Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/215

 Rh stone of the world's foundation: He the stone, the altar, the sacrifice, thus the Eucharist.

At the place where the Temple stood a church was erected, or the Temple transformed into a church, called the Church of Mount Zion, first the abode of the Virgin Mary, then the Church of St. James, One of the first pilgrims whose record is in existence, one from Bordeaux, ca. 333, shows the first phase of this transformation; he saw already there the "big corner-stone of which the Psalmist speaks."

Antoninus, another, of the year 570, knows already more about it, for he says: "When you put your ear to it, you can hear the voices of many men." According to the Mohamedan legend one hears the noise of water. Both tales derived from the old legend mentioned above, that the stone shuts up the waters of the depth.

This church founded there is the mother church founded by the Apostles; and with this agrees the whole Christian antiquity. In the same manner Evodius, Epiphanius, Hieronymus, and many other ecclesiastical historians, unanimously assert that the scene of the Last Supper took place on Mount Zion. John of Wurzburg (1160-70; an older contemporary of Chriestien) says: "The Coenaculum" is on Mount Sion, in the very spot where Solomon reared his splendid building, of which he speaks in his 'Song of Songs'." The table of the Last Supper was also shown there as late as the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and this table was identified with the altar upon which the Apostle John celebrated mass, which altar stands for that corner-stone.

There is a very interesting passage in Mandeville's description, a synchretistic account of what he saw on Mount Sion: "And 120 paces from that church (St. James) is Mount Sion, where there is a fair church of Our Lady, where she dwelt and died, and there is the stone which the angel brought to Our Lady from Mount Sinai, which is of