PART I. lowed you of it. For there is no going within the borders of it, without forfeiting your life, or, which is worse, your religion. In this pretended house of Pilate is still shewn the room, in which Christ was mocked with the ensigns of royalty, and buffeted by the soldiers. On the other side of the street, which was anciently part of the palace also, is the room where they say our Lord was scourged.

24.

which our

Lord was

led from Pi

late's palace

to mount

Calvary.

In our return from Pilate's palace, we passed, saith Mr. Of the way Maundrell, along the Dolorous way, so called because Christ was led along it to be crucified. In which walk we were shewn in order; first, the place where Pilate brought our Lord forth to present him to the people, saying, Behold the man! secondly, where Christ fainted thrice under the weight of his cross; thirdly, where the blessed Virgin swooned away at so tragical a spectacle; fourthly, where St. Veronica is said to have presented to our Lord the handkerchief to wipe his bleeding brows; fifthly, where the soldiers compelled Simon the Cyrenian to bear his cross.

25.

Of mount
Calvary.

There remains only now mount Calvary to be spoker to, whereon our Saviour underwent the last part of his most meritorious passion. It is then a small eminency or hill, upon the greater mount of Moriah, and it is thought by some to have had the name of Golgotha in Hebrew, Calvary in Latin, given to it from its somewhat representing a man's scull. It was anciently appropriated to the execution of malefactors, and therefore shut out of the walls of the city, as an execrable and polluted place. But since it was made the altar, on which was offered up the precious and all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, it has recovered itself from that infamy, and has been always reverenced and resorted to with such devotion by all Christians, that it has drawn the city round about it, and stands now in the midst of Jerusalem, a great part of the hill of Sion being shut out of the walls, to make room for the admission of mount Calvary.

This same mount is likewise honoured with a church,

called the church of the Sepulchre, as being built over CHAP. VI. the place where our Lord's sepulchre was. It is less than of our Sa one hundred paces long, and not more than sixty wide; viour's se pulchre. and yet it is so contrived, that it is supposed to contain under its roof twelve or thirteen sanctuaries, or places consecrated to a more than ordinary veneration, by being reputed to have some particular actions done in them relating to the death and resurrection of Christ. As first, the place where he was derided by the soldiers: secondly, where the soldiers divided his garments: thirdly, where he was shut up, whilst they digged the hole to set the foot of the cross in, and made all ready for his crucifixion: fourthly, where he was nailed to the cross: fifthly, where the cross was erected: sixthly, where the soldiers stood that pierced his side: seventhly, where his body was anointed in order to his burial: eighthly, where his body was deposited in the sepulchre: ninthly, where the angels appeared to the women after his resurrection: tenthly, where Christ himself appeared to Mary Magdalene, &c. The places, where these and many other things relating to our blessed Lord are said to have been done, are all supposed to be contained within the narrow precincts of this church, and are all distinguished and adorned with so many several altars.

In galleries round about the church, and also in little buildings annexed to it on the outside, are certain apartments for the reception of friars and pilgrims; and in those places almost every Christian nation anciently maintained a small society of monks, each society having its proper quarter assigned to it, by the appointment of the Turks: such as the Latins, Greeks, Syrians, Armenians, Abyssenes, Georgians, Nestorians, Cophtites, Maronites, &c. All which had anciently their several apartments in the church. But these have all, except four, forsaken their quarters; not being able to sustain the severe rents and extortions, which their Turkish landlords impose upon them. The Latins, Greeks, Armenians, and Cophtites keep their footing still. But of these four the

PART 1. Cophtites have now only one poor representative of their nation left: and the Armenians are run so much in debt, that it is supposed they are hastening apace to follow the example of their brethren, who have deserted before them.

Besides their several apartments, each fraternity have their altars and sanctuary properly and distinctly allotted to their own use. At which places they have a peculiar right to perform their own divine service, and to exclude other nations from them.

But that which has always been the great prize contended for by the Christians of the several nations aforesaid, is the command and appropriation of the holy sepulchre, a privilege contested with great warmth, especially between the Greeks and Latins. For putting an end to the quarrels hereby occasioned between the several sorts of Christians, the French King interposed, by a letter to the Grand Visier about twenty-two years since, requesting him to order the holy sepulchre to be put into the hands of the Latins, according to the tenor of the capitulation made in the year 1673. The consequence of which letter and of other instances made by the French King was, that the holy sepulchre was appropriated to the Latins. This was not accomplished till the year 1690, since which the Latins only have the privilege to say mass in it. And though it be permitted to Christians of all nations to go into it for their private devotions, yet none may solemnize any public office of religion there but the Latins.

In order to the fitting of this hill, called mount Calvary, for the foundation of a church, the first founders were obliged to reduce it to a plain area; which they did by cutting down several parts of the rock, and by elevating others. But in this work care was taken, that none of those parts of the hill, which were reckoned to be more immediately concerned in our blessed Lord's passion, should be altered or diminished. Thus that very part of Calvary, where they say Christ was fastened to,

and lifted up on his cross, is left entire, being about ten

or twelve yards square, and standing at this day so high CHAP. VI. above the common floor of the church, that you have' one and twenty steps or stairs to go up to its top. And the holy sepulchre itself, which was at first a cave hewn into the rock under ground, having had the rock cut away from it all round, is now as it were a grotto above ground.

!

At about a yard and an half distance from the hole in which the foot of the cross was fixed, is seen that memorable cleft in the rock, said to have been made by the earthquake, which happened at the suffering of the God of nature; when (as St. Matthew, chap. xxvii. 51. witnesseth) the rocks rent, and the very graves were opened. This cleft, as to what now appears of it, is about a span wide at its upper part, and two deep; after which it closes but it opens again below, (as you may see in another chapel contiguous to the side of Calvary,) and runs down to an unknown depth in the earth. That this rent was made by the earthquake that happened at our Lord's passion, there is only tradition to prove: but that it is a natural and genuine breach, and not counterfeited by any art, the sense and reason of every one that sees it may con

vince him. For the sides of it fit like two tallies to each other, and yet it runs in such intricate windings, as could not be well counterfeited by art, nor arrived at by any instrument.

rolled to the

It is proper here to speak more of the stone, which we Of the stone observed above is said to be the very stone, which was laid mouth of to secure the door of our Saviour's sepulchre. That this our Lord's sepulchre. stone was to be seen in the fourth century or age, both St. Cyril and St. Jerom, who lived in that age, inform us. It was accordingly kept for a long time in the church of the Sepulchre; but the Armenians, not many years since, stole it from thence by a stratagem, and conveyed it to the church above mentioned, built over the place where Caiaphas's house stood, and belonging to the Armenians. This stone, as Mr. Maundrell tells us, is two yards and a quarter long, high one yard, and broad

PART I. as much. It is plaistered all over, except in five or six little places, where it is left bare to receive the immediate kisses and other devotions of pilgrims.

I shall close this account of mount Calvary with observing, that it was a tradition generally received among the primitive Christians, that (the first as well as second) Adam was buried here: as also that this was the place where Abraham was about to have sacrificed his son Isaac, the type of our blessed Saviour.

Having thus given an account of the several places relating to our Saviour's passion, and that according to the latest relations we have of them, the reader will, I hope, excuse me, if I take him now a little way, not above half an hour, saith Mr. Maundrell, from Jerusalem to a convent of the Greeks, taking its name from the holy cross. This convent is very neat in its structure, and in its situation delightful. But that which most deserves to be noted in it, and for which reason it is here noted, is the occasion of its name and foundation. It is then because here is the earth, that nourished the root, that bore the tree, that yielded the timber, that made the CROSS,