1 of 3
|
|
The subtitle of Raymond Cohen's instructive book might more accurately read, "How Christians Nearly Destroyed Their Holiest Shrine." The battle over the supposed location of Calvary and Jesus' tomb has raged for two millennia, beginning with the Roman Emperor Hadrian—who, in the 2nd century, as part of his rebuilding of Jerusalem, constructed a temple to Venus over the site. In the 4th century, Emperor Constantine had the temple replaced with a Christian basilica. Then in 614 Persians swept in, burning the church.
When Muslim rulers replaced the Persians, they rebuilt and protected the shrine. Attacks four centuries later on the limestone of the tomb helped inflame European Christians. When the Crusaders conquered Jerusalem, they renovated the earlier rotunda and its chapels and expanded the church to incorporate the excavated hill of Calvary. Though Arab Muslims soon retook Jerusalem, Saladin continued to protect Christian holy places.
Interestingly, the property was best cared for under Ottoman rule. By the 14th century, oversight of the church was in the hands of Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Orthodox monks, with Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox monks claiming "rights of access." The grand vizier, Rajib Pasha, told the French ambassador, representing the Latin interest, "These places, my Lord, belong to the Sultan and he gives them to whomsoever he pleases." Under sharia law, Cohen says, all holy places, including Jewish and Christian shrines, were to be protected (though in practice such protection was often lacking). Also, no single entity could "own" religious shrines in the Western sense.
Franciscans and Orthodox monks vied—or paid for—favor with their Ottoman overlords. In 1757, wearied of their intrigues and violent skirmishes, the Turks arranged what came to be known as the Status Quo, which divided the church among the rival groups.
At the center of the church, on an east-west axis, stand two domes. The larger, called the Rotunda, contains the Edicule, a building-within-a building. It contains the entrance to Christ's tomb. The smaller dome, the Katholicon, joins the Rotunda at the Triumphal Arch. Around both the Katholicon and the Rotunda are numerous outcroppings of chapels sacred to the various factions. Also courtyards, both covered and open, ambulatories, porches, apses, galleries, a refectory, store rooms, and even an ancient latrine.
In this war of square feet, the Status Quo gave the Greeks the lion's share, followed by the Roman Catholic Franciscans, with the Armenians running a distant third. Trailing behind in the dust of small claims were the Coptic, Syrian, and Ethiopian Orthodox monks. The document also established rules for the use of the common spaces and designated times for each of the parties' services. Finally, it entrusted in perpetuity the keys to the church to two Muslim families living next door.
The Status Quo, at first a tacit agreement, was given written form in 1853. When the ruling was incorporated into international law in 1878, an added clause explicitly stated that "no alterations can be made in the status quo in the holy places." Unfortunately, the document was later destroyed in a fire, and each faction retains its own reconstructed version of the original. (You begin to wonder, reading Cohen's account, why Mel Brooks has never made a film based on this saga.)
No doubt the hope of both the Ottoman sultans and the international courts was that the Status Quo would do away with conflict between the various church parties. Instead, the ruling, especially the phrase concerning "no alterations," rigidified territorial imperatives to an extent undreamed of by its authors. (A ladder was left on a window ledge over the church's entrance sometime before 1852. Window ledges and doors are designated as common areas. So far, no one has removed the ladder.) The seemingly straightforward ruling did not do justice to the complexity of the disputes. The Armenians, for instance, had been given custody of the Chapel of Nicodemus in an apse let into the wall of the Rotunda. At the entrance of the Edicule, the Copts had a small chapel. But since the Greeks controlled the Rotunda, access to such spaces became problematic.
share this page
RSS Feed
