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Sacred Geography.

CANAAN, OR THE HOLY LAND.*

Of the principal Buildings in, and about Jerusalem.

We now proceed with a description of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, which stands partly on the low ground, and partly on the mountain. It is not entered from the Strada Dolorosa, or Mournful Way; the traveller has to ascend the next street, and then, turning to the left, to proceed along a winding descent till he arrives at the large open court in front of this sacred edifice; where he will find, says Dr. Richardson, every thing his heart can wish in the form of crucifixes, carved shells, beads and bracelets, saints and sherbet; all exposed to sale, and the venders thereof sitting on the ground beside their wares.

The front of the church presents a singular mixture of eastern and western architecture; but the combination, however contrary to the rigid chastity of taste, produces an agreeable effect. Among the small columns of the front are two of verd-antique, and the aspect of the whole cannot be denied to possess a venerable richness, though it be destitute of regular beauty. The court is bounded by the wings of the convent: that on the right contains Mount Calvary, and other sacred places; that on the left, the Greek chapel, and anciently the belfry. The door of the church faces the court, and is on the side of the building. It is open only on certain days in the week, and certain hours in each day. To get it opened at any other time, it is necessary to have an order of the two convents, the Latin and the Greek, with the sanction of the governor of the city. When open, the door is always guarded by Turks, who exact a tribute from all who enter. Once admitted, the visiters may remain all night, if they please. The crowd of persons pressing for admittance on certain days is immense; and the Turks, who keep the door, treat them in the roughest manner, notwithstanding that they pay for admission;† squeezing and beating them about like so many cattle. It must be allowed, however, that they are often extremely riotous, and conduct themselves in a manner very unbecoming their character of pilgrims, approaching the sepulchre of their Lord and Saviour,

Having passed within these sacred walls, the attention is first directed to a large flat stone in the floor, a little within the door; it is surrounded by a rail, and several lamps hang suspended over it. The

* Continued from p. 203.

+ Mr. Buckingham paid 33 piastres.

VOL. II.

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pilgrims approach it on their knees, touch, and kiss it, and, prostrating themselves before it, offer up their prayers in holy adoration. This we are told is the stone on which the body of our Lord was washed and anointed, and prepared for the tomb. Turning to the left, and proceeding a little forward, you come into a round space immediately under the dome, surrounded with sixteen large columns that support the gallery above. In the centre of this space stands the Holy Sepulchre: it is inclosed in an oblong house, rounded at one end with small arcades or chapels for prayer in the outside of it, for the devotion of the Copts, the Abyssinians, the Syrian, Maronite, and other Christians, who are not, like the Roman Catholics, the Greeks, and the Armenians, provided with large chapels in the body of the church. At the other end it is squared off, and furnished with a platform in front, which is ascended by a flight of steps, having a small parapet wall of marble on each hand, and being floored with the same material. In the middle of this small platform stands a block of polished marble about a foot and a half square; on this stone sat the angel who announced the blessed tidings of the resurrection to Mary Magdalen, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James: "He is not here, he is risen, as he said: come, see the place where the Lord lay." Advancing a step, and taking off your shoes and turbans at the desire of the keeper, he draws aside the curtain, and stepping down and bending almost to the ground, you enter, by a low narrow door, into this mansion of victory, where Christ triumphed over the grave, and disarmed death of all his terrors.

The tomb exhibited is a sarcophagus of white marble, slightly tinged with blue; it is six feet one inch and three quarters long, three feet three quarters of an inch broad, and two feet one inch and a quarter deep, measured on the outside. It is but indifferently polished, and seems as if it had at one time been exposed to the pelting of the storm and the changes of the season, by which it has been considerably disintegrated: it is without any ornament, and is made in the fashion of a Greek sarcophagus, and not like the ancient tombs of the Jews, which we see cut in the rock for the reception of the dead; nor like those stone troughs, or sarcophagi, which were shewn to Dr. Richardson, and called the beds of the Lord Jesus, of Mary, of John, and of Zacharias. There are seven silver lamps constantly burning over it, the gifts of different potentates, to illuminate this scene of hope and joy. The sarcophagus occupies about one half of the sepulchral chamber, and extends from one end of it to the other. A space about three feet wide in front of it is all that remains for the reception of visiters, so that not above three or four can be conveniently admitted at a time.*

The accompanying plate, for which we are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Charles Taylor, shews not only the outer chamber, where the pilgrims are represented in acts of devotion, as is their custom, at the commemoration of the crucifixion and resurrection, but the inner chamber also, with the altar marking the place where the

* Richardson's Travels along the Mediterranean, &c. ii. pp. 319-322.

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body of Jesus was laid. The figures in this chamber are an Armenian, and a Coptic priest. The entrance is guarded by Turkish janissaries; and the pilgrims in the outer chambers, are from various eastern parts. The stone, which lies down, and which a pilgrim is kissing, is supposed to be that which blocked up the entrance at the time of the resurrection: be that as it may, it is of a size exactly fitted to the door-way of the sepulchre.

The whole of these sacred premises is ornamented with hangings of damask and gold, at the expence of the King of Spain, (we think Charles III.), who also so far patronised the convent, as to pay the arrears of its debt to the Turks, for permission to attend the sacred precincts. The paucity of pilgrims, during late years, having been insufficient to pay the expences of the place, the convent, of course, was distressed; and must have been abandoned, but for this royal generosity and zeal.

Having lately inspected a model of this building, says Mr. Taylor, brought from Jerusalem, by one of the British officers who accompanied Sir Sidney Smith, in his ever-memorable defence of Acre, I am led to think that Mr. Mayer, who made the drawing from which our plate is engraved, in order to shew the inner chamber advantageously, has made the entrance too large as it certainly is impossible, judging by that model, to see the altar in the inner chamber, as shown in the print.

The walls of the sepulchral chamber are of greenish marble, the species of that beautiful breccia vulgarly called verd-antique.*

Leaving this hallowed spot, the visiter is led to the place where Christ appeared to Mary Magdalen; to the "chapel of apparition," where he appeared to the Virgin; and then to the Greek chapel facing the sepulchre, in the centre of which the Greeks have set up a globe, to mark out the spot as the centre of the earth; thus transferring, as Dr. Richardson remarks, the absurd notions of their ancient heathen priests respecting the navel of the earth, from Delphi to Jerusalem. A dark, narrow stair-case of about twenty steps conducts the pilgrim up to Mount Calvary. Here are shewn the place where Christ was nailed to the cross, where the cross was erected, the hole in which the end was fixed, and the rent in the rock, all covered with marble, perforated in the proper places, so that the ancient recipient of the cross, and the rent in the rock may be seen and touched.

Descending from Calvary, the traveller enters the chapel of St. Helena, in the low rocky vault beneath which the cross is said to have been found. In this murky den, the discovery of the cross is celebrated in an appropriate mass by the Latins on the 3d of May. It is large enough to contain about thirty or forty persons, wedged in close array, and on that occasion it is generally crowded. The year that Dr. Richardson was at Jerusalem, it happened that the day on which the festival was to be celebrated by the Latins, was the same as that on which it was to be celebrated by the Greeks; and he witnessed all the tug of war between the ecclesiastical combatants,

Clarke's Travels, iv. p. 315.

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