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this day; nor has God ever suffered sinners to dwell long therein in peace, as is clear to one who reads through the whole Bible history, the chronicles, and the legends. But reason argues that even in the times of our first parent Adam there must have been some sort of oratory on the place Calvary on the mount of the Holy City, be cause as to Adam was revealed the Redeemer of the human race, and the manner and time of the Redemption, so also to him was revealed the, place thereof. Since, then, he could not behold the Redeemer in his own lifetime, and had not strength to remain alive till the days of Christ, he splendidly honoured the place of the redemption, and frequently visited and prayed there, both he and his sons. At last, when he saw that the time of his death was at hand, he removed from Hebron, where he had a dwelling, went up to the place Calvary, and there paid the debt of death, because he knew the Christ, the second Adam, would in that place do away with the death which he had brought into the world. His sons bore his body to Hebron, to the double cave, all save the head, which remained in the place Calvary, wherefore his sons treated that place with respect. We may believe also that as Shem, the son of Noah, had a temple here after the flood, even so there was an oratory here before the Flood. Here, also, Abraham sacrificed a ram instead of his son. This we are told by Hebrew tradition, by Ambrose and Chrysostom, by Jerome and the chronicles. And although the commentary on Matt. xxvii. says that those who assert that Adam was buried at Calvary do not speak the truth, yet this does not contradict what we say, for we admit that his body was buried in Hebron, as we are told in Josh. xiv., but his head remained on Mount Calvary, God having so appointed it, and Adam, when dying, having begged his sons so to do. From all this, I conclude that even before

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the flood there was at the very least an oratory and a temple on the site of the city of Jerusalem, not without human habitations. The place Calvary was ever held to be especially sacred down to the times of the Romans, who, out of hatred for the Jews, appointed it to be the place for the torture and execution of criminals. But by Christ's death there all its holiness was restored to the place, and will hereafter abide there for ever. For the place itself see pages 115 and 130.

According to the diversity of persons and times, this city has received divers names. It is called `Salem' in Gen. xiv. 18; and by the poets it is sometimes called 'Solima'; and 'Jebus' in Josh. xv. 8; `Jerusalem' in Judg. xix. 10; 'Hiero Solyma" in Matt. ii: and Luke; 'The Threshing-floor of Ornan,' i Chron. xxi. 18; and so also it is called by Jerome 'On the distances of places'; ' Ariel,' by Isa. xxix.; 'The Daughter of Sion,' Zech: ix. g ; 'The Bloody City,' Ezek. xxii. 2; 'Sought out, a City not forsaken,' Isa. lxii. 12; 'A Strong City,' Isa. xxvi. i ; 'The City of God,' Ps. lxxvi.; 'The Throne of the Lord,' Jer. iii. 17; 'Great among the Nations,' Lam. i. i; 'Princess among the Provinces,' Lam. i. i; 'The Valley of Vision,' Isa. xxii. i, on which passage consult De Lyra's Commentary; 'Sodom,' Rev. ii.; 'The Tower,' Matt. xxi. 33; and Aelia, from the Emperor Aelius Hadrian. Moreover, Jerome very often-one may say always-calls it Halia; and at this day the Greeks call it Halia and Capitolia, as does also Ptolemy. It is like wise called ' Algariza,' that is, 'The Exceeding High Mountain,' by Eusebius. The Saracens call it ' A Kossa.' But we Latins call it either Jerusalem, or Jerusolyma, or the Holy City, or we give the whole city the name of a part, thereof, calling it the Holy Sepulchre.

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This city has always been less than the largest, yet greater than the lesser cities, and at this day it is of such a size as not to be overgrown through greatness, nor yet straitened through smallness, being no smaller than our own Augsburg in Suabia. On this subject see page 226 a. The extent of the walls whereby it is now enclosed is the same as it was left by the Emperor Aelius Hadrianus, as will be proved hereafter. For its extent see above, page 225 a.

In the old time there were many gates leading into this city, but we gather from the Scriptures that there were eight main gates, and if we read of there having been more, this is caused either by one and the same gate having more than one name, or by there having been little posterns beside the main gates, to which posterns these names belonged. In modern times I have not been able to find more than five gates. Toward the east it has the Golden Gate, which now is blocked up, and for an account of which see above, page 141 a. Between the east and the south there is the Dung Gate, described above on page 226 a. On the south side it has the Fountain Gate, through which one goes down to the fountain of Siloam, To the west it has the Merchants' Gate, or Fish Gate, spoken of above on page 92 b. On the north is the Gate of Ephraim, which is called St. Stephen's Gate. There is a long distance between the Fish Gate and St. Stephen's Gate, because the Fish Gate stands near the corner where the south wall joins the west wall, [256 a] and all along the west wall there is no other gate till one comes to St. Stephen's Gate, which stands in the north wall, near the corner where it joins the east wall. St. John in the Revelation, ch. xxi., saw twelve gates in the heavenly Jerusalem, a number which this city never possessed. Along the circuit of the walls and battlements there

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once were towers, whose ruins we can trace; but the Saracens have cast them down, and have built other towers within the city, near the mosques, for use in their ritual; for they do not trouble themselves about the fortifi cations of cities, but watch exceeding narrowly over the entrances into the country. The wall and battlements of old used to measure thirty-three furlongs round about, as Josephus tells us, Book V., ch. viii., and of old it was strong and double, as may be read on page 225 b. It has ditches on the west and north sides; on the east side it has the Valley of Jehoshaphat; on the south side it has the Valley of Sion.

Within, the city is hilly and uneven, being built upon a height. The Mount Sion overtops all the rest, and on the northern slope of Mount Sion stands a great part of the city. On a shoulder of Mount Sion rises Mount Calvary, which supports the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, together with a great part of the city. There also is the Mount Moriah, whereon stands the temple of the Lord and the main part of the city; wherefore one goes up and down everywhere throughout the city. But these mounts do not run up into lofty peaks, but are themselves the wide-topped peaks of the great main hill whereon the city stands, which causes it to be uneven. This entire hill is spoken of in the seventy-eighth Psalm: `And He led them into the mount of His salvation, the mount which His right hand had won.' As the city of Basle is hilly, even so is this city; for in Basle St. Leonard's Hill answers to Mount Sion, St. Peter's Hill to Mount Calvary, and St. Martin's Hill to Mount Moriah-albeit, in shape and configuration there is much difference between the one and the other.

A great part of the city, as aforesaid, is taken up by those two often-mentioned and most famous temples-the

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temple of the Lord, which they call Solomon's temple, and the temple of the Holy Sepulchre-together with their roomy courtyards, and the buildings adjoining them. Besides these, there are scattered throughout the city many chapels of heretics, many Saracen mosques, Jewish synagogues, and Samaritan tabernacles. The main streets are vaulted over, and beneath these vaults on either side stand merchants' shops or cooks' kitchens; in the other streets dwell working people.

The houses of the city are, as a rule, built with stone walls, though some poor men's hovels are made of mud. I have seen some large and goodly houses therein, but a great part of the city is laid waste, and the houses stand in ruins without any inhabitants. For this cause the dead bodies of camels, horses, asses, dogs, and the like are not taken without the walls, but are cast into the waste places within the walls among the ruined houses. Yet in the parts where men dwell there are many people gathered together from every nation under heaven, as we read in Acts ii. 5. Indeed, there are more than five hundred Jews, and more than a thousand Christians, of every sect and country; but the fewest of all are they of the Latin rite. It has no water of its own, save what falls upon it from heaven, or what they laboriously bring thither through watercourses, as I have told on page 249 b. In the city there are many places to store up water-pools, reservoirs, and endless cisterns and gutters-so that there is a suffi ciency of water therein. The King of Egypt, the Soldan, is lord there, and he appoints governors to rule the people of the land, dragomans [b] to rule strangers and pilgrims, both Christian and Jewish, and Mamelukes to rule the men of war; thus he rules the people with a civil power which is despotic. All who read the Scriptures and books of history know that this city from its beginning even until

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now has undergone many misfortunes; it has been often burned; one nation has overthrown and cast out another; and often it has been ruined down to the very foundations. It was laid waste by Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Baby lonians; after that by Asobeus, King of the Egyptians; next by Antiochus; and after him by Pompey. After these, Herod the Great and Sosius took the town, but did it no hurt. Afterwards, after the Lord's passion, Titus utterly overthrew it, and cast it down, breaking up the foundations thereof. Yet he left some of the strongest towers and the west wall standing, that posterity might see how strongly fenced a city had been won by the valour of the Romans, and to serve as a castle for those whom he decided to leave there as a garrison for the country. At this destruction the misery of the city and of her children was so great that no man can read the account thereof given by Josephus without shuddering. The cause of this disaster and massacre was the cruelty of Florus the prefect, who had plagued the Jews in Jerusalem with countless torments, till in their rage they essayed to rebel against the Romans, and, rising. in revolt, slew many of the Romans, and drove Cestius, the Governor of Syria, out of the province. But in the city the Jews themselves were partisans, were divided into three factions, and, before the Romans came, cruelly murdered one another within the city, set it on fire, and strove with one another day and night in implacable sedition. The determining cause of all these ills was the beheading of John the Baptist, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, and. the murder of James the Apostle, all of which is set forth at length in a piteous discourse by Josephus in his book on the 'Jewish War.'

After the destruction of the city, which was wrought in the forty-second year after the Lord's passion, the place

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became a den of robbers and murderers for many years, down to the time of the Emperor Aelius Hadrianus, who, hearing of the disorder of the place, came hither, A.D. 124, cast down the part that had been rebuilt, and drove out and slew the evil-doers. Yet, as he afterwards made up his, mind that a city ought to stand there, he came back again, A.D. 139, and both rebuilt and enlarged the city, enclosing within its walls the places of the Lord's passion and resurrection, as will be more clearly explained here after, and made a new city, which he called Aelia after his own name.

After this last building we do not read of its being utterly destroyed, but often of its being partly ruined and its people led into captivity; nor has it ever been moved from its place, as Gregory seems to declare in his homily on the text, `Jesus, when he saw the city, wept'; but it has been enlarged, as will be told presently, and has often been told already.

Now, albeit this holy city has been afflicted by many unheard of disasters, nevertheless neither its beginning nor its position have ever been forgotten, but it abides for ever as an eternal testimony among all the nations of the earth. Far different is the case of the other most famous cities of the world, to wit, Rome and Troy; for no one ever could learn with certainty who was the founder of the city of Rome, because of the disagreement of those who treat of its origin, as we are told by the writer of the 'Wonders of the World' that Sallust says that it was built by the Trojans, Eusebius that it was built by Romulus, other writers that it was built by others, and so no man knows at what time it began to be a city; whereas the founder of our holy Jerusalem and the time of its founda tion can be proved from Holy Scripture, as aforesaid.

But admitting that the parricide Romulus did found Rome

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by plunder and robbery, as Orosius tells us of him, yet was it founded a long while after Jerusalem, in the time of Hezekiah, King of Judah, [251 a] two thousand two hun dred and thirty years after the foundation of the city of Jerusalem, seven hundred and fifty-one years before the birth of Christ, in the year of the world 4484. It is a wonder that the origin of so great a city should. be unknown. Jerome in his epistle to Paulinus alludes to this when he says, `This age brought forth a notable marvel, and one unheard of in former times, that men who had entered into so great a city should seek something that was outside of the same.' Troy, according to Homer (`Iliad,' iv. 44), was the noblest of all cities beneath the sun and the starry firmament, yet it has been so destroyed that Ovid could say, `Cornfields now wave where Troy, once stood.' And what is more, no man now can tell, where Troy used to stand. That great Troy, once the bulwark of all Asia, has been so utterly ruined and brought to nought that neither its corpse nor any trace thereof can be seen; moreover, they say that the place beside the Hellespont, whereon some suppose Troy to have stood, is out of all proportion too narrow for a famous city to have been able to find room there. But not thus is it with our Jerusalem, which was founded four hundred and eighty- three years before Troy, and is a notable city to this day. Troy was founded in the days of Ajoth (? Ehud), the judge in Israel (Judg. iii.); some say that it was built beside the Hellespont, and some in Dardania by one named Tros; it was destroyed in the two hundred and fiftieth year after its foundation, at the time when Abdon judged Israel, about which judge see Judg. xii. For an account of Troy see Part II, page 174.

