seeing no other alternative in their extremity, resolved, with the advice and assistance of the more wealthy Armenians, to purchase justice by a bribe to the Cadi; and for this purpose borrowed a sum of £105, almost the value of the houses.

I add another illustration. About the same time they had a dispute with a Turk concerning a cistern of water which was common property, having an opening both from their convent and his house, but which he claimed for himself exclusively. Judgment was given for the Copts, but only in consideration of a bribe of £45! It is not surprising that disputes so decided should be afterwards revived, especially when the arrival of a new Cadi may be supposed to cancel all the acts of his predecessor; for this judicial appointment is held for three years, during which period the functionary is to turn it to what advantage he can, by the administration or perversion of justice. Accordingly, the troubles of the Copts were renewed the year after their adjustment; but I am sorry not to be able to report the result.

By what singular good fortune this community was able to establish itself in the large monastery contiguous to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is not very clear. The domination of the Mamluk dynasty appears to have been more favourable to them than to other Christians;

The very large cistern belonging It appears to be a very lofty cave in to their Convent of the Sultan, requires further investigation. Owing to the water and the darkness I could not properly explore it. They call it the Treasury of S. Helena, and point out in a distant part two columns of white marble, where they say an altar stands.

the native rock, and the descent to it is by a handsome staircase in one of the angles. The visitor should go provided with many tapers. It probably served as a substruction and cistern to the Basilica of Constantine. See above, p. 255, and letter Z, fig. 3. Plate 1. to Chap. 111.

and they have an interesting but very vague tradition relative to the Convent, which I heard from the Superior. A Coptic secretary to one of these sultans was offered any reward he chose to ask for his long and faithful services; he refused to accept any remuneration for himself, but humbly prayed that his master would repair this ruined convent at Jerusalem, and grant it to his brethren. The sultan consented, and the memory of this event is still preserved not only in the name of the Convent, Deir-es-Sultán (the Convent of the Sultan), but in a heavy iron chain fastened in the wall by the door as a perpetual memorial of the sultan's bounty, and a witness to all that the convent was under his special protection; and the significant token has hitherto preserved to them the possession of this important building.

The date of this transaction may be pretty accurately determined by the following notes of time. The ancient Georgian annals relate that one of their kings had received, as a reward of his military services, from the reigning Greek emperor, the half of Golgotha, which he covered with monasteries'. This is sufficiently vague; but it further appears, that Bagration IV. repaired these buildings in the eleventh century, and that so late as A. D. 1507 the Georgians were established on Mount Calvary, having recovered it from the Armenians through the powerful influence of another Georgian king with the sultan of Egypt3. Now since the city passed from the Mamluk Sultans of Egypt to the

1 Jossilian's Georgian History, cap. viii. n. 66.

2 This Bagration was son and successor of George I. who, in the same century, founded the monastery of S.

James. See above, p. 455, n. 3.

3 Baumgarten's Travels, Lib. 11. cap. ix. pp. 90, 91. This may, however, only refer to the Church of Calvary.

Ottoman rule under Selim I. in the year A. D. 1517', the story of the Coptic superior must belong to the ten years preceding the fall of the dynasty of the Mamluks.

The Convent of the Sultan is presided over by a married priest—a singular anomaly, and tenanted by a few poor Copts, and still more abject Abyssinians. The Copts also possess a smaller monastery dedicated to S. George, in another part of the town, at no great distance from which they had commenced a very large new Convent, or rather Caravansary, under the protection of Ibrahim Pasha, but on his expulsion from the country this extensive building was abandoned, and has lately been appropriated as a barrack by the Government.

Having thus reviewed the Oriental Churches, as they are represented around the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, I proceed to the Occidentals, among whom the Latins will challenge the first notice, both on account of their importance and the priority of their establishment.

II. OCCIDENTALS.

1. Latins.

THE foundation of Monastic establishments of the Latins in Palestine is coeval with the introduction of the monastic rule into the country, and was much promoted by the zeal of S. Jerome, and the liberality of his pious friends and disciples, whose virtues he has immortalized. We have seen that prior to the period of the Crusades they occupied the monastery of the merchants of Amalfi, otherwise called "Sancta Maria de

4 See Vol. I. p. 445.

Latinâ,” which was afterwards enlarged into the hospital of the Knights of S. John'. On the recovery of the city by Saladin, the strangers were expelled, and on their return, established themselves around the Cœnaculum on Mount Sion, where a Franciscan Convent was erected by Sancia, Queen of Robert of Sicily, in which the western pilgrims of the fourteenth and two following centuries were entertained during their visit to the city. From this Convent they were expelled by the infidels in 1560; and a pilgrim who visited the Holy City, and was received by them in their new Convent, only twenty years later, gives a curious account of the circumstances which led to their removal3. A Constantinople Jew, who had great influence with the grand Vizir on account of his riches, requested the Latin pilgrims to allow him to perform his devotions at the tombs of David and Solomon, whose place of burial was reported by ancient tradition to exist under the arches of their Church. But his most earnest entreaties were ineffectual. The Jew, in anger, vowed revenge, and, on his return to Constantinople, rebuked the Vizir for his indifference to two great prophets celebrated in the Koran, whose holy relics were in the hands of the infidels. His representations, aided by bribes, had the desired effect, and the holy places were rendered as inaccessible to the Christians as they had before been to the Jews.

The Latin monks next migrated to the Convent of S. Salvador, which they still occupy, originally the property of the Georgians, and probably identical with their

1 See Vol. 1. pp. 390, 391, and Addison's Knights Templars, p. 61.

2 See the authorities in Robinson's Biblical Researches, 1. p. 358, note 3.

3 Prince Radzivil, (cire. a. n. 1583 ) as quoted by M. Mouravieff, cap. xxxviii.; but I do not find it in the Latin edition of 1614.

celebrated Iberian monastery, erected by king Vachtang in the fifth century (446-499), and afterwards repaired by Justinian. The Church is dedicated to S. John the Divine, and is frequented by such of the native inhabitants as conform to the Latin ritual. Their number is stated by the Greeks at 200, or a third of their own; and although I should imagine the numbers of both to be understated, yet the proportion appears pretty correct. They are under the spiritual care of the Latin fathers, chiefly Spaniards, in number from twelve to fifteen, presided over by a guardian, who formerly exercised episcopal jurisdiction during his triennial appointment, until their titular Patriarch took up his residence in the city in A.D. 1847.

Notwithstanding the dispute between S. Jerome and the bishop John, and the exemption from episcopal jurisdiction claimed for the alien monks by Epiphanius, the good understanding between the Greeks and Latins in the Holy City does not seem to have been permanently interrupted previously to the Crusades; but it was impossible that harmony could survive the schismatical invasion of the Patriarchate and all its subject sees by the Latins, immediately after their occupation of the city. And when to this grievance were added the irritating claim of papal supremacy, and the no less exciting questions relating to the procession of the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the doctrine of Purgatory, and the use of unleavened bread in the Holy Eucharist, it was every way to be expected that a controversy conducted, as such controversies too often are, with more zeal than charity, should finally terminate in mutual

See above, p. 551, and Procop. De Edif. Just. v. 9. Vol. 11. p. 467.