The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is in the Christian quarter in the northwest corner of Jerusalem and stands on the traditional sites of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus, which in the first century AD were outside the city walls.

The discovery of the True Cross and also the site where Jesus was entombed and rose on the third day was made by Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, during her visit to the Holy Land in 326-8. First Constantine ordered that a basilica called the Martyrium (meaning place of witness) be built to encompass the site of Golgotha, that is Calvary, the place of crucifixion, and this was dedicated on 17 September 335. The interior of Constantine’s Basilica was faced with multi-coloured marble and its coffered ceiling was covered with gold which was said to ripple and swell like an ocean in the changing light. But the great domed Rotunda, also called the Anastasis (meaning resurrection), erected over the tomb of Jesus took longer to build and was not completed until 340.

The Martyrium and the Rotunda were linked by a court and surrounded by lesser buildings, to which a tumultuous history has lent a hand, so that the church you see today has often been restored. In 614 the Persians attacked Jerusalem, stole the True Cross and set the church alight, destroying its roof and many of its decorations. The church was again put to the torch by rioting Muslims in 938 who also devastated the Golgotha Chapel within Constantine’s Basilica and the tomb chapel within the Rotunda. Yet again, and this time on the orders of the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim, in 1009, the church and the tomb were destroyed. A few decades later, and with permission from Cairo, Byzantine emperors rebuilt the church on the old foundations using salvaged material.

The Templars had their origins here in this rebuilt church when on Christmas Day 1119 Hugh of Payns and his eight companions took their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Calling themselves the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, they dedicated themselves to defending pilgrims against attack along the roads to the holy places. The Templar Church in London, consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1185, takes its circular design from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in the Crusaders’ world.

Large parts of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were altered and rebuilt between 1150 and 1180 by the Crusaders. The entrance facade is mostly Crusader work and incorporates Romanesque and Gothic styles, the five-storey bell tower was added in 1153 and Constantine’s Basilica, the Martyrium, was rebuilt in Romanesque style, but the Rotunda was left essentially intact. This is the church you see today. During the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the church was the royal burial place, but the tombs were pillaged in 1244 when the Khorezmian Turks sacked the church and massacred the Christians huddled for safety inside.

The Temple Mount

The Hebrew for Temple Mount is Har ha-Bayit, but the mount is better known by its Arabic name, al-Haram ash-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. In the days of Kings David and

Solomon in the tenth century BC a limestone ridge rose from the Ophel Hill in the south where David built his city (now the City of David Archaeological Garden outside the city walls) and climbed northwards as Mount Zion, reaching its peak where the Dome of the Rock stands today. Thereabouts was the threshing floor of Araunah, the last Jebusite king, where David built an altar and where perhaps Solomon sited the Holy of Holies, the shrine of the Ark of the Covenant, when he built his Temple.

Solomon carved the ridge into a platform for the Temple; the same platform was reused for the Second Temple in the sixth century BC; and then Herod constructed a vaster masonry platform atop the ancient bedrock when he built his immense renovated and extended Temple in the first century BC. Though the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, much of the masonry platform and its retaining walls remained.

Over the centuries Jews from all over the world have come to pray at the Western Wall, famously known as the Wailing Wall for the laments heard here, an exposed section of the retaining wall which has come to symbolise not only the lost Temple of Herod but the Temple of Solomon built on this spot three thousand years ago. After the Arab conquest the Muslims built the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque atop the mount. In Crusader times the Temple Mount became an integral part of the city, and the entire southern half of the mount was a Templar complex; indeed their very name is taken from their close association with the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount is administered by the Muslim authorities, and the Western Wall, at its base, by the rabbinic authorities. Access to the Mount is allowed to all religions, although Orthodox Jews will not visit the Temple Mount at all. Only the Jewish high priest was permitted to enter the Temple’s Holy of Holies, and as its exact position remains uncertain, the Orthodox fear walking upon that most sacred of spots.