Now, Jerusalem is one of the most ancient cities in the world, as is clear from what is said on page 255, being

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older than Treves by one thousand and eight years, than Troy by one thousand four hundred and eighty-three years, than Rome by two thousand two hundred and thirty years, and it endures even to this day, because the Lord hath chosen it. Wherefore it is said in the Psalm, `For the Lord hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habita tion. This is My rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it' (Ps. cxxxii. 13, 15). Also in 2 Chron. vi: 5, 'Since the day that I brought forth My people out of the land of Egypt I chose no city among all the tribes of Israel save this.' And in another place, 'I have chosen Jerusalem that My name 'might be there for ever.' Yet someone might say, 'I admit that Jerusalem was a chosen and holy city before the Lord's death; but after so great a crime was done there it does not seem to deserve to be called holy, but rather profane and unclean.' This is answered by Jerome in his Epistle to Haedibius on the subject of the Lord's cry upon the cross, where he says, 'Let no man think it strange that after the Saviour's death Jerusalem should be called the Holy City, since even to the time of its destruction the Apostles always entered the temple and performed the ceremonies of the law for the sake of the believing Jews. The Lord so loved Jerusalem that He wept and lamented over it, and when hanging on the cross said, "Father, forgive them!"' Thus Jerome. Moreover, in the Epistle of Paula and Eustochium to Mar cella he discusses this matter at great length, and says much in praise of the Holy Land and of Jerusalem.

The city of Jerusalem is rendered glorious and holy by its temples, to which to a great extent it owes its size; for

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if the two temples with their adjoining chapels and mosques were taken away, nought would be left save a sorry village, and this thing may be seen in our own cities also. If the churches, monasteries, and chapels, with all the buildings appertaining thereto, were taken away from Cologne, only a small town would be left; and so likewise is it at Venice; were the monasteries and churches taken away, there would not be much of the town left.

Now that I am about to speak about the temples of Jerusalem, I must tell you first about the oldest one. We know from Holy Writ, that when the Lord promised the land of Canaan to our fathers, He hinted to them that there was in that land a place which He would choose for a temple and for sacrifices, and which in [b] His own good time He would show to them; wherefore we read (Deut. xii.), 'When ye shall have come into the land which the Lord your God shall give you, overthrow all idols from every place. Ye shall not make altars and sacrifices in every place, but unto the place which the Lord your God shall choose to put His name there, even unto His habitation shall ye seek, and thither shalt thou come, and thither shall ye bring and offer all your burnt- offerings and vows. Take heed that ye offer not your burnt-offerings in every place, but only in the place which the Lord shall choose; thither shall ye go up with your first fruits and your tithes, and there you shall confess yourself before the Lord your God.' Where this place was the Lord did not declare until the time of King David, to whom an angel showed the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite on Mount Moriah. This Araunah was a Gentile, a Jebusite, who was rich, and owned a great part of the city. So David bought from him the thresh ing-floor which had been shown to him, and thereat the bidding of an angel he set up an altar, and charged Solo-

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mon his son to build a temple in that same place. See 2 Sam. xxiv.; i Chron. xxi.; and especially 2 Chron. iii.

[258 a] So in the fourth year of his reign Solomon began to build that temple which was famous throughout the world, and finished it in eight years, as is told in 2 Chron. ii. This temple was built in the year 4169 from the creation of the world, 1033 before the birth of Christ, 1480 after the coming of the children of Israel out of Egypt. The length of this temple was sixty geometrical cubits, its width twenty, its height six hundred and twenty. He caused all the inside to be gilded with plates of gold, and to be paved with precious marble; moreover, there was a brazen altar built therein, measuring twenty cubits in length. See a fine description of this temple in Cusa `On * * *,¹ Book 1X., ch. iv.

The vessels which were needed for the service of the temple were all made of the finest gold. Moreover, Solomon brought into it much gold and silver, which David had consecrated to it. After all had been duly accomplished he dedicated the temple to God in a splendid service; and brought into it the ark of the covenant of the Lord, wherein were only the two tables of the covenant, the pot of manna, and Aaron's rod. Hereafter it was not permitted to offer sacrifice anywhere save in this temple; albeit, the people for a long time afterwards used to offer sacrifice on high places, a sin for which the kings of Jeru salem are often reproved, namely, that while the temple was standing they nevertheless did not take away the high places. Now, after four hundred and forty-two years had passed since the building of the temple, Jeremiah the pro phet, seeing that its end was at hand, took out from it the ark of the covenant, carried it across Jordan to the valley

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beneath Mount Abarim, which is called Galmoab, as has already been told on page 243 b, where by his prayers he caused it to be enclosed in the rock. Writing with his finger on the rock, he imprinted thereon the name of God in four letters, and made a seal like one that is carved with iron. This name of God is so hidden by a cloud that from without no man can find the place, neither can any man read that name to this day, nor will any man to the end of the world, neither can any man bring forth the ark from thence save only Moses and Aaron. This we are told in 2 Maccab, ii., and in the Speculum Historiale before the end of the story of Tobit. After the ark, which was the glory of the temple, had been taken away, came Nebu chadnezzar, who took Jerusalem, with Zedekiah the king, burned it, together with the temple of our Lord, as we read in 2 Kings iv., and led away the people captive to Babylon. After this the place of the city and temple remained desolate for seventy years, until the time of Darius, King of the Persians, who suffered the Jews to rebuild their temple, a work which was finished in the reign of Cyrus, forty-six years later, as we read in John ii. 20. But this temple was not like the first temple in splendour; wherefore the Jews who had seen the first temple wept, as we read in Ezra iii. 12. Now, these foundations were laid in the time of the princes Zerobabel and Salatiel, five hundred and twenty-five years before the birth of Christ. This temple, albeit often plundered and desecrated by the Gentiles, and its wooden parts burned, yet stood entire down to the golden age of our Lord Jesus Christ, who preached wondrously therein, and worked miracles, as the sacred history of the Gospel tells us. It is clear from Mark xiii. I, 2, etc., that this temple was a stately building raised aloft upon great stones. It remained standing for forty-two years, after Christ's passion.

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The whole time, from the second year of Darius, King of Persia, when the foundation of the temple was laid, down to its destruction by Titus, is reckoned to be five hundred and ninety years. From the foundation of Solomon's temple down to its final destruction by Titus, is reckoned to be eleven hundred and two years.

As for the reckoning of these years: first, from Adam to the flood was two thousand two hundred and forty-two years; from the flood to Abraham was nine hundred and forty-two; from Abraham to Moses, who brought Israel out of Egypt, is reckoned five hundred years; from Moses to Solomon, and the first building.of the temple, five hundred and twelve years; from Darius to the time of Christ's preaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, was five hundred and forty-eight years. All these years, up to the time of Christ's preaching, make five thousand two hundred and eighteen. Isidorus says that when the Jewish kingdom and priesthood was brought to an end, Christ was born in Bethlehem in the forty-second year of Caesar Augustus, who would then have had fifteen years left if he reigned fifty-seven years. After him Tiberius reigned for twenty- two years, and in his fifteenth year Christ was baptized, being then thirty years old. Christ was crucified in the nineteenth year of Tiberius's reign. Ambrosius says `From the creation of the world to the foundation of Jerusalem was four thousand four hundred and eighty-four years; and from the foundation of Rome to the nativity of Christ was seven hundred and fifteen years.'

When Titus besieged Jerusalem he first of all burned the temple and afterwards the whole city. He overthrew the walls of the temple down to their very foundations, caused the mount whereon it stood to be cut away, and ordered it to be cast down into the brook Cedron, and filled up the ditches thereof, levelling it with the earth, as we read in

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the `Jewish War,' Book VII., ch. xvi., and in many other places.

[B] 'Josephus says that in this utter destruction of the city eleven hundred thousand Jews perished by famine and the sword, and that another hundred thousand prisoners were publicly sold for slaves, because the city was full of Jews who had collected together to keep the Feast of the Passover. No Christian was present at these disasters, as we read in Eusebius of Caesarea's 'Ecclesi astical History,' Book III., ch. iv., towards the end. The Church, which had been gathered together at Jerusalem, was bidden by the voice of God to leave that city, and remove to a town named Pella, for which see above, page 244, beyond the Jordan, to the end that, after all just and holy men had removed thither out of the city, there might be full scope for the Divine vengeance to be wreaked both upon the sacrilegious city and on the impious people by the blotting out of their country and its destruction. When the Romans left the city.of Jerusalem, after having levelled it with the ground, the Jews who had been in hiding-places came back thither, built huts, and set up a lowly oratory in the place where the temple once stood. The Church also came back thither from Pella to serve God there; but the Jews, whose spirit even then was not sufficiently broken by their misfortunes, raised riots, whereby they daily vexed the faithful people and Gentiles who dwelt there, for they were exceeding cruel murderers, and shed fresh blood over Jerusalem, which now lay felled to the earth and weltering in gore. In this wretched state the place remained for about seventy-six years, when Aelius Hadrianus became Emperor in the year of our Lord 119. Hearing that Jerusalem, which had been dead, was again stirring, he hastily crossed the seas, and came thither. He found there many people, both Christians and Jews,

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who were at variance with one another because of the difference of their religion, while he, being a Gentile and an idolater, hated both religions alike. Wherefore in the place where the Jews had built their oratory, where once the ark of the Lord had stood, he placed a statue in his own image that he might render the place loathsome to the Jews; while in the place of the rock of Calvary, where the crucifixion took place, he set up a statue of Venus, and in the cave of the Lord's sepulchre an idol of Jupiter, that he might make those places hateful to the Christians. As for the murderers and robbers whom he found there, he put them to the sword, drove them away, and sold many of them for slaves, broke down the forts and walls, which had been left standing at the time of the destruction. of the city, ruined everything, and went his way, leaving there behind him governors of the province. When these men turned their back upon the province that they might: return to Jerusalem with their army, the Jews gathered, together to the place where Jerusalem had stood, and, having taken counsel together, tore up the column of Caesar, which bore his image, and cast it out of the temple. When the Emperor learned this, he was wroth. He set aside all his other business, and returned to Jerusalem in haste, slew what Jews he found there, and sold many of them for slaves, drove them all a long way beyond the borders of the Holy Land, and by a public interdict for bade any Jews to enter into that land. As he saw that the place was meet for a city, he became milder of mood -more fierce than ever against the Jews, but kindlier toward the Christians. He cleared the site, caused the ruined walls on the west side to be cast into the ditch, levelled the ground, enclosed the place of the crucifixion and the rock of the holy sepulchre within a wall which he built.round the city, and caused a temple of Venus and

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Jupiter to be built thereon. Above the Fish Gate, or Merchants' Gate, he set up a sow or pig carved in marble for the confusion of the Jews, that none of them might presume to. enter there. The city remained in this state for about one hundred and eighty years. Since the place of the temple of the Lord was rendered hateful and strange [259 a] to those who did not worship idols by reason of the statue of Caesar, so also was the place of the Lord's crucifixion and. resurrection, so much so that those places became forgotten. But in the year 38 (sic), when Constantine the Great had made himself Emperor, and had become a Christian, Helena his mother found the cross, cast out the idols, and built a temple over the holy places. The condition of the Christians was now im proved, while that of the Jews became daily worse, and so the Christians served God in Jerusalem with great peace for sixty years. In the year of our Lord 363, that disturber of the peace of the faithful, Julian, came to the throne, who was an apostate from the true faith and from the profession of religion. When he heard that there was at Jerusalem a stately church and a great assemblage of Christians, he came thither, and took an opportunity of displaying his hatred of the Christians. He laid hands upon St. Cyriack, the bishop of the holy city of Jerusalem, who had found the holy cross, and crucified him because he had preached of the cross's glory. When the Jews heard this, they came together with joy and merry-making; they gained Caesar's favour by many gifts, and made the Christians even more hateful at his court. After thinking how he might vex the Christians, he determined to exalt the Jews; and calling together the leading men and magnates of the Jews into his presence, he asked them why they did not offer sacrifice to their God, seeing that their law commanded them so to do. They, thinking that

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they had found an opportune time, answered: 'We cannot offer sacrifice according to our law save only in the temple of Jerusalem, not here or there. We beg you of your clemency to grant us leave to build a temple in the right place, and therein we will offer sacrifice for your safety and that of the empire.' When the Jews received leave to rebuild the temple, they rose to such a pitch of frenzy that they spread it abroad everywhere that Julian, that most wicked apostate, was the prophet promised to them in their law. So the Jews flocked together from all places and countries, and set to work on the place where the temple had been burnt. The Emperor granted to them an officer of his court to see the building carried out, public and private money was given to it, and the work was pursued with all diligence. Meanwhile, the Jews began to insult our people, and, as though the days of their kingdom had come back, they threatened the Christians fiercely, dealt cruelly with them, and were altogether puffed up with over-weening pride.

