While reading historical dramas, I often come across references to pilgrimages taken up by kings - part of a penance for sins; an expression of piety; collection of relics. An example, Louis VII the Younger, King of the Franks; in 1147 set out from the Basilica of St Denis on a pilgrimage and reached the Holy Land in 1148 (he was gone from his kingdom for years).
In the books I read about Eleanor of Aquitaine (who was married to Louis VII), I read of “relics”. (pg 36, The Summer Queen) A wedding gift, “a reliquary containing a sliver of bone from the leg of Saint James. The casing was of silver gilt, decorated with pearls and precious stones, and a little door of hinged rock crystal opened to reveal a gold box containing the precious fragment.”
(pg 398, The Winter Crown) a small lead ampulla which read “Thomas is the best doctor of the worthy sick.” -”They are diluting his blood and brains with water and selling the stuff to pilgrims, declaring it is a cure for the sick.” - Thomas Becket engaged in conflict with Henry II, King of England, over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the king; soon after his death, he was canonised by Pope Alexander III and a cult developed. The church evidently took advantage by selling these vials.
Eleanor’s father died while on pilgrimage to Compostela (pg 7, The Summer Queen) “many miracles are wrought at the shrine of Saint James… I am making this pilgrimage for the sake of my soul, not in expectation for a cure.”
This Blog Post is an ongoing project…
*Ancient Greek religion, prophet. Location, Lesbos.
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Ancient Greece, Lesbos, a major religious center:
The head of the poet-prophet Orpheus was supposed to have been transported to Lesbos (Greek Island), where it was enshrined and visited as an oracle. - [https://en.wikipedia.] Orpheus, legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles.
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*Christianity. “The remains of certain dead are surrounded with special care and veneration. This is because the mortal remains of the deceased are associated in some manner with the holiness of their souls which await reunion with their bodies in the resurrection.” -saints are intercessors… martyriums began to be built over the site of the burial, and it was considered beneficial for the soul to be buried close to the remains of saints, several large “funerary halls” being built over the sites of martyr’s graves, including Old Saint Peter’s Basilica…
*Saint Martin of Tours. Location, Tours, France.
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Tours became the chief point of Christian pilgrimage in Gaul (present-day France) [http://thecompletepilgrim.] Basilica of St. Martin of Tours. After the death of Martin, his gravesite in Tours became a pilgrimage destination. An early chapel was constructed there in the early 5th century; which was replaced with a larger basilica around 470; replaced by larger buildings in the 11th and 13th centuries. In 1562 it was sacked and nearly destroyed by Huguenots, restored in the 17th century, and nearly destroyed again in 1793 during the French Revolution. In 1860, the relic of Martin was rediscovered, and a new basilica completed in 1924.
[https://en.wikipedia.] Martin of Tours, was Bishop of Tours (d. 397), whose shrine in France became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. He has become one of most familiar and recognizable Christian saints, sometimes venerated as a military saint… Conscripted as a soldier into the Roman army, he found the duty incompatible with the Christian faith he had adopted and became an early conscientious objector… Hagiography. The early life of Saint Martin was written by Sulpicius Severus… casting out devils, raising the paralytic and the dead.
Rome became a major destination for Christian pilgrims as it was easier to access for European pilgrims than the Holy Land.
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[http://www.sacred-destinations.] Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Medieval pilgrims walked the Way of St. James for months to arrive at Santiago Cathedral, home of the relics of St. James in Santiago de Compostela. History. A small church was first built over the tomb of St. James shortly after it was discovered in 819 AD. This was destroyed by al-Mansur’s Moorish army in 997, although Almansor left the relics of the Apostle undisturbed… Construction of the present cathedral began in 1060 and was completed in 1211. Various elements were added in later centuries, culminating in the dramatic Baroque transformation of the exterior in the 16th-18th centuries. The remains of St. James, were lost in 1700 after being hidden before an English invasion; they were rediscovered during building work in 1879. Actually, three skeletons were found, presumed to be James and two of his disciples. The one belonging to the Apostle was identified thanks to a church in Tuscany, which possessed a piece of his skull that exactly fitted a gap in one of the discovered skulls. The identity was confirmed in 1884 by Pope Leo XIII and reinforced by John Paul II’s visit in 1982.
