In The Levant 7

In The Levant 7

At the end of the street, in a new Latin nunnery, are the remains of

the house of Pilate, which are supposed to be authentic. The present

establishment is called the convent of St. Anne, and the community is

very fortunate, at this late day, in obtaining such a historic site for

itself. We had the privilege of seeing here some of the original rock

that formed part of the foundations of Pilate's house; and there are

three stones built into the altar that were taken from the pavement of

Gabbatha, upon which Christ walked. These are recent discoveries; it

appears probable that the real pavement of Gabbatha has been found,

since Pilate's house is so satisfactorily identified. Spanning the

street in front of this convent is the Ecce Homo arch, upon which Pilate

showed Christ to the populace. The ground of the new building was until

recently in possession of the Moslems, who would not sell it for a less

price than seventy thousand francs; the arch they would not sell at all;

and there now dwells, in a small chamber on top of it, a Moslem saint

and hermit. The world of pilgrims flows under his feet; he looks from

his window upon a daily procession of Christians, who traverse the Via

Dolorosa, having first signified their submission to the Moslem yoke

in the Holy City by passing under this arch of humiliation. The hermit,

however, has the grace not to show himself, and few know that he sits

there, in the holy occupation of letting his hair and his nails grow.

 

From the house of the Roman procurator we went to the citadel of

Sultan Suleiman. This stands close by the Jaffa Gate, and is the most

picturesque object in all the circuit of the walls, and, although the

citadel is of modern origin, its most characteristic portion lays claim

to great antiquity. The massive structure which impresses all strangers

who enter by the Jaffa Gate is called the Tower of Hippicus, and also

the Tower of David. It is identified as the tower which Herod built and

Josephus describes, and there is as little doubt that its foundations

are the same that David laid and Solomon strengthened. There are no such

stones in any other part of the walls as these enormous bevelled blocks;

they surpass those in the Harem wall, at what is called the Jews'

Wailing Place. The tower stands upon the northwest corner of the old

wall of Zion, and being the point most open to attack it was most

strongly built.

 

It seems also to have been connected with the palace on Zion which David

built, for it is the tradition that it was from this tower that the

king first saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, when "it came to pass in an

eventide that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of

the king's house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and

the woman was very beautiful to look upon." On the other side of the

city gate we now look down upon the Pool of Bathsheba, in which there is

no water, and we are informed that it was by that pool that the lovely

woman, who was destined to be the mother of Solomon, sat when the king

took his evening walk. Others say that she sat by the Pool of Gibon. It

does not matter. The subject was a very fruitful one for the artists of

the Renaissance, who delighted in a glowing reproduction of the biblical

stories, and found in such incidents as this and the confusion of

Susanna themes in which the morality of the age could express itself

without any conflict with the religion of the age. It is a comment not

so much upon the character of David as upon the morality of the time in

which he lived, that although he repented, and no doubt sincerely, of

his sin when reproved for it, his repentance did not take the direction

of self-denial; he did not send away Bathsheba.

 

This square old tower is interiorly so much in ruins that it is not easy

to climb to its parapet, and yet it still has a guardhouse attached to

it, and is kept like a fortification; a few rusty old cannon, under the

charge of the soldiers, would injure only those who attempted to fire

them; the entire premises have a tumble-down, Turkish aspect. The view

from the top is the best in the city of the city itself; we saw also

from it the hills of Moab and a bit of the Dead Sea.

 

Close by is the Armenian quarter, covering a large part of what was once

the hill of Zion. I wish it were the Christian quarter, for it is the

only part of the town that makes any pretension to cleanliness, and it

has more than any other the aspect of an abode of peace and charity.

This is owing to its being under the government of one corporation, for

the Armenian convent covers nearly the entire space of this extensive

quarter. The convent is a singular, irregular mass of houses, courts,

and streets, the latter apparently running over and under and through

the houses; you come unexpectedly upon stairways, you traverse roofs,

you enter rooms and houses on the roofs of other houses, and it is

difficult to say at any time whether you are on the earth or in the

air. The convent, at this season, is filled with pilgrims, over three

thousand of whom, I was told, were lodged here. We came upon families of

them in the little rooms in the courts and corridors, or upon the roofs,

pursuing their domestic avocations as if they were at home, cooking,

mending, sleeping, a boorish but simple-minded lot of peasants.

 

The church is a large and very interesting specimen of religious

architecture and splendid, barbaric decoration. In the vestibule hang

the "bells." These are long planks of a sonorous wood, which give forth

a ringing sound when struck with a club. As they are of different sizes,

you get some variation of tone, and they can be heard far enough to call

the inmates of the convent to worship. The interior walls are lined with

ancient blue tiles to a considerable height, and above them are rude and

inartistic sacred pictures. There is in the church much curious inlaid

work of mother-of-pearl and olive-wood, especially about the doors of

the chapels, and one side shines with the pearl as if it were encrusted

with silver. Ostrich eggs are strung about in profusion, with hooks

attached for hanging lamps.