The Church at Jerusalem was at that time governed by Bishop Cyril, a holy man. Now, when they had opened up the foundations, they brought thither great stones, lime, mortar, and wood, and nothing was lacking so that on the morrow they might not cast forth the old foundations and lay the new ones. But Cyril, the bishop, after careful consideration, either from what he had read in the prophecies of Daniel about those times, or else from what the Lord had prophesied in the Gospel, firmly declared that in nowise could it come to pass that the Jews should lay one stone upon another in that place. All was anxious expectancy. Faint-hearted Christians feared, strong ones had no doubt but what the Jews would carry out their design. Miracle! Lo, on the one night which remained ere the work should be begun, a great earthquake took place,

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and not only were the foundation-stones scattered far and wide, but the whole of the buildings on the place were levelled with the ground; the houses wherein the Jews dwelt with the workmen were cast down, and those within them crushed to death. When day dawned, and they believed that they had escaped from this disaster, the rest of the people came running to search for those who had been crushed. Now, the house was sunk down in the lower parts of the temple, having an approach between two colonnades, both of which were overthrown, wherein the iron tools and other things needful for the work were kept. From this place there [b] suddenly flashed forth a ball of fire, which ran down the street, burning and slaying the Jews whom it met, and moving to and fro. This it frequently did, again and again, throughout the whole of that day, and by its avenging flames restrained the rash attempts of the obstinate people. Then with exceeding great fear and trembling all who were present were forced by their terror to confess that Christ was the only true God. Lest this should appear beyond belief, on the following night there appeared on the clothes of all the Jews so plain a mark of the holy cross that even those who in their unbelief tried to wash it away could in nowise do so. Thus both the Jews and the Gentiles were made afraid, so that they left the place and the works which they had begun and went back to their own homes full of confusion.¹ From that time forth the Jews have

Commenting hereon, Sir J. F. Stephen remarks: `The principal witnesses are Ammianus Marcellinus; some ecclesiastical historians, as Socrates and Sozomenes, who lived long afterwards; Ambrose and Chrysostom, who mention the matter very briefly, and of whom Ambrose was living at a distance; and Gregory Nazianzen, who gives a full account of the matter, and was in the neighbourhood at the time.-'Horae Sabbaticae.' Macmillan and Co.; 1892.

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never dared to attempt any building on the site of the temple. So the place stood for a long while without any temple. Now, as to when and by whom this temple, which stands at the present day upon the holy threshing-floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, was built many men have wondered. The writer of the Speculum Historiale, when speaking of the rebuilding of the temple after its burning, says: 'No man knows who built the temple of the Lord, which now is called Bethel.' Some say that it was built by Helena after the finding of the cross, together with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; some by Heraclius, when he brought the cross back in triumph from Persia; some by Justinian, some by a certain King of Egypt in honour of Halachibis-that is to say, 'God Most High.' That this is true I have found faithfully declared in a truthful history, the `History of Antoninus,'¹ Part 11., titulus xiii., ch. iv., § 4. In the year of our Lord 619, two hundred and forty-three years after Julian, the Emperor Heraclius, after having reigned and governed the empire prosperously for many years, brought his reign to a bad end, for he lapsed into the Monothelite heresy, and on the death of his wife defiled himself by incest; wherefore Hamor,² King of Egypt, the successor of Mahomet, entered Syria and Palestine with countless forces of Arabs, and snatched everything out of the hands of the Christians. During these disorders, the holy city of Jerusalem was

² Omar.

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taken by the infidels, and he made the Christian people therein subject to him. While Hamor was sojourning in Jerusalem, Sempronianus, the Christian Bishop of Jerusalem, became familiar with him, so much so that Hamor entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with him to see its decoration. While he was conversing with the bishop, Hamor asked him where the place was on which once stood the temple which had been destroyed together with the city by the Roman prince Titus. The bishop led him to the threshing-floor of Araunah, which then had been covered with common houses, and pointed out to him the place of the Lord's temple by some traces of the old work which still remained. Hamor gave orders that the place of the threshing-floor should be cleared, assigned a sufficient sum of money to meet the expenses, and set workmen to rebuild the temple. But when the foundations were laid, they presently sunk out of sight, and the walls could not be raised. While Hamor was wondering at this, he was told by a certain soothsayer that as long as a certain lofty cross remained standing upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple, the building would not hold together, but that if that cross were taken away the temple would stand. The Christians had set up a lofty cross on the Mount of Olives, over against the city, and often prayed beneath it. Their prayers, by virtue of the cross, were so powerful that the infidels could never build up the temple of their own perfidy save when the cross was taken away and the prayers had ceased. Had the Christians been brave enough to have preserved that cross from the infidels, this temple never would have been built; for I believe that the cross was set up by the saints for a sign of protection to the city of Jerusalem, lest temples of a strange worship should be set up therein. I can boldly declare that had this temple not been built, the Christians never would have

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lost Jerusalem and their own church; for the Saracens are so jealously fond of this temple of theirs, that while it stands the Christians can have no peace in Jerusalem: wherefore it would have been better to tear it up from its foundations than to dedicate it to the name of Christ, as has often been done. The aforesaid cross is described . . . the account of the temple follows. So (Hamor) finished this temple in no very long space of time, and endowed it with great. possessions. This temple stands in its place at this day, and has stood for more than eight hundred years. It has never been destroyed by anyone, but at first it was an oratory of the Saracens; afterwards, when the Christians began to bear rule in the land, they dedicated the temple to Christ, whereas they had better have ground it to powder and utterly done away with it, seeing that it is the church which caused the loss of Jerusalem. Again, when the Saracens took the city, they brought back the temple to the use of their worship, and thus from time to time the temple has come into the hands now of the one party, and now of the other, and at this day the Saracens hold it in exceeding high honour, as I shall show. Thus it is, since this temple was built by the infidels, albeit I have often read in little hooks of the pilgrims, that it was built by the blessed Helena.. But when I looked narrowly at the [260 a] temple, this did not seem to be true, seeing that it is altogether built in the infidel fashion, and has not the shape of a Christian church, for its main door opens from the east, a thing which I have never seen in the churches of Christ.

The temple of the Lord, built by Hamor, King of Egypt, upon the threshing-floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, whereon

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Solomon built a house of the Lord, is a building which is not equal to that most famous ancient structure of Solomon. The infidels call it Halachibis, learned Christians call it Bethel, common and unlearned Christians call it Solomon's temple. It is a noble and exceeding costly building, great and round, after the fashion of a great and wide tower. Enclosing the round part there is another wall built upon the ground, which wall goes round about the whole temple, and between it and the temple there is a wide space. This wall supports one side of a vault all round, the other part of which vault rests upon the wall of the temple itself, or rather upon columns from which the higher part of the temple rises up; for within there is a circle of marble columns, above whose capitals arches reach all round the circuit ; and above the arches there is built a high wall all round the circuit. Now, the outer wall, which encloses the columns within itself, is as high as the columns themselves, and from it, as I have said, a vault arches over to the columns. All round the circuit in the outer wall there are great oblong glazed windows, like those in churches, and the space between one window and another is as great as the window itself. This space on the outside is painted in mosaic in an exceeding costly fashion, so that the field of the picture gleams with gold, while the picture itself consists of palm-trees or olive-trees, or figures of cherubim, for they will not suffer any other pictures or carvings on their mosques. The higher part of the temple, which rises from the columns which stand within, is built up high in the air, as though it grew out of the aforesaid wide surrounding aisle. In this tipper part there are continuous windows all round, each touching the other; but these windows are shorter and smaller than those in the lower story. On the top it has a vaulted roof covered with lead, which once was gilded, as can well be seen at the

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present day. On the very top of the roof there stands a horned moon, with the horns uppermost, such as they put upon all their mosques; for on the top of all their churches or mosques they set a moon on its back like a boat. One interpretation of this is that the Mahometans try to walk along a middle path, so as neither to appear to be Christians nor Jews, and yet to have some connection with both. The Jews put nothing particular over their synagogues, and we do not read of Solomon's temple having had any device on the top; but Christians from their first beginning have set up a cross with a cock on the spires of their churches. So in order to differ from both, the Saracens have cast away the cross and have retained the cock on the top of their buildings, without the cross; but as even with the cock they seemed to be imitating the Christians, they have changed the cock into a horned moon lying on its back, an easy change, because a cock with his head and tail set up has the shape of a moon on its back. Wherefore, wheresoever there are cocks upon churches, they say that they are moons. So likewise in all their rites they have made certain alterations, that they may be unlike us. Another reason is on account of Mahomet, who was altogether lunatical and given up to wanton pleasure, to which the moon influences men beyond all other stars, seeing that it is of a moist nature, so that even the sea ebbs and flows in obedience to the moon's motion. Other reasons may be given, derived from the laws of Mahomet, as, for example, that God has given them the moon on its back for an ensign, because their law is void in its higher parts, even as a moon on its back is without grace, and so forth, turned away from the sun, ever empty, dark, and void; it takes away the sun's brightness from us, because it comes between us and the sun; it is the most wandering of all the planets; in the harmony of heaven its note is the

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deepest; it holds a wandering and uncertain course among the wandering stars; its orbit is the smallest of all; and it favours the wild beasts of the night. All these points agree with the law of Mahomet, which has no reason in its higher parts, but remains dark, being turned away from the light of Christ, yet has light on the other side, for in many respects the law of the Alcoran bears splendid testimony to the truth, more especially with regard to the blessed Virgin Mary. They call Christ Rucholla, which means the'Word of God,' the 'Breath of God,' or the 'Spirit of God,' words which, when well and piously interpreted, are full of holy awe.

Now, above the vault which runs round about the temple below the higher range of windows, there is a walk all round, upon which stand their servants of the mosque, who call, out the hours of the day and night, and hang out lighted lamps at certain hours. All these things I clearly and distinctly saw on the outside of the temple, when I looked at it from the Soldan's new mosque (page 227 b).

