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| The Garden Tomb |
“This
is one of the two places where Christ might have been buried.”
“One
of the two?”
My surprise is a bit for show. We are in the place called “The
Garden Tomb” on the map of Jerusalem. My interlocutor is clearly
trained in a Protestant way of leading a theological debate, knows by
heart the chapter and verse of each one of his quotations.
“Yes.
Traditionally it has been believed that the tomb of Christ is where
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is now but this is by no means sure.
According to the Gospels Jesus was crucified and buried outside the
city walls (chapter and verse) but the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
is within the walls. This tomb is outside the walls...”
“You
mean the walls you can see today? These were built by Sulaiman!”
My interlocutor is a bit thrown by this comment. Sulaiman? Who is
that? Apparently his erudition was restricted to the Bible which does
not mention Sulaiman the Magnificent, the Turkish sultan who
conquered Palestine some 15 centuries after the last book of the
Bible was completed. It was he who built the walls we see today. My
erudite interlocutor was clearly not aware of that and didn't know
what to say. However, succour came in a form of another erudite
Evangelical who knew who Sulaiman was. He joined the conversation and
said:
“Yes,
Sulaiman built his new walls where Hadrian's walls were before.”
I didn't say anything but disbelief must have been visible on my face
because he added straight away:
“OK,
Hadrian built his walls about 100 years after Christ but we don't
know what was there before and can only guess that Hadrian, too,
rebuilt earlier fortifications.”
.JPG) |
| The Edicule inside the Rotunda |
This is of course not true, we do know pretty well
what was there before. There are few places in the world as
thoroughly examined by archaeologists as Jerusalem. Both historians
and archaeologists agree that the place where the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre is now was outside the city walls at the time of Pontius
Pilate. Only in AD 130 did Hadrian build a new town here and named it
Colonia Aelia Capitolina. He built a pagan temple on the spot where
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands now. At the time of
Constantine the pagan temple was dismantled and the tomb of Christ
was found underneath. A church was built around the tomb.
There are more questions than answers here. How did they find the
tomb of Christ underneath the temple that had stood there for two
hundred years? Even if they found the tomb after the temple was
dismantled – how did they know it was the tomb of Christ? Eusebius
of Cesarea, who was present at the event, writes about it but doesn't
say on what ground it was decided that it was THIS tomb. Perhaps he
considered it obvious. This is not impossible, after all Christians
lived in Jerusalem all the time since the Crucifixion and could have
preserved the information where the place called Golgotha was.
There are more questions, though.
The
modern pilgrims enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and in the
middle of the rotunda they see a little free-standing chapel called
Edicule. Its walls are visibly cracking and this is probably why it
is held together by huge iron rails. I, as an art historian, can say
that the chapel was built in the 19th
century because of its architectural style, and yet they say it is
the tomb of Christ. Something doesn't add up here or at least some
more questions come to mind.
It is interesting actually – this is supposedly the most important
church in Christendom but it is very hard to find any info about its
architectural form. Well, hard it may be but I did some research and
have found that info. And I have found that the history of this
little chapel is as complicated as it can be for a chapel of this
size.
During the reign of emperor Constantine the tomb of Christ was
discovered. We don't know how they knew it was this particular tomb
but this is what they decided. Subsequently the rock around it was
removed and the tomb became a kind of a free-standing building. It
was surrounded by columns like a little temple, a conical roof was
added as well a a small portico before the entrance. Thus the first
version of the Edicule was created. A big rotunda was built around
it, big enough for pilgrims to circumambulate. A rectangular basilica
was also added on the eastern side of the rotunda. The form of this
ancient Edicule is known from some ancient paintings. Most likely it
still existed in 1009.