 

The first day of our visit to this church, in one of the doorways of

what seemed to be a side chapel, and which was thickly encrusted with

mother-of-pearl, stood the venerable bishop, in a light rose-colored

robe and a pointed hood, with a cross in his hand, preaching to the

pilgrims, who knelt on the pavement before him, talking in a familiar

manner, and, our guide said, with great plainness of speech. The

Armenian clergy are celebrated for the splendor of their vestments,

and I could not but think that this rose-colored bishop, in his shining

framework, must seem like a being of another sphere to the boors before

him. He almost imposed upon us.

 

These pilgrims appeared to be of the poorest agricultural class of

laborers, and their costume is uncouth beyond description. In a side

chapel, where we saw tiles on the walls that excited our envy,--the

quaintest figures and illustrations of sacred subjects,--the clerks were

taking the names of pilgrims just arrived, who kneeled before them and

paid a Napoleon each for their lodging in the convent, as long as they

should choose to stay. In this chapel were the shoes of the pilgrims

who had gone into the church, a motley collection of foot-gear, covering

half the floor: leather and straw, square shoes as broad as long, round

shoes, pointed shoes, old shoes, patched shoes, shoes with the toes

gone, a pathetic gathering that told of poverty and weary travel--and

big feet. These shoes were things to muse on, for each pair, made maybe

in a different century, seemed to have a character of its own, as it

stood there awaiting the owner. People often, make reflections upon a

pair of shoes; literature is full of them. Poets have celebrated many a

pretty shoe,--a queen's slipper, it may be, or the hobnail brogan of a

peasant, or, oftener, the tiny shoes of a child; but it is seldom that

one has an opportunity for such comprehensive moralizing as was here

given. If we ever regretted the lack of a poet in our party, it was now.

 

We walked along the Armenian walls, past the lepers' quarter, and

outside the walls, through the Gate of Zion, or the Gate of the Prophet

David as it is also called, and came upon a continuation of the plateau

of the hill of Zion, which is now covered with cemeteries, and is the

site of the house of Caiaphas and of the tomb of David and those Kings

of Jerusalem who were considered by the people worthy of sepulture here;

for the Jews seem to have brought from Egypt the notion of refusing

royal burial to their bad kings, and they had very few respectable ones.

 

The house of Caiaphas the high-priest had suffered a recent tumble-down,

and was in such a state of ruin that we could with difficulty enter it

or recognize any likeness of a house. On the premises is an Armenian

chapel; in it we were shown the prison in which Christ was confined,

also the stone door of the sepulchre, which the Latins say the Armenians

stole. But the most remarkable object here is the little marble column

(having carved on it a figure of Christ bound to a pillar) upon which

the cock stood and crowed when Peter denied his Lord. There are some

difficulties in the way of believing this now, but they will lessen as

the column gets age.

 

Outside this gate lie the desolate fields strewn with the brown

tombstones of the Greeks and Armenians, a melancholy spectacle. Each

sect has its own cemetery, and the dead sleep peaceably enough, but

the living who bury them frequently quarrel. I saw one day a funeral

procession halted outside the walls; for some reason the Greek priest

had refused the dead burial in the grave dug for him in the cemetery;

the bier was dumped on the slope beside the road, and half overturned;

the friends were sitting on the ground, wrangling. The man had been dead

three days, and the coffin had been by the roadside in this place since

the day before. This was in the morning; towards night I saw the same

crowd there, but a Turkish official appeared and ordered the Greeks to

bury their dead somewhere, and that without delay; to bury it for the

sake of the public health, and quarrel about the grave afterwards if

they must. A crowd collected, joining with fiery gesticulation and

clamor in the dispute, the shrill voices of women being heard above all;

but at last, four men roughly shouldered the box, handling it as if it

contained merchandise, and trotted off with it.

 

As we walked over this pathless, barren necropolis, strewn, as it

were, hap-hazard with shapeless, broken, and leaning headstones, it was

impossible to connect with it any sentiment of affection or piety. It

spoke, like everything else about here, of mortality, and seemed only a

part of that historical Jerusalem which is dead and buried, in which no

living person can have anything more than an archaeological interest.

It was, then, with something like a shock that we heard Demetrius, our

guide, say, pointing to a rude stone,--

 

"That is the grave of my mother!"

 

Demetrius was a handsome Greek boy, of a beautiful type which has almost

disappeared from Greece itself, and as clever a lad as ever spoke all

languages and accepted all religions, without yielding too much to any

one. He had been well educated in the English school, and his education

had failed to put any faith in place of the superstition it had

destroyed. The boy seemed to be numerously if not well connected in the

city; he was always exchanging a glance and a smile with some

pretty, dark-eyed Greek girl whom we met in the way, and when I said,

"Demetrius, who was that?" he always answered, "That is my cousin."