The court of the temple, and the whole of the area or open space all round about it, is paved with white and polished marble, and is so clean that when one stands upon the Mount of Olives and looks at the temple it seems to stand in a pool of quiet whitish water. At the south end of the courtyard, where the stone paving ceases, there is a delightful grove of olive-trees planted to supply oil to the temple lamps, whereof more than seven hundred hang in the temple. All these things I saw with my eyes from the outside, but what it is like within I have not seen, though I have been able to guess with some probability. from the outward form of the temple, and from the other mosques which I have entered; for within it has no sanctuary to contain their [b] relics, or in which either sacrament or

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relics might be put, seeing that they have neither sacraments nor relics. Yet I have read in some chronicle that the feet and hands of Mahomet are kept there, but that the rest of his body was devoured by swine. In this profane temple there is no altar, no image either painted or carved, no wooden seats, benches, or stalls, but the whole pavement of various hues of polished marble can everywhere be seen, and the walls within are decorated with Greek work, even as they are without, so that nothing stands against the walls of the temple all the way round, and there is nothing at all within, save that there are lighted lamps hanging down from the vault above. But some say that in the midst of the temple there rises out of the pavement a rock, which is fenced round about with iron lattice-work on every side, and that no Saracen or infidel dares or presumes to go near to it; yet they come and make pilgrimages from distant lands, devoutly wishing to visit and behold that rock, and because of that rock, in their common talk, they call the temple itself the Holy Rock. They say that many great things have been done upon that rock, for in the first place it was, upon it that Melchisedek offered bread and wine (Gen. xiv.), and the patriarch Jacob slept there, with this rock beneath his head, and from it saw in his dreams the ladder whose top reached to heaven, and the angels ascending and descending on it; and in the morning he anointed it with oil (Gen. xxviii.). Moreover, it was upon this rock that David saw the angel standing with his unsheathed sword, as we read in I Chron. xxi. Now, when the priests used to lay the burnt offerings upon. that rock, presently Divine fire came down and consumed what was laid there. They also say that the prophet Jeremiah, when he saw that destruction was nigh the city and the temple, hid the ark of the Lord in this rock, which miraculously opened and took in the ark; wherefore they believe that

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the ark is still shut up within that rock. It is upon this rock that Christ was presented on the fortieth day, when Simeon took him in his arms (Luke ii.). Jesus, when twelve years of age, sat upon this rock in the midst of the doctors (Luke ii.); and when He was thirty years old He often preached sitting upon that rock. This is what the Saracens say about that rock, and some things which I have already said do not very well agree with these sayings of theirs, as, for instance, that about Melchisedek (page 255), and about Jacob (page 210 a); the instance of Jeremiah occurs on page 258.

The holiness of this place, I do not. say of this temple, is proved by many texts of Scripture. This is the place which the Lord chose above all other places, as is told above, page 257. Here the glory of the Lord appeared in thick smoke, and the cloud filled the house so that the priests were not able to abide in the temple (I Kings viii. 10, I I). Uzziah when he would have offered incense here, not being a priest, was smitten with leprosy (2 Chron. xxvi. 19). Heliodorus, when sent to despoil it, was grievously scourged (2 Maccab. iii. 26). Nicanor, when he rashly stretched out his hand toward the temple, lost both his hand and his head (I Maccab. vii. and 2 Maccab. xiv.). King Antiochus when hastening to rob this temple died a miserable death in the mountains (2 Maccab. ix.). The Emperor Pompey, he who had heretofore been victorious, after he had defiled this place and stabled his horses therein, never had any good luck again. In this place the blessed Virgin was fed; here Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, appeared to Zacharias; here Joseph's rod flowered. From the temple which was built on this place the Lord Jesus several times cast out those who bought and sold. Here He wrote on the pavement with His finger (John viii:). In this place He preached much and worked great miracles.

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When the temple was destroyed the Jews were not able to build anything here, as is told above, page 159 a, etc.; neither were the Saracens able to build a mosque on this spot until they had cast down the cross, as aforesaid. When the mosque was at last built, God seemed to be wroth that the worship of the execrable Mahomet should be carried on in this most holy place, wherefore He brought the people of the West into the place and was angry with the Saracens. The Christians consecrated the mosque of Mahomet into a church. It is of this temple that Bernard speaks in his sermon to the Knights Templars (chapter v.), saying: `There is a temple at Jerusalem wherein knights dwell together, which is not equal as a building to the ancient and splendid temple of Solomon, but which is no less glorious; for the whole magnificence of the former temple depended on corruptible things, such as gold and silver, hewn stone, and divers kinds of wood; but all the beauty and glory of this temple, all its decoration, consists in the pious zeal for religion and chastened conversation of those who dwell therein. The one was remarkable for divers colours; the other is to be venerated for divers virtues and holy deeds. Indeed, holiness becomes the house of God which rejoices not so much in polished marble as in cultured morals, and loves pure minds more than gilded walls. But the appearance of this temple also is gay with arms, not with gems or ancient crowns of gold; the wall is covered with shields slung thereon instead of chandeliers, censers, and flagons; the whole house is fenced about with bridles and lances, forasmuch as the knights of Christ burn with the same zeal for the house of God wherewith He burned when He cast out those who bought and sold with a scourge, and think it far more unworthy and unbearable that the holy places should be defiled by infidels than that they should be disgraced by

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traders. They dwell in the holy house together with their horses and their arms, to the end that, having driven far away from it and from the other holy places all the foul and tyrannical fury of the infidels, they may busy themselves both by day and by night in useful works, while they vie one with another in doing honour to God's temple with constant and heartfelt service, always offering vows therein, not the flesh of beasts as of old, but true sacrifices, peace, brotherly love, devout obedience, voluntary poverty. Thus did men at Jerusalem in the days of St, Bernard, and the whole world was stirred up to devotion by their example. But as the zeal of the knights of this temple grew cold, it was not long ere the foolish people who had been cast out came back again, drove away with shame those lukewarm and carnal followers of the cross, and a second time desecrated Christ's holy temple by making a mosque of it. And so, alas! it is; for the Saracens who know the holiness of the place, and the mighty works which have been done there, treat the temple with great respect, and are wondrous diligent to keep it clean and well-ordered with all external care, washing it daily both within and without, [261 a] and it is all splendidly polished, so that it is a marvel to behold. The Saracens themselves will not enter this temple save after they have purified themselves with their ceremonial washings, and then they approach it with gravity and decorum, not in troops, but each man walks alone, even though he be a great lord; and they do not talk one with another, or bring children or dogs with them, so that no man is disturbed when at his prayers. Women have a door of their own, through which they enter both the temple and the courtyard thereof, and their own aisle in the temple, wherein they pray apart from the men; and those with whom it is after the manner of women stay in their houses,

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and are in no wise suffered to approach the temple. Men put off their shoes. before they enter the courtyard, make frequent kneelings and reverences in the courtyard before the temple, and so enter it with gravity.

When the king the Soldan is in Jerusalem, and wishes to enter the temple, they wash the pavement and the walls of the temple with rose-water, and the Soldan is sprinkled with the same water before he comes in, to show honour to the grandeur of the temple and of the king.

So highly is this temple esteemed among the Saracens, that so long as they kept it they would not much care if the Christians held the rest of the city; wherefore in the year of our Lord 1269, when our people were besieging Damietta, a city of Egypt, the Soldan, seeing that the place would be taken, sent a solemn embassy into our camp praying for peace, and begging that we would raise the siege, and take Jerusalem to possess it for ever, all save the temple of the Lord, which he meant to keep for himself. Besides this, he offered at his own expense to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by Corradinus, King of Damascus, and to keep nothing that belonged to the kingdom of Jerusalem, save only the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. The Christians, that is to say John, King of Jerusalem, and the French and Germans, would willingly and contentedly have accepted this offer, but it was not approved of by Pelagius, the Cardinal Legate, the Italians, and the Eastern Christians, so they would not receive the Soldan's ambassadors. But a few days afterwards, though they had taken Damietta, yet they lost it again, and all the places in the East and in the Holy Land, insomuch that they did not possess one stone of Jerusalem; and this befell them by the just judgment of God as a punishment for the avarice of the Italians, who, because Damietta was a city suitable for

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trade, preferred it to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, thinking that they would gain possession of them all. Indeed, the Saracens would have been content to give up all Judaea, Palestine, and Galilee to the Christians, if only they might have been suffered to hold the temple in Jerusalem, but by refusing this to them we lost all, and to this day they possess the Holy Land, the Holy City, and the temple. They will not suffer any man who is not of the law of Mahomet to enter the temple, and whatever Jews or Christians enter therein and are discovered they straightway either force to abjure their faith, or else slay them with torture. Yet, notwithstanding this prohibition, many Christians run the risk, and devise ways whereby they can gain an entrance thither, because, as Ovid says"

Ignorant Christians fancy that the temple must be wondrous to behold within, seeing that it is highly wrought and exceeding beauteous without; but in good sooth there are no decorations within, neither altars nor pictures nor images, but only a bright roomy chamber, paved and panelled with marble of divers colours, and lighted at night by many lamps which hang from the vaulted roof, for they say that there are seven hundred lamps always burning therein. In the whole of this temple there is nothing whatever save only on the north side there is a likeness of the sepulchre of Mahomet, a raised marble tomb, representing the sepulchre of Mahomet at Mecca, which they so greatly reverence that they worship its likeness in all mosques. About the sepulchre of Mahomet see Part II., page 40 and you will find much about Mecca on page 62.

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So, these, there are in this temple no splendid decorations to be seen, nor are there any services or sacraments performed by priests or clergy. About this see Part II., pages 94 and 100. Among the Saracens there is no salvation, remission of sins, virtue, or truth; so likewise their temples have no holiness, no consecration, no decoration, no priesthood, services, or sacraments. Yet, in spite of the emptiness of the temple, Christian pilgrims, as I have already told you, have a burning desire to see the inside of this temple, and sometimes some of them run the risk of death in order to do so. Here, therefore, seems to be a suitable place to consider the question raised by Antonius in Part III. of his history, tit. xxiv., ch. ix., § 17, `whether a Christian commits a sin by entering Saracen mosques.' It seems that he does not, because their temples are ordered to be closed (against Christians) on pain of the loss of life and property (see Cusa 'On the Infidels and Saracens and their Temples,' Books I. and II.); and because, as far as prohibition of entrance goes, they are exactly like the Jews. . . . To this he answers that a Christian may enter a temple or Saracen mosque for four reasons: to wit, either to. praise God or to preach Christ's Gospel; to see the temple, to offer some insult to the temple, or to consider how the temple may be preserved. Now, a Christian ought not to enter a profane church or mosque to pray to God or to praise Him, lest he appear to partake in those people's errors, seeing also that the Saracens never praise God without perfidiously blaspheming the Saviour, and extolling the false prophet Mahomet; and from such praises as these a Christian must by all means hold aloof. Therefore, lest he should appear to be a disciple of Mahomet, he ought to avoid places which are set apart for his praise, even though they be holy places; nor can he praise God therein in a

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proper fashion, because human actions depend very much upon the circumstances of the place wherein they are done. The Apostle (I Cor. viii. 10) forbade the faithful to sit at table in a place where meat offered to idols was eaten, lest his brother, seeing him, should be led astray, believing him to be doing thus out of reverence for the idol; even so it is forbidden to a Christian to kneel in prayer in a place where idols 'are worshipped, and if he does so he commits a mortal sin, even though he did not mean to worship the idol. Wherefore, when the Emperor Aelius Hadrianus set up a temple of Venus and an image of Jupiter, the Christians abandoned that most holy place because of that profane temple; and had any man entered it, even in order to worship the holy place, he would have been held to be an idolater. In like manner the churches of heretics and schismatics are interdicted to Christians, who must not pray in them for fear of giving scandal; much more, therefore, the temples of idols, the synagogues of Jews, and the mosques of Saracens may on no account be visited. Thus a man would sin most grievously against the faith were he to worship the true God in a temple of idols. He would sin equally grievously-nay, even more-were he to enter a Saracen mahumeria or mosque to say his prayers, because, albeit, the Mahometan Saracens are not idolaters, yet they are worse than true idolaters, as is proved in Part II., page 98 a. [262 a] And if the Lord (Matt. vi.) forbade His people to pray at the corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men and counted holy and saintly, much more is it forbidden to stand in a Saracen temple and pray, lest they be seen of men, and be thought to be wicked men and infidels. Hence it is clear that a Christian may not enter a mosque, to worship Christ therein, without sin.

