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About Jerusalem | Western Wall | Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Dome of the Rock | Threats to the Old City | Bibliography
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Photo credits:
Corbis
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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre: Christian Holy Site
Jerusalem also holds one of Christianity's most venerated spaces of worship—the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians believe occupies the site of Jesus Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In the northwest quarter of the Old City, the church still stands at the end of Via Dolorose, the Path of Sorrows, believed by Christians to be the path along which Jesus carried his cross to Calvalry. Apparently, the site was a burial ground at the time of the crucifixion. Later, the Roman Emperor Hadrian erected a temple to Venus in this place.
In 326 C.E., Queen Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, visited Jerusalem to seek out the locations associated with the last days of Christ. Nine years later, in 335 C.E., Emperor Constantine the Great, who declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, built the Holy Sepulchre on the site that Queen Helena had identified as the place of Christ's supposed resurrection. According to Christian tradition, it was at this site that Helena also found the True Cross, the wood of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. In order to establish a new Christian identity for the city, Constantine had the pagan temple destroyed so that the first church could be built on this spot. Rejecting the traditional pagan forms of religious architecture, Constantine commissioned a new kind of religious structure to celebrate the new Christian city—and empire.
Constructing a new identity for Jerusalem, Constantine's architects took their inspiration not from pagan temples, but rather, from a secular building, the basilica, which had served as a hall of assembly, commerce, and law-making in the Roman Republic. The building is a complex of monumental structures, including the great basilica, a rotunda, galleries, and columned courtyards. Only the rotunda, about 130 feet in diameter, above what is held to be Jesus' tomb, still resembles Constantine's fourth century church.
Like so many of Jerusalem's sacred structures, The Church of the Holy Sepulchre faced continuous attacks throughout the centuries. In fact, the Constantine Church stood for less than 300 years. In 614 C.E., when the Persians invaded Jerusalem, they partially destroyed the Church and stole its treasures, including the True Cross. Almost twenty years later, the Byzantines recaptured the territory, forced the Persians to return the relics, and began restoring the Church. Since its first destruction and subsequent restoration, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was alternately destroyed and rebuilt several more times.
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When the Arabs conquered Jerusalem in 638 C.E., they protected the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction and their use as living quarters. The Arabs left the Christian sites relatively undisturbed for almost four centuries, with the exception of a riot in 966 C.E. during which the door and roofs of the Church were burned. In 1009, however, the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakin ordered the destruction of all churches in Jerusalem, including the Holy Sepulchre. Christians were forbidden to visit the Church's ruins. It took almost forty years for the Byzantine Emperor to negotiate a peace treaty with al-Hakin's successor that granted him permission to rebuild the Holy Sepulchre.
The structure that is seen today closely resembles the building magnificently restored by Crusaders, who conquered Jerusalem in 1099. The Crusaders unified the scattered sanctuaries, found at the site when they arrived, under one monument in the shape of a cross. Because of this holy site's turbulent history, the six Christian communities that now share responsibility for the church have organized major plans for its restoration. At the end of 1996, a renovation project of the rotunda was completed and new projects were planned to renovate other sections of the church—a testament to the sacred significance that Jerusalem continues to hold for Christianity.
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About Jerusalem | Western Wall | Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Dome of the Rock | Threats to the Old City | Bibliography
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