a century on this site, and, although it was never very accurately noted at the time, the lower courses of the structure still remain below the level of the new German church and the Greek bazaar.

THE great church of the Holy Sepulchre is the most remarkable and interesting monument of twelfth-century art and history in the world—the secondary churches of Jerusalem, chiefly built by the Crusaders, also attract the attention of the architectural pilgrim.

De Vogüé, in his Églises de la Terre Sainte, 1860, gives a description and plans of nearly all of these remains of the wonderful crusading kingdom, and such few monuments as escaped his notice have since been planned and fully investigated by more recent visitors to the Holy City. The following notes are now offered as a résumé of the past fifty years' studies on the subject, and as a means of affording some idea of the present condition and probable future fate of these most interesting monuments.

Our principal source of information as to the condition of the monuments of Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades is the laborious description of his pilgrimage written by John of Wurzburg, at the beginning of the twelfth century. Although considered of no great importance by the historians of the Crusades, he certainly gives the most interesting account of the mediæval Holy City.

THE HARAM

The ancient churches of Jerusalem are mostly the property of the different Christian sects, or have been turned into mosques. The great and famous mosque of the Haram esh-Sherif (the Noble Sanctuary) is in a sense the most important of these ecclesiastical monuments, although its Christian character has been but of the most evanescent and transitory kind at different periods of its history.

WITH the advent of printing begins the long and incalculable series of more modern descriptions of the Holy Land.

During the sixteenth century one or two events took place of a certain importance in the history of the Holy Sepulchre. In 1516 the whole of Syria and Palestine passed from the possession of the Egyptian Caliphs into the hands of the Turkish Sultans, who from henceforth became the owners of the Holy Sepulchre. Selim I is credited with being the most bigoted of the Turkish Sultans, but fortunately for Christendom his religious animosities were directed more against dissenters from his own faith than against the Christians. Passing on his devastating campaign of 1520 close to Jerusalem, he contemplated the total destruction of the city, but changed his mind in consequence of a lucky dream, and is even said to have presented gifts to the Christians in the Holy City.

The Turkish occupation of the Holy Land seems to have been inaugurated by friendly relations between the new governors and the Latins. The policy of Selim I was to subdue the Moslem world beneath the new Caliphate of Constantinople, for which purpose he employed the firearms and artillery, and even the bombardiers, lent him by the Grand Master of Rhodes and the Venetian Republic. He did not live long enough to turn upon his Christian allies, as he doubtless intended to do when once he had consolidated his empire; he left this for his son Solyman the Magnificent to attempt after his death.

TO add yet another to the innumerable volumes which have appeared on the Holy Sepulchre seems a somewhat thankless venture. The only excuse for so doing is that notwithstanding the multitude of students whose names are linked with that of the Holy City in modern times or in passed away centuries, and the voluminous results of their studies, there are certain aspects of the greatest of Christian Monuments which still remain comparatively unknown. My ambition has been to cast into book form the notes which I made some few years back to satisfy my own curiosity—I trust I have presented these studies in such a way as will interest others in the most famous of Christian relics.

This account of the Holy Sepulchre first appeared in a published form in the pages of the Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1910. I have to thank the editor of that journal for permission to make use of the original illustrations for the present purpose.

I am also under a special obligation to a leading authority on Christian Archæology—Dr M. R. James, Provost of Eton—for very kindly reading the proofs, and affording me the advantage of his valuable advice and criticism.

To my wife I am indebted for the laborious compilation of an index.

DURING the Middle Ages a very considerable number of these replicas existed in almost every country of Christendom, and at a later period the “Way of the Cross” or “Sacro Monte” of Italy appears to be a development of the same idea.

Next in order of date to the remarkable “New Jerusalem” of Bologna come some French examples, of which unfortunately no vestiges of importance remain beyond mere documentary record.

At Neuvy-St-Sépulcre in the Department of the Indre, France, is a very large circular church, supposed to date from the eleventh century, with a later square church added on one side. This interesting building was almost completely destroyed by alterations in the eighteenth century, and the simulacrum of the Holy Sepulchre has entirely disappeared (vide V.-le-Duc, Dictionnaire, sub voce).

Of minor examples the most important is the “Vera Cruz” church at Segovia, Spain. Standing at a distance from the city of Segovia it suggests the idea of a pilgrimage shrine of the type of that of Bologna, but without the adjacent chapels—possibly the intention may have been to make a similar “New Jerusalem,” but the scheme miscarried.

THE Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem was a brief interval in the history of the Holy Land, during which pilgrimage to the greatest shrine of mediæval Christianity was comparatively easy. Before and after that period the difficulties of the way, the tediousness of the journey, and the hostility to be met with, were the causes which led to a very general desire in Christendom to transport all movable relics as far as possible away from the power of the infidels, and to represent by copies the immovable, but most precious of all—the Holy Sepulchre. Even the removal of this most valued record of the great Christian epic seems to have been seriously contemplated in the seventeenth century (vide p. 35).

At the time of the loss of Acre and the termination of the Latin Kingdom, the “Holy House” of Loretto is supposed to have been transported bodily across the sea to the shores of the Adriatic—a comparatively simple thing for the Venetian traders to undertake with their experience in transporting the immense quantities of building materials from ruined temples and sites in the Ægean which have gone towards the building of mediæval Venice.

Many of the relics preserved in St Peter's and elsewhere in Rome are supposed to have come from the Holy Sites around the Holy Sepulchre, the dates of their “invention” are perhaps uncertain, but as a rule they were probably added to the collection in Europe at different periods of religious enthusiasm connected with the barbarian inroads of the “Dark Ages.”