Page:A History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 2.djvu/424

408 / 408 ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE. Pakt II. Gei-many, and much more likely that an Italian would undertake the erection of buildings in the East than a Northern architect, whose ideas of Palestine and its ways must have been extremely indistinct. Be this as it may, there is little in the Gothic architecture of Palestine either as regards arrangement or details — except the plan of the church of the Holy Sepulchre — which would excite attention as sin- gular if found in the South of Italy or Sicily; and as little that would not seem out of place if found on our side of the Alps. Holy Sepulchre. The principal building erected by the Crusaders in Palestine was, as might be expected, the church of the Holy Sepulchre — the deliv- erance of which from the hands of the infidels was the object of that wonderful outburst of national enthusiasm. For a century or more before the Crusades the Christians had been debarred from approaching the sacred dome erected by Constantine over the holy rock which still contains the cave — the "salutary mon- ument of our Saviour's resurrection," ^ and had been obliged to con- tent themselves with a temporary church of very moderate pretensions erected in their own quarter of the city."^ In this latter building the Easter rites had been celebrated since the year 1048 ; and when the Crusaders (in 1099) achieved the unexpected deliverance of the city from the Moslem, it seemed to the uncritical intellect of the age better to retain the church where it then was than to unsettle the belief of the ignorant by transferring it back to its original site. The "Dome of the Rock" — now known to European travellers as the "Mosque of Omar " — which was undoubtedly the church which Constantine erected over what he believed to have been the Sepulchre of Christ — was throughout the 12th century considered as equal in sanctity with the church of the S^pulclire, and the veneration with which it was regarded had, no doubt, considerable influence on the architecture of the age. When the Crusaders reached Jerusalem the sepulchre on the spot where it now stands appears to have stood in a court open to the sky,"' with five small chapels attached to it. As soon as their kingdom was sufficiently consolidated and leisure afforded them, the Crusaders set about rebuilding this church, appar- ently from its foundations. There is no precise record of when this took place, but it must have been about the year 1130. The plan ^ Eusebius, "Vita Constantini," lib. iii. ch. xxviii. 2 For particulars regarding the trans- ference til 8 reader is referred to the Author's Essays on " The Ancient To- pography of Jerusalem," and " The Sep- ulc'hre and the Temple at Jerusalem." 3 Sajwulf, " Peregrinatio," etc. (A. D. 1102-3), p. 83.