Secondly, may he enter a mosque to preach the true

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faith therein? It seems that this is not lawful, because he who so enters exposes himself to the risk of death, seeing that, in accordance with the law of the Alcoran, such a one would straightway be slain, and so would kill himself fruit lessly. But, on the other hand, many men, full of zeal for the faith, have entered Saracen temples and preached therein with fruit, and yet have not been slain; as, for example, the holy Vincentius of the Order of St. Dominic, who converted many thousands of Saracens to the true faith. Therefore it does not follow that, because you do or say that which causes you to be slain by others, therefore you are guilty of slaying your own self; because the saints themselves professed the Catholic faith, even when they knew without doubt that by so professing they would be put to death by tyrants; and we now worship them as martyrs to God. This we read of Brother Levinus of the Order of St. Dominic having done; for when the Saracens were all assembled together in one of their mosques he entered it, being filled with zeal for the saving of their souls, and boldly and continually cried out that their prayers were vain, that unless they believed in Christ they would go into eternal torment, and that the laws of Mahomet were unjust,- deceitful, fanciful and false. While he was preaching thus the Saracens fell upon him and slew him. This friar is numbered among the martyrs by Antonius in the aforesaid passage; for he seems to have gone in thither, not out of his own superstition, but under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Were any man, moved by indiscreet zeal or anger, to enter in and cry out against them and be killed, he would be judged to be a busybody rather than a martyr. Thus was it done to certain Greek Christians, two of whom a few years ago at Jerusalem entered with great fury into the. temple, and there snatched up their books, tore them to pieces, and stamped

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upon them with their feet, saying that they were all made up and false. The Saracens straightway caught these men, and put them to death with cruel torture by sawing them asunder.

Thirdly, may a Christian enter a mosque without sin and therein offer insults or mockeries, and make jests upon it, or destroy the books, windows, or lamps, or bring in mud or filth? It seems to me, with all respect for those who are better able to judge, that he may not, because such insults and mockeries do not appear fo proceed from charity, but rather from anger, dislike, and rancour, or from pride, and by such acts the honour of God is not exalted, but blasphemy against Christ and anger is stirred up among the infidels without any amendment of their lives, and so those who act so risk their lives fruitlessly. Indeed, simple men think that they are doing God service when they play some insolent trick in Saracen mosques, or in Jewish synagogues. But this is no service of God, for our holy Mother Church tolerates the synagogues of the Jews, and does not destroy them as it might; wherefore the sons of the Church ought not to defile that which their mother endures. The same argument applies, to the mosques, wherefore a certain knight, a comrade of mine in my pilgrimage, did wrong; for when in the country of Palestine we passed a night in an inn adjoining which was a mosque, in such sort that we could get down from the vaulted roof of the house wherein we lodged on to the adjoining vaulted roof of the mosque. At the top of this roof there was a hole, through which we could look into the mosque, as we did. But the aforesaid knight arose in the night, [b] climbed on to the vaulted roof of the mosque, and defiled it through the hole, which made us laugh much, for we were all amused at seeing him. But I do not see what virtue there was in what he did, neither could

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any good follow from it, but much evil; for had the Saracens known of it, we should not have left the country alive. For albeit in mosques God is untruly worshipped, yet they are built in honour of the true God, and might be consecrated and made into Christian churches, as often happens when Christians take any town from Saracens or Turks; and they in like manner make mosques of our churches, wherefore because of this property, not out of any respect for their ritual, one retains a certain respect for the temples of the Gentiles, seeing that even the Apostles did not destroy the temples, but removed the idols from them and made them into Christian churches. We often read that even those who defiled idolatrous temples were punished, as is clear from the story of Medusa, the daughter of Phorcus, who, being an exceeding lovely woman, had among her other beauties hair which was not merely yellow, but golden. Attracted by its brilliance, Neptune lay with her in Minerva's temple, and thence the horse Pegasus was born. Wherefore Minerva, being angered at this, lest the insult offered to her temple should pass unavenged, turned Medusa's hair into snakes, and so, after having been beauteous, she became a monster. And what befell Pompey, and what misfortunes he came into after he had stabled his horses in the temple at Jerusalem, everyone knows save those who never read anything. I pass over the disasters which Antiochus and Nicanor brought upon themselves by their spoliation of temples, and the scourging of Heliodorus.

Fourthly, it remains that we should see whether a Christian can without sin enter a mosque, not to pray, nor to destroy any part of it, nor yet to offer any insult to it, or play any tricks with it, but merely to behold the mosque and the ritual thereof. I believe that if he can enter in without danger and unnoticed that he does not

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commit a great sin-albeit, he appears to be inquisitive if it be mere curiosity, and not devotion, whereby he is brought in thither. If the mosque stands in any holy . place, and a Christian can secretly and unnoticed go in and out of it without danger, then he can meritoriously enter, kiss the earth, and say his prayer, as we did in the mosque which stands over the sepulchre of David, for which see page 97 b; and we would willingly have done the same in the mosque at Hebron, which stands over the double cave, as is told in Part II., page 8. But if entrance cannot be gained without risk or heavy charges, he who enters such a place acts imprudently. I know a knight who is still alive, and who was led by his desire to see the temple, whereof I have been speaking, into making a bargain with a Mameluke to put a Saracen dress upon him, and take him in thither. So this old Mameluke brought our comrade, dressed in an Eastern dress, as far as the entrance to the courtyard of the temple; but when they were there, and would have gone in, such terror came upon the knight that he could scarcely stand for trembling, and dared. not go in, but turned back, and came to us, rejoicing at having given up his design. Indeed, it is not to be wondered if he feared to risk his life, because he was not sure that his guide was faithful. Although I myself am fond of seeing strange and curious sights, [263 a] yet I never was tempted to enter the temple, but was satisfied with the sight thereof, whereby I confess I have often been troubled and scandalized, when I compared the cleanliness, the beauty, and the decent order of the temple with our churches, which, O shame! are like stables for beasts of burthen. Our churches stand all dirty, with people walking through them as though they were inns, and befouled with filth, to our great confusion, and to the contempt and reproach of the sacraments. It is a burning

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shame to see at Jerusalem the church of Christ's resurrection standing almost without decoration like a smoky hospice and to see the church of Mahomet neat and clean like a king's palace. Oh, what a false proportion and untrue comparison between Christ and Mahomet, seeing that the one is the Son of God, and the other the first-born of the devil; the one is the incarnate Lord, the other the devil incarnate; the one is the Father of those that shall be saved, the other the seducer of wretches to their doom. The one bath built up, the other bath cast down; the one bath saved, the other hath damned; the one hath redeemed, the other hath destroyed! Yet is the temple of Christ cursed, desecrated, and despised, while the temple of Mahomet is adorned, beautiful, and exalted.

But what wonder if this be done in Jerusalem, among Moors and Saracens, when it is done even among Christians and Catholics? Look, I pray you, at the supreme church of all the world-that of St. John Lateran-which is the head of all the churches both within the city of Rome and throughout the world, as is proved by Alvarez in his `Lamentation over the Church,' Book II., ch. ii., etc., which see. In what a state it is as regards both ornament and cleanliness! Pray God it may even be safe from ruin. There stands the Church of the Saviour¹ and our Holy of Holies, with its incomparable treasure of relics, yet the place looks as though it were abandoned and left desolate, and one can scarce find therein the things needful for the sacrifice of Mass. .Its courtyards are filthy, the chapels adjoining it are desecrated, its altars profaned, its palaces destroyed, the monks who once served God there have been driven out, and in their place others have been put in, under whose rule all is going to ruin, and many parts have already fallen, not because of the presence of Turks

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and Saracens, but because of the absence of Christians. So also the church of St. Peter is greatly in need of all things befitting so great a church. If these things have come to this pass in the chief churches of the world, in the capital city of Catholics, in the centre of the faithful, what, then, may not take place in the other churches throughout that body? Filthy churches, misuse and neglect in the fabrics, vessels, books, vestments, altar-cloths, churchyards, burial-grounds, and out-buildings. It is a disgrace to think of it, and a shame to say it. A church can be found, and would that it were but one, not many churches, wherein the altar, the altar-cloths, the cloths of the sacristy, the corporal, the cover of the chalice, the albs¹ and amices² are all so dirty that the priest of that church could not for disgust suffer them to be upon his own table-nay, he would not endure his own breeches to be so filthy and neglected. The albs are begrimed, the amice is foul with sweat, and all the things needful for service are rotten with excess of dirt, so that no man would endure to have them in his own dwelling. O human brother, would that thou couldst see at Jerusalem how reverend is the appearance of this temple of the execrable Mahomet, how pleasant is the approach thereunto, as I have told. you on page 227 b, how clean and quiet its courtyard, how bright and neat everything is kept, how devoutly the worshippers enter therein, how gravely they bear themselves in praying, how modestly the women show themselves there, with their faces always veiled, and how the men pray in silence apart from them! Couldst thou see this, thou wouldst be deeply (b] shocked and grievously wroth with the neglect and

¹ See Palmer's 'Antiquities of the English Ritual,' Vol. II., Appendix, section vi.

² Humerale, an amice. Cf. Virgil, ' Aen.,' iii. 405; also Amalarius of Metz, s. v.

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irreverence shown by the faithful in our own churches. Yet, perchance, this irreverence itself may be interpreted in a good sense, because, seeing that we have true sacraments, whose chief power consists in winning mercy for the death and in the healing of souls, we therefore take less care concerning the mere outward ornaments of our temples, whereas the heathen, who do not seek after inward purity of heart, are all the more eager for outward cleanliness. But if Christians allow this dirt to be there through irreverence and carelessness, it is a grave abuse, as is proved by Hugo, who sets down irreverence towards the altar among his twelve 'sins of the cloister.'

On the south side of Bethel, and of the temple which they call Solomon's temple, in the same threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite, there is another great temple and exceeding fair church, built in all respects after the fashion of our own churches. It is larger than Solomon's temple by .reason of the length of its nave; it is roofed with lead, and by day it is lighted by many windows all round about it, while at night eight hundred lamps burn therein, because it is an exceeding holy mosque of the Saracens. I am quite unable to find any account, written by anybody, of who built this temple, and when it. was built; yet I have no doubt whatever in my own mind that the Christians built it after the last recovery of the Holy City in the time of the Latin kings, because the form and character of the building show that it was built by Christians, even as the form of what is called Solomon's temple clearly proves that it was built by heathens, and no sensible Christian can believe what they are wont to tell pilgrims, that this same temple was built by Helena,

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as is explained on page 259. So also this temple whereof I speak was not built by any men but the Christians; for when they had taken the Holy City, they wished that there should be a church of the blessed Virgin near the temple of the Lord, and so they built this church in her honour, and consecrated it to her out of respect for her purification in the temple, wherefore some call this the Church of the Purification of Mary: Others call it the temple of Simeon. Others simply call it the Church of the Blessed Virgin. Others draw a distinction between Solomon's temple and the temple of the Lord, and say that this is the temple of the Lord, and that other is Solomon's temple, Others call it Solomon's portico; others call it the temple of Zachariah. The latter have more claim to belief, since the blessed Virgin when a child was presented to Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist.

In this church the Templars used to perform service, but now the Saracens have made a mosque of it, and it has been taken away from the use of the Christian religion, as has also the temple of Solomon. Beneath this church there is a remarkable and extensive vaulted underground building, of such size that six hundred horses could be conveniently stabled therein. In this building I myself have been, as I have already told you on page 228 b. Another temple is now being built near these two, at the charges of the Soldan that now is, and it is a great and costly one, standing without the courtyard and threshing-floor of Araunah. In it there are eighty-eight lighted lamps. About this mosque, see page 227 b.

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[246 a] Almost the whole description of the holy city of Jerusalem is connected with these two temples -that is to say, Bethel, which they call Solomon's temple; and the Anastasis, which is the Church of the Lord's Resurrection. To these temples also is due every good thing that has come to the city, as Chrysostom bears witness when he says that every good thing and every evil thing is poured out upon the people from the temple of the Lord, as is told in his work on the `Lament of the Church,' Book I., art. 616. For the many destructions of the city of Jerusalem and the many rebuildings of the same, its glory and exaltation, its shame and degradation, came from its temples, both in the Old and New Testament, even to this day.