*BP: Religion, Relics, Hero Cults, Saints. [http://historicalandmisc.] Constantine erected great basilicas over the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul. A distinction of these sites was the presence of holy relics… In the 11th and 12th centuries, substantial numbers of pilgrims flocked to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, in which the supposed relics of the apostle James, son of Zebedee, discovered ca. 830, are housed… Believers would make pilgrimages to places believed to have been sanctified by the physical presence of Christ or prominent saints, such as the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
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[https://en.wikipedia.] Church of the Holy Sepulchre. aka Church of the Resurrection Founder, Constantine the Great; completed 335 AD, demolished in 1009, rebuilt in 1048. A church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church contains, according to traditions dating back to at least the 4th century, the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, at a place known as “Calvary” or “Golgotha”, and Jesus’s empty tomb, where he is said to have been buried and resurrected. The tomb is enclosed by the 18th century shrine, called Aedicule. Within the church proper are the last four (or, by some definitions, five) Stations of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of Jesus’ Passion; The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the 4th century… control of the church itself is shared between several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years… The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox and Roman Catholic, and to a lesser degree the Egyptian Copts, Syriacs and Ethiopians. Meanwhile, Protestants, including Anglicans, have no permanent presence in the Church. Some Protestants prefer The Garden Tomb, elsewhere in Jerusalem, as a more evocative site to commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.
Construction. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD built a temple dedicated to the goddess Venus in order to bury the cave in which Jesus had been buried. The first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, ordered in about 325/6 that the temple be replaced by a church. During the building of the Church, Constantine’s mother, Helena, is believed to have rediscovered the tomb… Constantine's church was built as two connected churches over the two difference holy sites, including a great basilica (the Martyrium visited by Egeria in the 380s), an enclosed colonnaded atrium (the Triportico) with the traditional of Golgotha in one corner, and a rotunda, called the Anastasis “Resurrection” in Greek), which contained the remains of the rock-cut room that Helena and Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus. According to tradition, Constantine arranged for the rockface to be removed from around the tomb, without harming it, in order to isolate the tomb; in the center of the rotunda is a small building called the Kouvouklion in Greek or the Aedicula in Latin, which encloses this tomb. The remains are completely enveloped by a marble sheath placed some 500 years before to protect the ledge from Ottoman attacks… The church was consecrated 9/13/335. From pilgrim reports it seems that the chapel housing the tomb of Jesus was freestanding at first, and that the Rotunda was only erected around the chapel in the 380s.
Damage and destruction. This building was damaged by fire in May of 614 when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius restored it and rebuilt the church after recapturing the city. After Jerusalem came under Arab rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city’s Christian sites… The building suffered severe damage due to an earthquake in 746; in the 9th century, another earthquake damed the dome of the Anastasis -repaired in 810. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Orthodox Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out and was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and the Patriarch John VII was murdered.
10/18/1009, Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining. Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews (for example, Cluniac monk Rodulfus Glaber blamed the Jews, with the result that Jews were expelled from Limoges and other French towns) and an impetus to later Crusades.
Reconstruction. In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027-8, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the Church. The rebuilding was finally completed with the financing at a huge expense by Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople in 1048. As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was re-opened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir’s name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the recanting of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under Al-Hakim’s prosecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by Al-Hakim and the re-establishment of a Patriarch in Jerusalem… …”The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins.” The chapels were to the east of the court of resurrection, where the wall of the great church had been. They commemorated scenes of the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and of his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shines in the streets of the city. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims’ devotion to the suffering of Christ… 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 until the arrival of the Crusaders in 1099.
Crusader period.
Later periods. Renovations… fire damage… restorations…
In 2016, restoration works were performed in the Aedicule. For the first time since at least 1555, marble cladding which protected the estimated burial bed of Jesus from vandalism and souvenir takers was removed. When the cladding was first removed on Oct. 26, an initial inspection by the National Technical University of Athens team showed only a layer of fill material underneath. By the night of Oct. 28, the original limestone burial bed was revealed intact. This suggested that the tomb location has not changed through time and confirmed the existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule. The tomb was resealed shortly thereafter.
