The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church is simultaneously the seat of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and the Catholic Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. It is the holiest site in Christianity, and it has been an important pilgrimage site for Christians since the fourth century.
According to traditional beliefs dating to the fourth century, the church contains the site of the crucifixion of Jesus at Calvary, or Golgotha, and the location of Jesus's empty tomb where he was buried and resurrected. Both locations are considered immensely holy sites by most Christians. Researchers note that there are two or three independent accounts of the burial of Jesus in a tomb, and many scholars view the site as the possible location. Archeological findings in the site are consistent with details found in early sources, including the Gospel of John. After the crucifixion, Emperor Hadrian covered the tomb of Jesus and erected a Temple of Aphrodite on top of it (c. 135 AD), where it remained until Constantine the Great rediscovered the tomb around 325 AD. The church and rotunda were built under Constantine's rule in the 4th century (which has been confirmed by scientific testing), and destroyed in 1009 by al-Hakim. Al-Hakim's son allowed Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos to reconstruct the church, which was completed in 1048. After it was captured by the crusaders in 1099, it continued to undergo modifications, resulting in a significant departure from the original structure. Several renovations and restorations were made under the Ottomans. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule.
Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. Since its creation the church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ; hence its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis (Resurrection).
The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site. Control of the church itself is shared among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox. Directly adjacent to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the Church of the Redeemer, marking a Lutheran presence at the site.
Name
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also known as the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre or simply as the Holy Sepulchre, named for the tomb of Jesus, the focal point of his resurrection according to Christians. Eastern Christians also directly call it the Church of the Resurrection or the Church of the Anastasis – anástasis (ἀνάστασις) being Greek for resurrection.
History
Background (1st–4th centuries)
After the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of Aelia Capitolina, on the site. About AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to make a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Venus or Aphrodite. The temple remained until the early fourth century.
After the death of Jesus, Emperor Hadrian covered the tomb and erected a Temple of Aphrodite on top of it around 135 AD and it remained until Constantine rediscovered the tomb around 325 AD. Physical testing of a mortar layer between the original older limestone tomb and later marble slab, revealed that the original shrine construction around the actual tomb could be securely dated to the time of Constantine, as historical records indicate on its rediscovery.
Constantine and Macarius: context for the first sanctuary
After seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favour Christianity and signed the Edict of Milan legalizing the religion. The Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius asked Constantine for permission to dig for the tomb. With the help of Eusebius (a Bishop of Caesarea) and Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one, which was said to have cured people near death, was presumed to be the True Cross, on which Jesus was crucified, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary.
About 326, Constantine ordered that the temple to Jupiter or Venus be replaced by a church. After the temple was torn down and its ruins removed, the soil was removed from the cave, revealing a rock-cut tomb that Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus.
First sanctuary and Sassanid destruction (4th–7th centuries)
A shrine was built on the site of the tomb Macarius had identified as that of Jesus, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over two holy sites:
- a rotunda called the Anastasis ('Resurrection'), where Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried, and;
- the great basilica (also known as Martyrium), across a courtyard to the east (an enclosed colonnaded atrium, known as the Triportico) with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the fourth century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead. The church was consecrated on 13 September 335.
In 327, Constantine and Helena separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to commemorate the birth of Jesus.
The Constantinian sanctuary in Jerusalem was destroyed by a fire in May of 614, when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrow II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius rebuilt the church after recapturing the city.
Early Islamic period (7th–10th centuries)
After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746.
Early in the ninth century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. The damage was repaired in 810 by Patriarch Thomas I. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the rotunda. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out, which was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and Patriarch John VII was murdered.
Fatimid destruction and reconstruction (11th century)
On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian and Jewish places of worship in Palestine and Egypt, He was also hostile toward Sunni Muslims. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. The tomb itself was almost completely destroyed, with only portions of the northern wall containing the burial bench and the southern wall surviving. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock: it was a spur to expulsions of Jews and, later on, used as a justification for the Crusades.
In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–1028, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem in 1048, during the reign of al-Mustansir Billah (Ali az-Zahir's son). As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the renunciation of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by al-Hakim and the reestablishment of a patriarch in Jerusalem. Contemporary sources credit the emperor with spending vast sums in an effort to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after this agreement was made. Still, "a total replacement was far beyond available resources. The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins."
The rebuilt church site consisted of "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it." The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as "a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature" since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins. Control of Jerusalem, and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, continued to change hands several times between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks (loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad) until the Crusaders' arrival in 1099.
Crusader period (1099–1187)
Background
Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abbasids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.
The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. In light of this mentality, Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon (who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem) decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ('Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre').
According to the German priest and pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys to the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians", and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given to them by the pilgrims at the south door of the church.
Crusaders: reconstruction (12th century) and ownership
By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos.
William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reports on the rebuilding of the church in the mid-12th century. The Crusaders investigated the eastern ruins on the site, occasionally excavating through the rubble, and while attempting to reach the cistern, they discovered part of the original ground level of Hadrian's temple enclosure; they transformed this space into a chapel dedicated to Helena, widening their original excavation tunnel into a proper staircase.
The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. These renovations unified the small chapels on the site and were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149, placing all the holy places under one roof for the first time.
The church became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and the site of the kingdom's scriptorium.
Eight 11th- and 12th-century Crusader leaders (Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V – the first eight rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem) were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam.
The royal tombs were looted during the Khwarizmian sack of Jerusalem in 1244 but probably remained mostly intact until 1808 when a fire damaged the church. The tombs may have been destroyed by the fire, or during renovations by the Greek Orthodox custodians of the church in 1809–1810. The remains of the kings may still be in unmarked pits under the church's pavement.
Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods
The church was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187, although the treaty established after the Third Crusade allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the site. Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50) regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century while under a ban of excommunication, with the consequence that the holiest church in Christianity was laid under interdict. The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the last period of Latin control over Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians and the Ayyubids in 1244.