At this present day the Christians would care little about the Saracens' bearing rule in Jerusalem, provided only that we were allowed freedom to pass in and out of our temple of the Lord's sepulchre without fear, and without vexations and extortionate payments. Neither would the Saracens mind if the Christians were lords of the Holy City, if we would render up the temple to them. But since Christians and Saracens cannot agree about this matter, unhappy Jerusalem has suffered, doth now suffer, and will hereafter suffer sieges, castings down, destructions, and terrors beyond any other city in the world. Well, indeed, may it say, 'The zeal of Thy house bath eaten me up.' In truth, zeal for these temples has eaten up, devoured, and crushed Jerusalem. To go back further into this matter, the Romans never would have rent the city to pieces so cruelly and

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butcherly had not the Jews fought in defence of their temple with such exceeding obstinate zeal, whereby they angered the Roman army, and stirred up a destructive hatred against the Holy City and the temple. When the city and temple were destroyed by the Romans, it is believed that the city of David on Mount Sion was preserved for a citadel and fortalice. In this same city of David the faithful had a church, which had been built in the time of the Apostles in the place of the chamber of the Lord's Supper, where they performed divine service, held councils and elections,. and published ordinances concerning matters of faith before their separation. Here, also, the most blessed Virgin Mary is believed to have had her dwelling. In this church St. Stephen filled the office of deacon, and in it he was buried after his martyrdom. This church on Sion was never quite destroyed, either under Titus or Aelius Hadrianus, or under the Saracens, but has endured from the time of the Apostles even to this day, save only for a few years, when the wrath of the Romans was hot against the Jews, when they took Jerusalem, what time the faithful, warned beforehand by the Holy Ghost, had removed out of Jerusalem, lest they might share the doom of the Jews. But straightway after the Romans had gone away they again went up to the hill and church of Sion. Now, it is believed that the notable miracle of the Easter fire, whereof I have spoken on page 121 a, first began in the church on Sion; but at what time I have nowhere read, save that in the year of our Lord 192, before Constantine the Great and Helena, before the Invention of the Holy Cross, Narcissus was Bishop of Jerusalem, and he, when he was going to hold service on Easter Even, was told by his servants that there was no oil either in the jar or in the lamps. When the holy and believing man heard this, being full of faith, he ordered the servants to draw water and.bring it to him.

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When the water was brought to him, he prayed, blessed the water, and bade them pour it into the lamps. Then of a sudden, by a wondrous power unheard of in any other age, the water took upon itself the fatness of oil, and, being lighted from heaven, made the light of the lamps shine more brightly than it was wont to do. This miracle was wrought in the days of the pagans, under the Emperor Victor and the Emperor Severus, who reigned two hundred and eleven years before Constantine. After this Narcissus there were many saintly bishops in Jerusalem, and the multitude of Christian people were never without a church-albeit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was not yet built, wherefore all religious solemnities took place on Mount Sion, until the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, of whose beginning I will now tell you.

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place, Abraham would have sacrificed Isaac at the Lords command. Here the brazen serpent was set up, to which the people offered sacrifice; indeed, this was the chief of the high places which afterwards Hezekiah removed (2 Kings xviii, 4); wherefore the Jews showed an especial reverence for this place. Moreover, Gentile philosophers used to visit this place, because of the middle of the world, which they proved to be here, as I have told on page 117 b. The shape of this place is described on page 117 b and page 130 b. This place continued to be held in honour down to the time of the Greek Gentiles, who, out of hatred towards the Jews, broke in pieces and scattered the oratory which stood there, and appointed the place to be that where evil-doers should be put to death, whereby the sacred place of the Jews was rendered loathsome to them. But during His lifetime it is believed that the Lord Jesus often came and visited the place of the mount and the place of His burial, pointing out that holy spot which at the last by His death, His burial, and His most glorious resurrection He hath consecrated and made venerable for all the world. After the Lord's ascension the most blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and the rest of the faithful, were wont to visit the place daily, and to kiss the footprints of the Lord Jesus, as aforesaid, on page 173 b. Some also declare that St. James the Less, who was ordained by the Apostles first Bishop of Jerusalem, made his seat and dwelling in the place of his Lord's resurrection, and there celebrated divine service; moreover, he was the author of one of the articles of the Creed, that, namely, which sets forth that the Lord `suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.'

Now, after the martyrdom of St. James in the forty-second, or, as some say, in the forty-fifth year since the Lord's passion, the sins of the Jews caused the Holy City

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to be utterly destroyed, save only the city of David, and the west wall over against the rock of Calvary, and the garden of the Lord's sepulchre, which they suffered to remain standing to the end that the guards of that country might have a strong place. After the Romans were gone, the Christians came back, as aforesaid, into Jerusalem, and used to visit the place Golgotha with all their accustomed devotion; yet they did not build there any church or temple, because of their fear of the Roman guards, and because they would not change the form of the place from that which it bore at the time of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, a form which St. James also was loath to change, that the remembrance of what had come to pass there might be keener. And I would [265 a] that no church had ever been built there, for then we should have more clearly understood the meaning of the Gospels where they tell of the Lord's passion and resurrection. I verily believe that the Christians would not have altered the form of the place, had the Emperor Hadrian not done so.

This Caesar came to Jerusalem A.D. 119, at which time it had already been in some sort rebuilt by the Christians and Jews. For the second time he slew the Jews, sold them for slaves, and drove them out of the country, and he built a new city of Jerusalem, pulling down and enlarging the old one. He filled up the ditch between the city and the place of Christ's passion and the garden of the sepulchre, raising it to the level of the rest of the ground, and he built a wall round the city which enclosed this place within its circuit, because he had heard that the place was sacred, and was venerated by Christians. Now, seeing that he was a heathen and an idolater, he wished his own gods to be honoured there, and he built a great temple enclosing both the rock of Calvary and the cave of the Lord's sepulchre. On the rock of Calvary, where the holy cross had

BROTHER FELIX FABRI. 267 once stood, he set up a statue of the most shameless courtesan Venus, and in the cave of the Lord's sepulchre he set up the figure of the most wicked Jupiter; and thus it came about that the place which before had been most frequented by Christians became most hateful to them. The place remained in this evil condition for one hundred and eighty years, down to the time of Constantine the Great and St. Helena, as we learn from the epistle of Jerome to Paulinus, which begins with the words Bonus homo. This epistle is in the third book, at page 210.

In the year of our Lord 313, Constantine and Helena were converted to our faith, and she, having become a worshipper of the cross, came to Jerusalem. Here she found the place of the Lord's death and resurrection in a profane and most unclean temple; wherefore, being filled with zeal for God, she cast out the idols and destroyed the temple down to its very foundations, cleansed the rock of Calvary and the stone of the Lord's sepulchre, and caused men to dig deep into the ground, with much toilsome throwing out of earth, in the place where she found the precious wood of the holy cross, together with the other symbols of the passions of Christ, as has been told on pages 114, 115, and 130. Now, when she made this known to her son Constantine, he straightway sent her a sum of money to meet her charges, and gave orders to Maximius, who then was Bishop of Jerusalem, to build a splendid church in that holy place, according to the will of his mother Helena. Thus was this great work begun and ended, and a great temple built with exceeding costly decorations, so that in all the world there was not the like thereof, and many thought that this temple was costlier than that former one had been which Titus had destroyed, which had stood upon the threshing-floor of Araunah. At that time this threshing-floor contained no temple or even

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oratory, but only some dwellings of common people, and was altogether without honour. So now the seat of the bishop was moved from Sion to this new temple, and the clergy and all the court dwelt there; moreover, the miracle which I had spoken of on the last page, of the holy fire at Easter, was renewed there; for when on that holy day, Easter Even, all the lights throughout the. whole church had been put out, while the clergy and people were praying, lo! of a sudden lightning came down from heaven and lighted the Easter wax-candle and all the candles. and lamps. This prodigy took place every year in this church on Easter Even, and as long as it appeared, the church received no hurt at the hands of the infidels. It was then the custom that when this holy Saturday was come every fire throughout all Jerusalem was put out, and no man dared to light any other fire by any means soever, save from that which was furnished from the church. Wherefore all the people, both in the church and in their own houses, remained instant in prayer for the heavenly fire, which they held to be a most certain sign of God's favour toward them. When it came down from heaven, all of them lighted lamps and took the fire to other churches far and wide, even as nowadays the consecrated oil is carried about, and they also brought it to private men's houses, where they used to keep it alight all the year.

Now, in the year of our Lord 323, after the death of Maximius; Bishop of Jerusalem, the Arians began to assail the Church of God throughout the world, and having made their way into Jerusalem, they got the Church of the Holy Sepulchre into their power. They deposed Conrad, the Catholic and lawfully-appointed Bishop of Jerusalem, established an archdeacon therein, thus altering the appointed order of the Church of Rome, and for many years reigned

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over the holy church of Golgotha, which they disgraced by their heresy. In these times, when the Arian heretics possessed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Council of Nice was held. After this Constantine came to Jerusalem, and, gave ear to the Arians to such an extent that he was persuaded by them to go down to the Jordan and receive a second baptism at the hands of the Arians, as though the. baptism of St. Sylvester¹ were of none effect. This we find written in history concerning Constantine but I believe that the whole story was made up by the Arians, to the end that they might strengthen their party by the shame of so great an Emperor. It may be that he went down, together with the clergy and people, to the Jordan and washed therein out of devotion, as pilgrims always do, and that this gave the Arians occasion to say that the Emperor was baptized a second time. As long as the Arians bore rule over the church, the fire from heaven was never sent down to the light on Easter Even, as it was wont to be under the rule of the Catholics. Indeed, it has been proved by unerring experiments to be true that whenever there are schisms and divisions in the Roman Catholic Church, at that same time the Lord's sepulchre is always taken away from the Catholics and given to heretics, schismatics, or Saracens; and I firmly believe that if at this day the Western Church were at unity with itself, we might without the sword and without war gain possession of the Lord's sepulchre. Now, while the Arians governed this

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church, they cast out the Catholics from it on all sides, neither would they suffer pilgrims to enter into the Lord's sepulchre, wherefore homicides took place daily, and there were terrible quarrels between the Arians and the Catholics at this time, I say, the Saracens drew to a head together, fell upon both sorts of Christians, drove them out of the church, [266 a] cast all these wranglers, whether they were heretics or Catholics, out of Jerusalem, and . . . destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. But it did not long remain desolate, for all the bishops of the Eastern Catholic Church, together with other faithful people, about this year of our Lord 371, went to Jerusalem, drove out the Saracens and Arians, rebuilt the fabric of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and brought it back to the true faith of .the Catholic Church with much toil, forasmuch as the Arians had become exceeding powerful throughout the world, and were favoured by bishops, clergy, kings and princes. This damnable heresy took its rise from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who. at Alexandria was mad enough to try to implant discord in the orthodox faith, and. also tried to separate the Son from the eternal and ineffable substance of the Father, as we are told by Gratian in his twenty-fourth Decretal, ch. i.

After the Church at Jerusalem had been purged from that heresy, sainthood prevailed to a wondrous extent both among clergy and laity throughout the world until the time of the Emperor Heraclius. Indeed, between the time of the Emperor Constantine, who reigned A.D. 313, and Heraclius, who reigned A.D. 611, there flourished exceeding famous and enlightened men, and with them also most perverse and dangerous heretics, of whom Arius was the chief. This age was both holy and perilous. It was holy because of the saints who lived at that time, for, not to speak of others, there flourished between those two

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Emperors four famous doctors of the Church-to wit, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory; while of saints there were Nicholas, Anthony the Great; Zeno, Bishop of Verona; Paul, the first of the hermits; Paulinus of Treves, Eusebius, Hilary, Athanasius, Macarius, and Mary of Egypt. There were many hermits at that time in the wildernesses of Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, and Libya. Every year devout Christians flocked together from all parts of the world to Jerusalem to keep the great feast of Easter Day, and many came not only for the sake of Jesus, but that they might behold the miracle of the heavenly fire on Easter Even, and the prodigy on Mount Olivet,on Ascension Day, of which I have told you already on pages 131 a and b, and 149 b. At that time, too, the Divine power ceased not to magnify this place by many signs declared by divers miracles. Thus, in the year of our Lord 620, a monk named Bernard,¹ not he of Clairvaux, but another holy man, beheld the oft-mentioned fire come down from heaven into the temple of the Lord's sepulchre, and has written much about it in the book of his pilgrimage. At that time the Christians were thought much of because of this Easter fire. At that time, too, the holy cross and the other relics which had been laid up there by St. Helena were displayed. Thus we read that St. Mary of Egypt, while yet a sinner, came up to Jerusalem with many others to see the holy cross, but she was not let in to see it before she had vowed to amend her life, as is set forth in her legend.