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| Three separate decorations on the altar inside the Edicule |
In AD 638 Arabs conquered the Holy Land but they left the Christian
holy places untouched. There is even a legend that caliph Omar was
once invited to pray in the church of the Holy Sepulchre but refused
saying that if he did so the church would be in the future changed
into a mosque. The legend is a bit anachronistic (there weren't any
mosques at the time of Omar so he could not have known what a mosque
would be) but it demonstrates the approach of Muslims to newly
conquered peoples. The choice “Islam or decapitation” was only
given to pagans, mostly Arab polytheists. Christians and Jews in
non-Arab countries (which then meant both the Middle East and North
Africa) were left alone and could practice their religion if they
paid a special tax. In AD 1009, however, the mad caliph al Hakim of
the Fatimid dynasty, who on occasions claimed to be God incarnate
himself, ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem
destroyed. The job was done thoroughly, the sources say that the
basilica built by Constantine completely disappeared. Three years
later al-Hakim changed his mind and let the Christians rebuild both
the church and the tomb of Christ. The Byzantine emperor of the time
financed the works. The Edicule was built in a new form this time,
there was an ante-chamber before the entrance and over the whole
structure there was a little dome resting on columns. A new rotunda
with a conical roof was build around the Edicule but the old basilica
has not been rebuilt. There was a courtyard in front of the rotunda,
at the corner of which stood the rock of Golgotha. This is what the
crusaders found when they arrived a century later.
When the knights of Christ stormed the city, the whole population was
put to the sword; they say streams of blood ran along the streets.
The buildings were left alone but the new lords of Jerusalem decided
to build a proper church joined to the rotunda of the tomb. They
built a Gothic-style basilica with a transept and ambulatory – this
is the building we see today. The Gothic style was at that time
normally used in Western Europe but in this case the influence went
both ways – the layout of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was
copied in many places in Europe. The Crusader orders especially
tended to build rectangular churches with a rotunda added from the
West. The Temple church in London is the prime example of this.
In 1187 Saladin chased the crusaders from Jerusalem but allowed
peaceful pilgrims to remain. Franciscan friars were permitted to look
after the Christian holy places. The new era of the Muslim rule in
Jerusalem began, there would be no new Christian edifices built, only
the existing ones repaired. In 1555 the Franciscans decided that the
Edicule needed radical repairs so they took it apart and put it back
together again. They mostly used the old material when rebuilding so
the chapel didn't change its appearance radically. We know what it
looked like from drawings made by some pilgrims. It was unchanged
until 1808, when the fire in the rotunda caused its roof to collapse.
The Edicule was seriously damaged and completely rebuilt the
following year. In 1927 an earthquake caused the walls to crack. In
1947 steel rails were put in to keep it from falling apart. This is
what we see today.
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| The rails around the Edicule |
From what we know we can gather that the present chapel is built
around the fragment of solid rock in which the tomb of Christ is
located. For the believers this is the place where the Resurrection
happened. So holy a place must be properly decorated. What does this
mean – properly? It is a well known fact that there is more than
one Christian Church and each has its own tradition of decorating
holy places. What can be done, then? It has been decided that the
interior of the tomb will be divided into sectors: the middle will be
Greek Orthodox, the left side Roman Catholic, the right side
Armenian. All this inside of a tomb in which hardly three people can
stand next to each other.
And
where are the Protestants? Didn't they get a section to decorate?
Apparently not, but not to be outdone they found themselves another
tomb. In the 19th
century the English general Gordon (famous for not being able to
defend Khartoum) decided that the Catholic are as usual wrong. Beyond
the walls of Sulaiman he found a rock with two caves that looked like
eye sockets ans not far away from that place he found an ancient tomb
cut into the rock. What is interesting – in the Byzantine era
somebody had painted a cross on the side of this tomb. Why did
somebody paint a cross here? Could it be that somebody even then
thought this was the place where Christ was buried? This is what the
present Protestant guardians of the place suggest. Certainly the
Protestant guardians keep a nice garden around it. It is certainly
worth seeing this tomb – it may give an idea what a tomb of Christ
looked like before it was decorated.
You will find this story, and many others, in my book "ASK A GLOBETROTTER".
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