The Architectural History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem

© Barakaldo Books 2020, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF THE

CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE AT JERUSALEM

BY

REV. ROBERT WILLIS, M.A., F.R.S.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 8

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. 9

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA. 11

I.—INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 12

II.—CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE IN GENERAL. 15

III.—ON THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, AND ROCK-TOMBS IN GENERAL. 18

IV.—THE TOMBS OF THE JUDGES. 26

V.—THE TOMB OF ABSALOM. 36

VI.—DESCRIPTION OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 38

VII.—THE FORMER STATE AND HISTORY OF THE SEPULCHRE. 43

VIII.—THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE. 56

IX.—THE ORIGINAL FORM OF THE GROUND. 76

X.—THE BASILICA OF CONSTANTINE. 79

Book III. Of the Life of Constantine. 81

XI.—THE BUILDINGS OF THE SECOND PERIOD, FROM A.D. 614 TO A.D. 1010. 88

XII.—THE BUILDINGS OF THE THIRD PERIOD, FROM A.D. 1010 TO A.D. 1099. 95

SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 99

NOTE A.—ON THE IMITATIONS OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 99

NOTE B.—ON THE CONFLAGRATION OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE IN 1808. 104

NOTE C.—ON THE AUTHORITIES FOR THE PLANS AND SECTIONS IN PLATES II. AND III. 107

DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES, WITH ADDITIONAL REMARKS. 110

PLATE I. 110

PLATE II. 111

PLATE III. 113

PLATE IV. 114

PLATES V. AND VI. 114

PLANS 116

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 121

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

PLATE I. Plane of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at different periods, and of the ground in its original state

II. General Plan of the Church and of the Chapels of Calvary, and Plans of the Holy Sepulchre at different periods

III. Longitudinal Sections of the Church and Sections of the ground in its original state

IV. Plans and Sections of the Tombs of the Judges

V. Tomb of Absalom. Elevation and Section

VI. Ditto Plan and Details

WOODCUT. View of the Holy Sepulchre in its present state

Ditto Figs. A and B. Plans of Jewish Sepulchral Chambers

Ditto figs. X. Y. Z. Plan, &c. of Rock-Tombs at Khan Kesrawan

N. B.—The present Work is inserted entire in the Second Edition of the HOLY CITY, of which it forms Chapter III., Vol. II., and which is published simultaneously with it.

ADDENDA ET CORRIGENDA.

All have been fixed in this edition.

I.—INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

THE Church or group of Churches which is the subject of the following pages, was in its original form erected by the Emperor Constantine for the pious purpose of protecting and venerating that Sepulchral cavern which was believed to have been the very Tomb in which the Body of our Lord was laid. The buildings received, in accordance with the custom of that period, the name of the Martyrium of the Resurrection. They have long since disappeared, and others have been in turn erected and destroyed on the same site, until at length they have been brought to the state in which they now are. But during all ages of Christianity, and under all their vicissitudes, these structures have remained the great centre of pilgrimage; to obtain this site, the best blood and wealth of Europe was poured forth in the Crusades, and before and after that hopeless struggle to retain Christian possession of it, no difficulties, dangers, or insults, were powerful enough to deter the crowds of pilgrims who annually went forth to visit the scenes of their Saviour’s sufferings and triumphant Resurrection. Whether or no these sacred events took place upon the spots that were so confidently assigned as their true localities, has been of late years very warmly contested. But this is not essential to the question. Those who erected the buildings, and those who visited them, were alike convinced of the genuineness of the traditions; and therefore the influence of these buildings upon Ecclesiastical Architecture is wholly irrespective of the enquiry into the true localities. And it is as a branch of the history of Ecclesiastical Architecture alone that I purpose to treat the subject at present.

But, considering the vast influence that was exercised during the middle ages by the veneration for sacred localities of all kinds, as well as for relics, and the numerous Churches which were erected solely for the purpose of affording objects of pilgrimage, by distinguishing such sacred localities and making them as it were a mark for pilgrims; it is evident that the buildings upon that spot which was of all others the most sacred, must be of exceeding interest in teaching us the principles upon which such Martyria were arranged.

In saying this, I by no means intend to throw doubts upon the truth of that tradition which has fixed the site of the Holy Sepulchre within the Church in question; for I am myself fully convinced of the genuineness of that site. But that question has been treated by much abler hands than mine, and requires an investigation of the entire topography of the City, which I am not qualified to undertake, if even it were included in the Architectural question, which it is not, as I have endeavoured to shew{1}.