Between the two aforesaid Emperors Constantine and Heraclius, Julian the Apostate took up the reins of government in the year 363. This man was jealous of the glory of Christ and of the Christians, wherefore, he gathered all

¹ See ' Itinerarium Bernardi, monachi Franci,' in Tobler's 'Descriptiones.' Leipzig, 1874; 8vo.

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the Jews together and sent them to Jerusalem at his own charges, to the end that they might build a temple on the threshing-floor of Araunah, to the prejudice of the glorious temple of the Lord's sepulchre, which then was magnified throughout all the world; but with what confusion they were forced to desist from the work is told above, on page 259.

After the Arian heresy was cast forth of the Church at Jerusalem, and when the entire body of faithful people were flocking in multitudes to the Lord's sepulchre, when peace and holiness were flourishing, and while the most blessed Jerome was dwelling at Bethlehem, another evil arose, in the Church at Jerusalem, to wit, a schism about jurisdiction; for when the holy Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, came to Jerusalem, and was arguing in the temple of the holy sepulchre against the heresy of Origen, John, the Bishop of Jerusalem, and all his clergy, indignantly bade the holy man hold his peace on this subject; and afterwards, when he had gone back to his own place, Bishop John forbade those who had been ordained by Epiphanius to be accounted priests, and excommunicated all the holy men of the other party, so that it came to pass that heretics alone were suffered to enter the Lord's sepulchre and to kiss the holy cross. We read of this matter in Jerome's book addressed to Pammachus against John, the schismatic Bishop of Jerusalem. After many years had gone by, when St. Gregory sat in the seat of Peter, in the year of our Lord 584, the seamless coat of our Lord was found in a marble chest in Masphat, near Jerusalem. It was brought with weeping and fasting by St. Gregory, Bishop of Antioch; Honorius, Bishop of Jerusalem; and John, Bishop of Constantinople, to Jerusalem, into the church of Golgotha, to the great joy and devotion of the people.

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In the year of our Lord 609 there arose in the East that notable savage, Chosroes, King of Persia,. who gathered together a heathen army, laid waste Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, and [b] opposed the Roman rule in every way. After he had swallowed up many cities he entered Judaea, besieged the holy city of Jerusalem, which was full of devout Christians, took it, and slew therein thirty thousand men, whose bodies he ordered to be cast out of the city into the brook Cedron. But a great lion sent from God came and bore away the corpses of the Christians, and buried them on the Mount of Martyrs, near Jerusalem, as we read in the `Ecclesiastical History,' and above, page 252 a. He seized some nobles and made them captives, among whom Zacharias, the Bishop of Jerusalem, was imprisoned. After he had cast down the wall of the Holy City, he entered into the temple of the holy sepulchre, meaning to plunder it and then to destroy it; but after he had taken away the holy cross, which Helena had placed there, enclosed in cases of gold, and presumed to stretch forth his hand for the destruction of the temple, the Divine power shone forth from the Lord's sepulchre in such sort that he and his men were terror-stricken, refrained from the destruction which they had begun, and returned with his spoil, with the holy cross, and with the captives to Persia. After this he laid waste the churches of the East and sent his son to the northern parts, to Syria, to the end that he might conquer the nations in that country and lay waste their churches. He passed through many countries, and at last sat down near the Danube, where the Emperor Heraclius marched against him and conquered him, as we are told in the service for the day¹ of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. When he was conquered, his father slain, and the lost kingdoms

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recovered, Heraclius brought back to Jerusalem the holy cross, Zacharias the bishop, and all the captives and plunder. He repaired the ruins of the temple and of the city, and restored to the Christians the ordinances of their Church according to ecclesiastical usage. Indeed, the Holy City had stood for ten years in desolation and misery, but Heraclius restored it, and returned to Constantinople, where he began to lead a vicious life.

At this time Mahomet, the devil incarnate, the first-born of Asmodeus, the son of Belial, the messenger of Satan, the deceiver of the world, the confusion of mankind, the destroyer of the Church of God, the false prophet, the forerunner of Antichrist, yea, Antichrist himself, the fulfilment of heresies, the corrupter of the Divine laws, the persecutor of the faithful, and the miracle of all that is false, began to display his madness, that the lamentable prophecy set forth in Rev. xiii. about him might be fulfilled, because he was that horrible and detestable beast whom John saw rising out of the earth, having two horns, and so forth. See the explanation of this passage in the Chronicle of Antoninus, Part I., tit. vi., ch. i., § 10. While this evil beast was cruelly raging, many Christian countries and kingdoms were joined unto him. Seeing this, Heraclius feared that he might enter Jerusalem, destroy the temple of the Lord's sepulchre, and show irreverence toward the holy cross; wherefore he prevented Mahomet, took the holy cross and everything else that was costly and precious out of the temple, and translated them to Constantinople, because he despaired of being able to withstand Mahomet. This translation of the holy cross took place in the year of our Lord 623.

After the death of Mahomet, his third successor, Hamor,¹ the son of Cathap, took the city of Jerusalem, A.D. 634,

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and built therein a great mosque for Saracens and followers of Mahomet, on the place where once Solomon's temple had stood, whereof I have spoken before, page 256. When he took the city, he meant to make a mosque of the temple of the holy sepulchre, and to fit it up for the Saracen rites; but when he entered the temple he was terrified by the Divine power in such sort that he desisted from his [267 a] intention, and dealt fairly kindly with the Christians, on account of the piety of Sempronius the Christian bishop, whose kindly counsel he made use of in the building of the new temple. From what has been said, it is clear that the temple of the Lord's sepulchre stood for three hundred and four years before the temple which they call Solomon's temple. So Hamor suffered the Christians to serve God in their own temple, and forced the Saracens to praise Mahomet in another temple; for the heathen people were not yet accustomed to the rites of Mahomet, and therefore they had to be driven by force. In process of time divers quarrels arose in Jerusalem between the Saracens and the Christians, and the Saracens cast many burdens upon the Christians, from which burdens they were often relieved by the Emperors. For instance, in A.D. 670 Constantine III., albeit the worst of men, nevertheless seven times freed the Holy City and the Lord's sepulchre from the oppression of the Saracens; and after him Constantine IV. wrought much evil to the Saracens both in Jerusalem and elsewhere, wherever they were fighting against the Christians. Nevertheless, the Saracens bore rule over Jerusalem, and our Emperors could not set the Holy City free from the yoke of the Greeks. In the year of our Lord 803, in the reign of the great and most Christian Emperor Charles, the Christians in Jerusalem and in all the East were in great tribulation beneath the yoke of the heathen, and in their misery they begged for

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help from Constantine, the sixth of that name, Emperor of Constantinople, and from Irene his mother. But, forasmuch as the strength and power of the Greeks had very greatly fallen away, he could not aid these distressed people by his own forces. At that time Leo, the third Pope of that name, out of respect for his transcendent merits, gloriously raised Charles the Great, King of the Franks, to the dignity of Roman Emperor, a title which had been lost almost five hundred years before by Constantine the Great, and by this time had almost become forgotten through age, and restored its empire to the West.

Charles, surnamed Augustus, adopted the imperial name and dignity, and reigned for fourteen years. He did wondrous. deeds throughout the world, and brought glory and honour upon his people the Germans. For this Charles was a Teuton, as is clearly proved by that announcement in ... the Decretals, where the text runs: `The Apostolic See hath transferred the Roman Empire from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of the Magnificent Charles.' And in Appa. II .¹ the same thing is told. Moreover, we read in the Chronicles that when the Roman Church was oppressed by the Lombards, the Pope begged for help from Constantine and Leo his son, Emperors of Constantinople; but as they would not undertake the defence of the Church of Rome, he transferred the Roman Empire to Charles the Great, the son of Pepin, whom he himself had put in the place of Louis, King of France, whom he had deposed.

This transfer of the empire from the Greeks to the Germans took place A.D. 776. In the reign of Charles his fame was heard of in Jerusalem, wherefore the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent to him the keys of the Lord's sepulchre,

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and of the place Calvary, and the keys of the city gates, and of the Mount (Sion), together with a banner, for a blessing and in sign of subjection, as may be read in the Chronicle of Antoninus, Part II., titulus xiv., ch. iv., .§ 2.

Not long after this the heathen rose in rebellion against John, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and drove him and all his clergy out of the city. He went to Constantinople, and called upon the Emperor of Constantinople to help him. While the Emperor was busied about this matter, he beheld a vision in his sleep, whereby he was taught that it was not he, but Charles the Great, who should set Jerusalem free, and restore the Lord's sepulchre to the [b] Christians. Wherefore the Emperor of Constantinople, by the hands of the clergy of the holy sepulchre, sent to Charles the Great the keys, and a letter setting forth the straits into which the Lord's sepulchre and the Christians were brought. When Charles read this letter, he wept. Straightway he gathered together a great host of Germans and Franks, brought it across the sea, and rescued the Holy City from the hands of the heathen. He restored the holy sepulchre to the Christians, and made so complete a peace between the Christians and the heathens as we never read of their having had before. He did not slay the infidels, nor drive them out of Jerusalem, but made them agree together on fixed conditions. It is said that there was so great concord between them for many years that, if the beast of any traveller perished on the way, they would lay down their burden by the wayside and go to the nearest village for another beast without the property they left behind suffering any loss, plunder, or theft. So peace being thus restored, and the Church at Jerusalem set in order, the most illustrious Charles on his return to his own country visited Constantinople, where he was magnificently entertained.

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In recompense for his labours they offered him exceeding precious gifts, gold, silver, precious stones, and other valuable things, all of which he refused, saying that it would ill become him to take hire for the labour which he had wrought for the love of God alone. When he was besought to receive some gift, he asked to be given relics. Wherefore they opened their treasuries, and gave him some thorns from the Lord's crown, one of the nails of the holy cross, and a great piece of the same; the Lord's kerchief, the tunic of the blessed Virgin, the swaddling clothes wherewith she had swaddled the Boy Jesus, part of the Lord's manger, the iron lance-head wherewith the Lord's side was pierced, St. Simeon's arm, and many other things, which were received by that illustrious man with great devotion, and many miracles were wrought on the occasion, as is told in the Speculum Historiale, Book XXV., ch. v. He brought them home with him to Germany, to his own city of Aix la Chapelle, where he laid them up in the church of the Virgin which he had built. There they are reverently preserved at this day, and are displayed every seven years, at which times an innumerable multitude of the faithful gathers together, and especially Hungarians come from their own country in vast troops and gather at Aix. I myself saw these relics in the year 1468.

Some relics Charles kept in his own court, and appointed them to belong to the court of the Emperor. He therefore laid them up, together with the most precious emblems of the empire, in a certain place within the same; wherefore at this day they are kept at Segodunum-that is to say, Nuremberg, where they, are displayed every year on the Friday after Quasimodo, when a great multitude gathers together to see them.

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But if any prince visits Nuremberg at other than the appointed time, they bring them out and show them to him. Wherefore in the year of our Lord 1486, on the Sunday called Cantate, when the brethren of our province were met together there in chapter, they displayed those relics to us, and let us handle them and kiss them. Among them is the iron of that most holy lance of the Lord, which the citizens of Nuremberg suffered each one of the brethren to touch with his own hands, out of the especial reverence which they bore to the Order. There we saw and put upon our own heads the exceeding precious gold crown of Charles the Great, all set with jewels, and we saw the golden sceptre, the golden apple, the golden spurs, and the rest of the imperial regalia, all of which had been brought to Nuremberg that same week from Frankfort, where the glorious and victorious Maximilian, Duke of Austria, son of the great Frederick III., had been elected King of the Romans and invested with these sacred insignia.

