suppose his southern church to be the Church of St Mary. The description which is given by Arculfus of the construction of the Round Church and its entrances is very obscure and strange. Of its three walls it appears certain that the middle one was, properly speaking, the external wall, for it contained the apses that still exist for the altars; and the outer wall of his description was probably an external peristyle or cloister, as in the Church of St Fosca at Torcello". In the Plan (Fig. 3, Plate 1) I have dotted a circular wall (a b c d) in the probable position of this peristyle, and I have carried it concentrically round the Western end of the Church (b c d), for the mere purpose of shewing that the rising ground and rock at the West makes it very improbable that the circuit was so carried round at this end. Arculfus is but a loose describer, or rather, perhaps, his interpreter and amanuensis, Adamnanus, was not successful in extracting his meaning; and, after all, his work was merely the result of recollections, recalled to oblige the Abbot after his return from the pilgrimage. His description of St Sophia at Constantinople may shew how far his usual expressions are to be literally understood; for he actually uses the same words as in his account of the Round Church of the Anastasis. He says it is a "triple Vide Agincourt, pl. 26, Gally Knight. Ecc. Arch. of Italy, pl. 29. v. 1. The round church or mausoleum of Constantia at Rome had also an exterior peristyle. (Ciampini, de Sac. Æd. p. 135.) 3 This plan is drawn from the account of Sawulf, to illustrate the state of the churches in the subsequent pe riod. But that state differed so little from the churches of Arculfus, that, by the help of a few dotted lines, I have made it also subservient to the illustration of the second period, which we are now considering. The long range of chapels, A, B, C, I, are the principal points of difference between the two. stone church, rising from its foundations in three walls," upon which the dome rests, and that there is "between each of the above walls a broad space1," &c. By the outer space in this case he must mean the first narthex or vestibule of St Sophia, which extends only along the front. But the whole phraseology of this sentence is sufficient to shew how large a licence we may assume in explaining his descriptions. I presume, therefore, that the outer passage in the Church of the Anastasis was confined to the Eastern half of the rotunda. His entrances to the North-east and South-east would differ but little in position from those of the subsequent Church, as shewn in the plan at D and H. The nature of the ground forbad a convenient entrance to the West, and the reverence due to the Sepulchre seems to have equally hindered a central Eastern Entrance. Indeed, an altar was placed opposite to the door of the Sepulchre at F, as Arculfus relates. The pilgrims were therefore naturally admitted at the South-west (at D), so that they might pass across in front of the Sepulchre, and after visiting it be dismissed in a similar manner at the North-east door (at H), to visit the other "holy places." But the quadruple construction of these entrances is very difficult to understand. Perhaps by the three walls we must understand three piers; and thus we get a group of four arches in the outer wall of the peristyle; and the middle wall might only have had a single "Cæterum de celeberrima ejusdem civitatis rotunda miræ magnitudinis lapidea Ecclesia,......quæ ab imo fundamentorum in tribus consurgens parietibus triplex, supra illos altiùs sublimata, rotundissima et nimis pulchra, simplici consummatur culminata camera. Hæc arcubus suffulta grandibus, inter singulos supra memoratos parietes latum habet spatium, vel ad inhabit andum, vel ad exorandum Deum, aptum et commodum." L. III. c. 3. p. 275. doorway, as usual. What he calls the inner wall is, of course, the circle of columns as at present; but Arculfus mentions twelve columns. I presume that in fact the Eastern apse F, which is shewn in Fig. 3, did not exist in the buildings of Modestus. If the plan of the columns be completed in the eastern half, in the same manner as it stands in the western, we obtain twelve columns divided into four groups by four pair of square piers; which is a probable arrangement; for twelve columns alone would scarcely have been sufficient to carry the wall. The present three western apses (J, K, L) are, in all probability, upon the same foundations as the old ones2. The Golgothan Church is described as a very large one, and can scarcely, therefore, have occupied less ground than I have assigned to it at N in the outline, where it appears with three aisles. The cavern in the rock under the place of the Cross was, of course, the present apse of the Chapel of Adam, and the other exedra or apse, where the relics were kept, may have been placed at P, as I have indicated it. This Church was not rebuilt after Hakem destroyed the whole, for the Crusaders found only a small oratory over the place of the Crucifixion. Probably some remains of it are worked up into the present chapels, and may account for their irregularity of plan3. 