It is very curious and interesting, but at the same time most melancholy, to trace the process by which the cravings of the simpleminded and ignorant crowd of pilgrims to behold and to touch every spot where some event of the sacred narrative took place, led to a gradual accumulation of local appropriation, which has ended in a confident indication not only of every place where every historical event happened, but also of places connected with the parables, which we have no reason to believe were other than fables invented for our edification. A visit to the House of the Rich Man, or a sight of the Stone which the builders rejected, are very apt to excite the wrath and disgust of our better informed but somewhat hasty modern travellers, and lead them to denounce the Monks and Pilgrims of the middle ages as a pack of knaves or credulous fools, and the entire body of local tradition as a system of premeditated imposture, no one portion of which deserves the least credit.

This is an error in the opposite extreme, by which much valuable truth is rejected. It is, unfortunately, impossible to deny the credulity, or even the imposture in many cases; neither can we wonder at the disgust and indignation which must arise in the mind of every sincere and right-thinking person at the sight of such a mass of absurdity and falsehood, and of mean and low passions and feelings, fostered into full activity in a land and in a city that ought to excite far different and holier feelings. But however difficult it may be to separate the after-growth of credulity from the true original tradition around which it has accumulated, it must be remembered that it may have preserved to us the memory of the spot where some great and leading event took place; and, for example, I am not prepared to reject the traditional site of the Sepulchre, because I find close to it an altar absurdly pretending to mark the very place where the soldiers divided the vestments.

With respect to the Church which is the immediate object of this Essay, Robinson has well and calmly stated the difficulties that at first sight present themselves to the mind of a traveller. "The place of our Lord’s Crucifixion, as we are expressly informed, was without the gate of the ancient city, and yet nigh to the city{2}. The Sepulchre, we are likewise told, was nigh at hand, in a garden, in the place where Jesus was crucified{3}. It is not, therefore, without some feeling of wonder that a stranger unacquainted with the circumstances, on arriving in Jerusalem at the present day, is pointed to the place of Crucifixion and the Sepulchre in the midst of a modern city, and both beneath the same roof. This latter fact, however unexpected, might occasion less surprise; for the Sepulchre was nigh to Calvary. But beneath the same roof are further shewn...various other places said to have been connected with the history of the Crucifixion, most of which it must have been difficult to identify, even after the lapse of only three centuries; and particularly so at the present day, after the desolation and numerous changes which the whole place has undergone{4}."

The difficulty thus laid down with respect to the locality, is fully discussed in the Holy City. The places, which are to this day so confidently and credulously pointed out within this Church, may be enumerated as follows: (1) the Holy Sepulchre. (2) The hole in the Bock in which the Cross was fixed. (3) The holes on each side in which the thieves’ crosses were fixed. (4) The spot upon which the Crucifixion or actual nailing to the Cross took place, which the Latins assert to have been done previously to the elevation of the Cross. (5) The stone upon which the Body was laid after it was taken down from the Cross, and where it was wrapped in linen with spices. (6) The place where the soldiers divided the vestments, (7) The spot where the friends of our Lord stood afar off during the Crucifixion. (8) Where the women stood during the anointing of the Body, &c. (9) Where the women stood over against the Sepulchre. (10) Where our Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene as a gardener. (11) Where He appeared to the Virgin Mary. (12) The Prison in which He was detained while the preparations were making for the Crucifixion. (13) The place where the Crosses were discovered by Helena. (14) The place where she sat while the digging was proceeding for that purpose. Beside these places, which are distinguished by altars and especial chapels, or else by stones let into the pavement, there are some relics removed from other places, such as the column of Flagellation, of Mocking, &c. Some of the places above enumerated have no connexion with the Scripture narration, but belong to legendary addition, as Nos. 11 and 12. But it will appear in the course of the following history, that with the exception of (1) The Sepulchre, (2) the hole for the Cross, and (13) the place where the Crosses were found, not one of the above sacred localities or stations are mentioned by any writer previous to the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, at the end of the eleventh century, and the hole for the Cross appears for the first time in the narration of Arculfus in the ninth century; for before this time we only hear of Golgotha (or Calvary) in general terms, which, as Robinson has observed, is scripturally connected with the site of the Sepulchre. The place where the Crosses were found belongs to the legend of their discovery, and thus, after all, with this exception, the original tradition of the Sepulchre stands alone and separated by many centuries from the heap of credulous rubbish which has so disgusted and repelled modern travellers and writers, and which has mainly induced them to seek arguments for the rejection of the Sepulchre itself. Many of the holy places or stations probably arose from the mediaeval practice of dramatising the sacred narratives, or presenting them in the most palpable forms of representation to the senses of the ignorant crowd We may therefore regard such stations as having been at first established as memorials, or altars, for the purpose of fixing the succession of leading events more certainly in the memory, and that in time they came, by an easy transition, to be considered as having been placed upon the very spots upon which each event happened.