See how widely my wanderings cause me to wander throughout the. world! Now I will return to, Jerusalem, which after the departure [268 a] of Charles the Great remained at peace for some years. The Westerns, were admitted to the holy places without any hindrance, and the heathen, who held the kingdom of Jerusalem, did not vex the pilgrims who journeyed thither. For Charles did not restore the kingdom to the Christians, nor make it subject to himself, but merely restored peace between the Christians and the heathen, which, however, did not long endure. But as long, as the peace lasted the Westerns daily visited the holy places in great troops, and slept at night in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because there was no dwelling-place for Latins in the city; for as yet there were no hospitals, neither was there any Latin

280 THE BOOK OF THE WANDERINGS OF church, but the Greeks performed service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and in the other churches. Now, it befell in these days that Apulian merchants brought certain strange wares, hitherto unknown in the East, to Alexandria to make a profit by selling them there. These wares are believed to have been hazel-nuts, as is explained in Part II., page 127 b. These wares were brought as exceeding precious things to the King of Egypt, who also ruled over Arabia, Palestine, and Judaea. The king, attracted by the novelty of these wares, promised the merchants that in return for them he would grant them any boon which they might crave of him. So they asked and obtained leave to build a dwelling-place for Latin pilgrims in any part of Jerusalem that they might choose. They therefore built a monastery in honour of the blessed Virgin Mary in front of the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and placed therein an abbot and Latin monks. Now, since it was the Latins who did this, they called the place itself St. Mary the Latin, and this church stood scarce a stone's-throw from the Lord's sepulchre. The abbot and monks were men of great piety, received over-sea pilgrims with all possible kindness, and treated them with much humanity. As a multitude of pilgrims flowed thither, both men and women, the men were received into the guest-house of the monastery, but the women lodged without its walls, as best they could, and sometimes they were molested by the Saracens and suffered loss thereby. So the monks, after calling upon Mary the helper of pilgrims to aid them, built, near their own monastery, against the wall of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, another monastery for women on the left hand as one enters the church, which was called St. Mary Magdalen's, wherein women pilgrims were received and

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well treated. Thus the condition of Western pilgrims in Jerusalem was improved in the time of the infidels, who, nevertheless, besides laying many other burthens upon them, would not suffer them to visit the holy places without paying them for leave to do so in peace, even as at this day.

Thus did the Christians fare for more than one hundred years, from the days of Charles to those of Henry I, at which time, A.D. 1015, there arose a certain man of sin, an instrument of the devil, the scourge of the people of Christ, the destroyer of the holy sepulchre, named the Caliph, King of Egypt, who in his frenzy swept from the earth the peace and concord which had been made by Charles the Great between the Christians and the Saracens. This man was born of a Christian mother, and when he became King of the Saracens, lest he should be thought to be guided by his mother, began to rage cruelly against the Christians. He forced the Christians to abjure their faith, laid exceeding heavy taxes upon them, and vexed them in many other ways. Nothing stirred him up to cruelty against the Christians so bitterly as the reproach that he himself was of Christian blood, whereof he was greatly ashamed, and therefore he raged against them with singular cruelty, to the end that by so doing he might prove that he had not a drop of Christian blood, and was not swayed by love toward the Christians. [b] Among other evil deeds which he wrought was the following: he entered the Holy City with a great host, and cast down the crown of the Christians to the ground; for he ordered that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been splendidly built by Constantine the First and Great, should be destroyed and utterly ruined, while he desecrated the churches of Mount Sion and Bethlehem, and dedicated

282 THE BOOK OF THE WANDERINGS OF them to the foul worship of Mahomet. When this was done the condition of the faithful at Jerusalem became worse through the exceeding bitter grief which they felt at the ruin of the church. Furthermore, he forbade the Christians any longer to hold their holy services, or to meet together for divine worship; and thus they were in exceeding heavy tribulation by reason of their daily vexations, and in the deepest sorrow because of the ruin of the holy sepulchre and of the church thereof. Hence it is clear that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was built by Helena, stood for seven hundred years, at the end of which it was totally destroyed. Howbeit, in the year of our Lord 1049 the Divine clemency came, bringing no small comfort to the ruined Christians; for the aforesaid tyrant was then removed from this world, leaving an heir who was better than himself, and all this trouble came to an end. Daher, his eldest son, as soon as he became king, entered into a treaty and compact with the Emperor of Constantinople, and was tolerably kindly disposed towards the Christians. At this time the holy Pope, Leo IX., a German by birth, saw a vision in his sleep, and thereafter stirred up the Emperor of Constantinople to rebuild the Lord's sepulchre in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed thirty-seven years before by the barbarians. So now, at the request of the Emperor of Constantinople, Daher the Saracen gave leave to the Christians to rebuild the temple of the Lord's sepulchre in Jerusalem. The Christians therefore went up thither with great joy, and began to build a new church over the Lord's sepulchre, after the pattern of the earlier one, towards the expenses of which restoration the Emperor Constantine largely contributed. Thus, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that now is was built in the aforesaid year, twenty-five years

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before the recovery of the Holy Land, which was performed by Godfrey, as will be hereafter set forth. And as the Jews and people of Israel had only two temples, following one another, to wit, that of Solomon and that of Esra, or Zerubbabel, even so the Christians have had two temples, to wit, Helena's, temple and that which stands at this day. The first stood for seven hundred years, and the second, which is now standing, has stood for four hundred and fifty years, seeing that we are now in the year 1488. After the church had been rebuilt, when the Christians would have visited it after the fashion of their religion, the Saracens would not suffer them to go the round of the holy places in peace, but taxed them in money, or vexed them with blows, and there was much hatred and indignation between them; for then also the Saracens bore rule over that country and raged furiously against Christian strangers therein, so that all Christendom was stirred up by the complaints of the pilgrims, became enraged against the Saracens, and earnestly desired to shake off their yoke, whereby they had been so long and so sorely oppressed. From the time of Hamor, the Saracen prince who ascended the throne of Egypt in the time of the Emperor Heraclius, down to the time of Godfrey, the first of the Latin Kings of Jerusalem, who lived in the time of (the Emperor) Henry III., the Holy City was subjected to the yoke of the Saracens for a period of about four hundred and ninety years. Indeed, though the Emperors Heraclius and Constantine III. and Charles the Great did in some degree set free the Holy City and the Lord's sepulchre, yet they never did so altogether; but the heathen always bore rule over the Christians, a rule which the aforesaid Emperors rendered less burthensome, but which they never did away with, for they obtained peace between the two peoples by covenants,

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[269 a] and therefore their settings free of the Holy Land were imperfect, and such as could not endure, more especially between men who could not be brought to agree in religion, such as are the Christians and Saracens, between whom there is also a natural enmity and the dislike which is bred of different race, way of life, habits and religion.

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THE redemption and complete setting free of the Lord's sepulchre, of the city of Jerusalem, and of the whole of the Holy Land, was brought about in the time of the German Emperor Henry, the third of that name, who was a Bavarian, and Pope Urban, the second of that name. Indeed, the predecessors of these princes had often taken counsel about this matter in their solemn meetings, diets, and other assemblies of princes and bishops, and had even begun the work, but never brought it to any good effect. Thus, in the time of the Emperor Henry II., and Pope Victor II., a German, in a council held at Tours, a famous city in France, in the year of our Lord 1055, it was determined that the Holy Land should be set free. At that time Othus, Count of Angleria and Prince of Milan, was notable for his great wisdom, and his vast knowledge of the conduct of public affairs, insomuch that he was a man of exceeding great value both for peace and for war. This man, whose courage was known to all those who met at this synod of Tours, was chosen to be the captain of the Lord's host which was to fight against the Turks and Saracens for the setting free of the holy sepulchre of the Lord in Jerusalem. He agreed to the request of the Pope and other Kings with a single mind, and set out for Jeru-

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salem with the rest. Here he passed the winter with the other Christians besieging the city, and wrought much hurt and mischief to the Saracens. He brought the Holy City into great straits, yet could he by no means take it. Now, while he was sitting down before it, an Arab named Volucer, a heathen prince from beyond Jordan, perceiving that he was a bold man, challenged Othus through an interpreter to single combat, a proposal which the latter willingly received, so that on the sixth day thereafter both of them came forth on horseback armed for the fight. Othus bore upon his shield seven chaplets, because he had overthrown seven exceeding brave warriors with a single stroke of his sword. Volux (sic) had different, armorial bearings, for from his helmet there arose a brazen viper,¹ wondrously wreathed and coiled about, having in its mouth a clothed child, which as far as the ribs was swallowed, but whose head and shoulders were still outside, and whose widely-open mouth seemed to be calling for aid. Bearing those ensigns, they both took their places in the lists, which were in the Fuller's Field before the holy city of Jerusalem, where at the first onset Othus cast Volux headlong from his horse, and, straightway brandishing his mace, broke his skull so that his brains were all scattered on the ground. When he was dead Othus took off his helmet and carried it away with him, together with his other spoils, and so after raising the siege he returned to Europe, because his army was too small. When he came to Milan he offered this armorial device to Christ and the Church, and took the viper as his own bearing and that of his successors for ever. So at the present day the Dukes of Milan and the rest of the Visconti family may be seen bearing it, and

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they stamp their money with the figure of the viper. This money is now current and esteemed throughout all Germany, and brings in much profit to the state of Milan; the greater of its coins are called old blaffardi, the lesser spagurlines, the middle-sized ones trigeras.

So the aforesaid general Othus came home again and told the Pope and all the princes of the West that Jerusalem and the Holy Land could not be taken unless an exceeding great host, and a very strong one withal, were sent across the seas.

Next, in the year 1063, a great German host gathered together for the pilgrimage to the Lord's sepulchre in the Holy Land. Siphred (? Siegfried), Archbishop of Mainz; William, Bishop of Treves; Gunther, Bishop of Bamberg; and Otho, Bishop of Ratisbon, with many nobles and followers, set out for Jerusalem by land, meaning to cross the Euxine Sea. When they came into Bulgaria, they were sorely vexed by those Northern peoples; howbeit, they came with much tribulation to Asia, and reached the confines of Syria. But the governor of that province, when he heard of the approach of the Christians, gathered together an army of Turks and marched against our bishops Our people, being overpowered by numbers, took refuge in an ancient castle, where they patched up the breaches of the old wall, and so made it into a stronghold.

The Turks essayed to take this fortress by storm, but could not do so, and continued to attack the place for two days and nights in succession. On the third day, when peace was proclaimed for an hour that they might recruit their strength, our men begged the Turks to send their governors and captains to make terms of peace. So six of the most puissant of the Turks came to our people, and our people opened the gate and conferred with them for a long time, finding the Turks most contrary-minded; for

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our bishops offered to give all that they had, and promised much more, if they might return home with their base lives; yet these Turks showed no pity, and would not be satisfied save with the death or abject servitude of their lordships. Meanwhile our people; seeing in what straits they were, had secretly sent forth servants who knew the country to run with speed to the Emir and Captain of Rama, and to promise him much money, which soon would have to be paid over to these other infidels. After these messengers had been sent out, our people begged the barbarians to grant them,terms, and offered them money; but they cared only for getting their persons into their power, either to put them to death or to make them the lowest of slaves, and they could get no other answer than this. But now our men, being driven to desperation, fell upon the Saracens who had come into their fortress and put them in irons. When their army learned this, they essayed to break down the wall, and attacked it with missiles, darts, and military engines; but our men set up their great men and captains in. bonds on the most dangerous parts of the wall, [b] and thus quelled their attack. They called upon God with exceeding frequent prayer, and, lo! help came to them; for the Emir of Rama, a Saracen, collected together an army of Saracens, came to the place, and drove away the Turks, forcing them to raise the siege. Our people sallied forth from their stronghold, followed the flying enemy, plundered them, and caught many, whom they hung upon gibbets. Afterwards they put to death the captured captains with frightful tortures. This deliverance of the bishops took place on Easter Even, the vigil of Easter Sunday. Now, when they set out from Germany, they had decided that they would pass the days of the Lord's passion and ascension at the holy places in Jerusalem, but this siege hindered them. So now the aforesaid

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Saracen brought those pilgrims safe to Jerusalem, and, after being rewarded by them, went home agai