Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/419

 JERUSALEM

357

JERUSALEM

imitate tliem in their own churches. Thus a great number of our well-known ceremonies (the Palm Sunday procession, later the Stations of the Cross, etc.) were originally imitations of local rites of Jeru- salem. All this could not fail to bring about an advancement of rank for the local Ijishop. P^rom the freedom of the Church the development was inevi- table that changed the Bishop of JElia, mere suffragan of Caesarea, into the great "Patriarch of the Holy City Jerusalem and of the whole Land of Promise".

Meanwhile another result of these pilgrimages was the discovery of the Holy Places. Naturally the pilgrims when they arrived wanted to see the actual spots where the events they had read of in the Gospels had happened. Naturally too each such place when it was known or conjectured, became a shrine with a church built over it. Of these shrines the most fa- mous are those built by Constantine and his mother St. Helena. St. Helena "in her eightieth year (326-327) came on a pilgrimage and caused churches to be built at Bethlehem, and on the Mount of Olives. Constantine built the famous church of the Holy Sepulchre (Anastasis). Eusebius (Vita Constantini, HI, xxvi) says that the place of Calvary in about 326 was covered with dirt and rubbish; over it was a temple of Venus. Emperor Hadrian had built a great terrace round the place enclosed in a wall, on this he had planted a grove to Jupiter and Venus (St. Jerome, Ep. 58). When St. Helena came and was shown the place she determined to restore it as a Christian shrine. By order of the emperor all the soldiers of the garrison were employed to clear away the temple, grove, and terrace. Underneath they fovmd Golgotha and the tomb of our Lord. Con- stantine wrote to Bishop Macarius saying: "I have nothing more at heart than to adorn with due splen- dour that sacred place", etc. (Vita Const., HI, xxx). Two great buildings were erected near each other on this spot. To the west the rock containing the tomb was carved away, leaving it as a little shrine or chapel standing above ground. Over it was built a roiuid ch\irch covered by a dome. This is the Anas- tasis, which still has the form of a rotunda with a dome, containing the Holy Sepulchre in the middle. Quite near, to the east, was a great basilica with an apse towards the Anastasis, a long nave, and four aisles separated by rows of columns. Above the aisles were galleries, the whole was covered by a gable roof. Around the apse were twelve columns crowned with silver, at the east were a narthex, three doors, and a colonnade in front of the entrance. This basilica was the Martyrion ; it covered the ground now occupied by part of the Katholikon and St. Helena's chapel. Etheria speaks of it as "the great church which is called the Martyrium " (Per. Silv., ed. cit., p. 38). Underneath it was the crypt of the Inven- tion of the Cross. The Mount of Calvary was not enclosed in the basilica. It stood just at the south- east side of the apse. Etheria always distinguishes three shrines, Anastasis, Crux, Martyrium. The place of the Cross (Calvary) was in her time open to the sky and surrounded by a silver balustrade (op. cit., p. 43). People went up to it by steps (Eus., "Vita Const.", Ill, xxi-xl; Mommert, "Die h. Grabeskirche zu .Jerusalem in ihrem ursprunglichen Zustande", Leipzig, 1898). Later in the fifth century St. Melania the younger (439), a Roman lady who came with her husband Pinianus to Jerusalem where they both entered religious houses (see Nilles, "Kal. Man." Dec. 31, pp. 372-373), built a small chapel over the place of the Crucifixion. These buildings were des- troyed by the Persians in 614.

It is not possible to enter here upon the endless discussion that still takes place as to the authenticity of this shrine. The first question that occurs is as to the place of the wall of Jerusalem in Christ's time. It is certain that He was crucified outside the

city wall. No executions took place within the city (Matt, xxvii, 33; John xix, 17; Hebr. xiii, 12, etc.) If then it could be shown that the traditional site was within the wall (the second wall built by Nehemias) it would be proved to be false. It is, however, quite certain that all attempts to prove this have failed. On the contrary, Conder foimd other contemporary tombs near the traditional Holy Sepulchre, which show that it was without the city, since Jews never buried within their towns. Supposing then its possi- bility, we have this chain of evidence: if Hadrian really built his temple of Venus purposely on the .site, the authenticity is proved. Constantine's basilica stood where that temple was; that the present church stands on the place of Constantine's basilica is not doubted by any one. A number of writers (as Eu- sebius, op. cit.) of the fourth century descriljc the temple as built on the site of Calvary in order to put a stop to its veneration by Christians, just as the temple of Jupiter was built purposely where the Jewish Temple had been. We have seen that an unchanging Christian community lived at Jerusalem down to Hadrian's time (Bar-Kochba's revolt). It would be strange if they had not remembered the site of the Crucifixion and had not reverenced it. The analogy of Hadrian's profanation of the Temple leaves no difficulty as to a similar deliberate profan- ation of the Christian sanctuary. The theory of Fergusson who thought that the cave under the Qubbet-es-Sachra, on the site of the Temple, was the Holy Sepulchre of Constantine's time, and Conder and Gordon's site outside the Damascus gate (Con- der, "The City of Jerusalem", London, 1909, pp. 151-158) hardly deserve mention. With the finding of the Holy Sepulchre and the building of the Anas- tasis and Martyrion is connected the story of the Invention of the Holy Cross. It is told by Rufinus (Hist. Eccl. X, viii, P. L. XXI, 477— about the year 402), Paulinus of Nola (Ep. xxi, v; P. L. LXI, 329; A.. D. 403) and others. When the soldiers were re- moving the old balustrade and digging out the Holy Sepulchre they found to the east of the tomb three crosses with the inscription separated from them. Bishop Macarius discovered which was our Lord's Cross by applying each in turn to a sick woman. The third Cross healed her miraculously (see the lessons of the second nocturn for the feast, 3 May). Paulinus (op. cit.) adds that a dead man was raised to life by the Cross of Christ.

The fame of the great shrines, Anastasis and Mar- tyrion, then began to eclipse that of the Coenaculum. From this time the Bishop of Jerusalem celebrated the more solemn functions in the Martyrion. But Constantine had a new "Church of the Apostles" built over the Coenaculum. Other shrines that go back at least to his time are the place of the A.scen- sion on the top of the Mount of Olives, where he built a church, and the still extant magnificent basilica at Bethlehem.

(3) The Patriarchate (325-451).— From the time of Constantine then begins the advancement of the See of Jerusalem. The first General Council (Nicsea I, 325) meant to recognize the unique dignity of the Holy City without disturbing its canonical dependence on the metropolis, Ca!sarea. So the seventh canon declares: "Since custom and ancient tradition have obtained that the bishop in MVia be honoured, let him have the succession of honour (^X^" 'V" aKoXovdiav t^s ti/^^s) saving however the domestic right of the metropolis {rij ^ijTpoiriXei ffmfoiii^vou ToD oIkcIov d|ni;uaTos)." The canon is in the "Decretum" of Gratian, dist. 65, vii. The "succession of honour" means a special place of honour, an honorary precedence immediately after tlie Patriarchs (of Rome, .\lexandria, Antioch) ; but this is not to interfere with the metropolitan rights of Caisarea in Palestine. The situation of a suffragan