I will now proceed to the Architectural History of the Church, the investigation of which has formed the subject of Lectures that I have delivered at Cambridge and at the Royal Institution in London, at various times, but has been considerably matured by the information which these Lectures have procured for me from the kindness of many of my friends; and, amongst others, from the excellent author of the Holy City, whose knowledge of the locality, and extensive researches into the literature of the subject, has been of great service to me. I have gladly, therefore, availed myself of his kind request that I would append these pages to his valuable history.

II.—CHURCH OF THE SEPULCHRE IN GENERAL.

THE buildings on this site have been repeatedly ruined and rebuilt, and otherwise altered from time to time; but the principal changes which we shall have to consider may be briefly recapitulated as follows{5}.

The first edifices that were erected to do honour to this place were those of Constantine, which were dedicated in the year 335. These were ruined in the Persian invasion of Chosroes, in 614, and restored by Modestus fifteen years afterwards. Jerusalem was taken by the Mahometans in 637; but the sacred buildings in question were not injured by them at that time. In 1010, they were, however, utterly and purposely destroyed by the order of the Kalif Hakem. Thirty years afterwards, permission was obtained by the Emperor Constantine Monomachus to rebuild them, which was effected under the Patriarch Nicephorus, about fifty years before the entry of the Crusaders.

They, during their reign in Jerusalem, greatly increased the buildings; and, after their expulsion, no important changes took place until the unhappy fire, which, in 1808, so greatly damaged the Church, as to necessitate the entire reconstruction of its central portions. All these successive changes I shall proceed to examine at length.

Each successive restoration of these buildings introduced changes of form and style, in accordance with the methods of building that happened to prevail at the moment; and we have, therefore, according to the statement just made, five distinct periods of the building to examine, namely, (1) the buildings of Constantine; (2) those of Modestus; (3) those of Monomachus; (4) those of the Crusaders; and, finally, (5) those that at present exist.

Now, although the historians relate that in the Persian invasion, and at the demolition by the Mahometans in 1010, the buildings upon this site were, as it were, uprooted from the earth; it must be remembered that the destruction of a complex mass of building, like that in question, is by no means so easy: nor is it ever effected by a hostile force, so as to obliterate the foundations, for the ruins of the vaults and walls necessarily protect the lower part of the buildings. When a building is taken down by friendly hands, the materials are care-fully removed as fast as they accumulate. But this systematic process is not likely to be carried on by men working under the influence of malicious violence, whose sole purpose is to disfigure, and render untenable, the object of their fury. They are satisfied when the perfect structure is converted into a misshapen heap of ruins. But those who, when the storm has passed, return with friendly hands to clear away the rubbish, and rebuild the fallen walls, are sure to find the original foundations, much of the lower part of the walls, and many of the vaults, still entire. The original plan of the buildings, therefore, can never be lost, under such circumstances; but it may be departed from during the rebuilding, for two opposite reasons. In the first place, the funds may not be sufficient to reconstruct the whole of the buildings, or even to construct the part of them which has been selected, on so magnificent a scale as before. Or, on the other hand, the funds may be so large as to tempt an increase of magnitude and grandeur. It is true, however, that buildings founded, as these are, upon a rock, require so little depth of foundation-building, that they are more easily eradicated, and afford less temptation for the employment of old foundations in rebuilding, than structures which are erected upon ground that requires deep trenches to be made, and massive subwalls to afford a footing for the superstructure. Such substructures necessarily escape a hostile destruction. In our present building, the original levelling and cutting down of the rock will be found to afford the best traces of the former dispositions. But all these causes have influenced, from time to time, the remarkable group of buildings which I propose to examine. The authorities from which our knowledge of the arrangements of the buildings are derived, are the numerous pilgrimages and chronicles of the middle ages; and, by comparing and collating these, and by a constant reference to the site, I hope to be able to shew, that a tolerably consistent architectural history of these vicissitudes of plan may be drawn out.

As the Churches in question form an exceedingly complex group, and we are necessarily better acquainted with the more recent structures, than with the older ones, we must take the history in a reverse order, and begin with the fourth period, namely, by describing the whole as it stood from the time of the Crusaders, until the fire of 1808{6}, which however has not affected the plan of the buildings.