Calvary (Golgotha). Traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion… Beneath the Calvary and the two chapels there, on the main floor, there is the Chapel of Adam. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam’s skull was buried. According to some, at the crucifixion, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill the skull of Adam. The Rock of Calvary appears cracked through a window on the altar wall, with the crack traditionally claimed to be caused by the earthquake that occurred when Jesus died on the cross, while some scholars claim it to be the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.
Rotunda and Aedicule. In the center of the Rotunda is the chapel called the Aedicule, which contains the Holy Sepulchre itself. The Aedicule has two rooms, the first holding the Angel’s Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second is the tomb itself. Possibly due to the fact that pilgrims laid their hands on the tomb and/or to prevent eager pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, a marble plaque was placed in the 14th century on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb.
Prison of Christ. In the north-east side of the complex there is The Prison of Christ, alleged by the Franciscans to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox alledge that the real place that Jesus was held was the similarly named Prison of Christ, in their Monastery of the Praetorium, located near the Church of Ecce HOmo, at the first station on the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation, a building near the second station on the Via Dolorosa, as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins near the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ.
Status quo. The Sultan’s firman (decree) of 1853, known as the “status quo”, pinned down the now permanent statues of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians… Times and places of worship for each community are strictly regulated in common areas… The establishment of the 1853 status quo did not halt controversy and sometimes violence, which continues to break out occasionally. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured. On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 11/9/2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross.
A less grave sign of this state of affairs is located on a window ledge over the church’s entrance. A wooden ladder was placed there at some time before 1852, when the status quo defined both the doors and the window ledges as common ground. This ladder, the “Immovable Ladder”, remains to this day, in almost exactly the same position it occupied in century-old photographs and engravings…
No one controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nuseibeh family… The Joudeh Al-Goudia family were entrusted as custodian of the keys to the Holy Sepulcher by Saladin in 1187.
Despite occasionally disagreements, the religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the recent (2016-17) full restoration of the Aedicule.
Location. The Bible describes Jesus’s tomb as being outside the city wall, as was normal for burials across the ancient world… Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus’ time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41-44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present norther walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well. The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early 1st century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated.
Influence. From the 9th century, the construction of churches inspired in the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem. Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been modeled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. The include the Heiliges Grab of Gorlitz, constructed between 1781 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, DC in 1898.
[https://en.wikipedia.] Constantine the Great, 57th Emperor of the Roman Empire (306-337 AD), aka Saint Constantine, Equal-to-the-Apostles in the Orthodox Church. In 313, he played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan, which decreed tolerance for Christianity in the empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325, at which the Nicene Creed was adopted by Christians… He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself… The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype -symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem. The Papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine. He is venerated as a saint by Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics… scholars debate his actual beliefs or even his actual comprehension of the Christian faith itself (he was not even baptised until just before his death).
Donation of Constantine… by the 4th century, a legend had emerged that Pope Sylvester I (314-335) had cured the pagan emperor from leprosy… Constantine was soon baptized, and began the construction of a church in the Lateran Palace. In the 8th century, most likely during the pontificate of Stephen II (752-757), a document called the Donation of Constantine first appeared, in which the freshly converted Constantine hands the temporal rule over “the city of Rome and all the provinces, districts, and cities of Italy and the Western regions” to Sylvester and his successors. In the High Middle Ages, this document was used as accepted as the basis for the Pope’s temporal power, though it was denounced as a forgery by Emperor Otto III and lamented by the poet Dante Alighieri. The 15th century philologist Lorenzo Valla proved the document was indeed a forgery.
*Basilica of Saint Denis, Paris, France.
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Sacred places, pilgrimage: Basilica of St Denis, Paris, France [https://en.wikipedia.] became a place of pilgrimage and the burial place of French kings with nearly every king from the 10th to the 18th centuries being buried there (list)
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*Related
*List of Christian pilgrimage sites. There are several shrines dedicated to apparitions, in particular, Marian [the Virgin Mary].
*BP: Hagiography, an important literary genre in the early Christian church. http://historicalandmisc.*
*BP: Religion, Cross Reference. http://indextoblogposts.*
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*BP: Religion, Cross Reference. http://indextoblogposts.*
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