2 It may be supposed, on the other hand, that the inner circle of this church was smaller than the present one, and that the outer circle was of the same diameter; but I do not think this so probable as the explanation I have given above. 3 To complete the authorities I subjoin the account which Antoninus Placentinus gives of these buildings. "A monumento usque Golgotha sunt gressus LXXX. Ab una parte ascenditur per gradus, unde Dominus ascendit ad crucifigendum. Nam in The so-called Basilica of Constantine was perhaps the existing Chapel of S. Helena (W); for I have shewn its similarity to the Byzantine churches; and as Sawulf and others who describe this spot between Hakem's destruction and the Crusaders' works, speak of this Church as in ruins, it must have been erected during this second period. loco ubi fuit crucifixus, apparet cruor sanguinis. Et in ipso latere petræ est altare Patriarchæ Abraham, in quo ibat offerre Isaac, quando tentavit eum Dominus. Ibi et Melchisedech obtulit sacrificium Abrahæ quando revertabatur cum victoria à cæde Amelech, tunc ibidem dedit ei Abraham omnem decimationem in hostias. Juxta ipsum altare est crypta, ubi ponis aurem et audis flumina aquarum, et jactas pomum aut aliud quod natare potest, et vadis ad Siloa fontem ubi illud recipies. Intra Siloa et Golgotha credo est milliarium: nam Hierosolyma aquam vivam non habet, præter in Siloa fonte. "De Golgotha usque ubi inventa est Crux sunt gressus L. In Basilica Constantini cohærente circa monumentum vel Golgotha, in atrio ipsius Basilicæ, est cubiculum ubi lignum Crucis reconditum est, quam adoravimus et osculavimus. Nam et titulum, qui super caput ejus positus fuerat, in quo scriptum est Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum,' tenui in manu et osculatus sum. Lignum Crucis de nuce est : procedente vero sancta Cruce de cubiculo suo apparet stella in cœlo et venit super locum ubi Crux residet, et dum adoratur Crux stat super eam stella et ad fertur oleum ad benedicendum ampullis onychinis: hora vero qua tetige rit lignum Crucis ampullas mox ebullit foras. Revertente Cruce in locum suum et stella pariter revertitur, et post reclusam Crucem non apparet stella. Etiam ibi est Canna et Spongia de quibus legitur in Evangelio, cum qua Spongia aquam bibimus, et Calix onychinus quem benedixit Dominus in cœna, e aliæ multæ virtutes: Species B. Mariæ in superiori loco, et zona ipsius, et ligamentum quo in capite utebatur: et ibi sunt septem cathedræ marmoreæ seniorum." (Antonini Placentini Itinerarium. Acta Sanctorum, Maii. Tom. II. p. 10.) The distances given in this passage are the only things worth attending to "From the Sepulchre to Golgotha LXXX. gressus," "from Golgotha to the place where the Cross was found, L. gressus." Measuring upon Mr. Scoles' accurate plan of the church, I find the distance from the middle of the altar of the Sepulchre to the foothole of the Cross to be 143 English feet; and the distance from the said foot-hole to the centre of the apse in the chapel of the Invention, by a singular coincidence to be also 143 English feet. Gressus is the traveller's step (varying with the individual,) and not an established measure of length, like XII. THE BUILDINGS OF THE THIRD PERIOD, FROM A.D. 1010 TO A.D. 1099. THE third period exhibits to us the restoration of the buildings after their malicious and systematic destruction by the fanatic Caliph Hakem, in the year 10101. This restoration seems to have been commenced or attempted almost immediately afterwards by Hakem or his mother, but was not effectually undertaken for several years, when the emperors of Constantinople, Romanus Argyrus, Michael the Paphlagonian, and Constantine Monomachus, in succession opened and concluded the necessary negotiations, and furnished the funds and architects, by which means the buildings were completed in A. D. 1048, or, at least, brought to the state in which the Crusaders found them. The best description of this state of the churches is given by the traveller Sæwulf, who performed his pilgrimage in the years 1102 and 1103, and whose account is contained in a manuscript preserved at Corpus Christi College, the passus. trives to interpret this author so as to give 400 feet between the Sepulchre and Golgotha. Distances written numerically are never to be depended upon in manuscripts. 1 Vide Part 1. p. 352 above, for the detailed history of these events. The Emperor Romanus died in 1034; Michael, his successor, in 1041; and Constantine, who succeeded to the throne in 1042, reigned until 1054. |