At no time in the whole year is the Holy City so interesting as during Easter Week. Jerusalem seems always filled to overflowing, but during Holy Week it is crowded and jammed with people for days and nights on end to a degree that it is impossible to describe.
I had the good fortune to be here during the most remarkable Easter that Jerusalem ever had, when by a curious coincidence the calendars of the various sects fixed the holy feasts on the same days, and the Jewish Passover and the Mohammedan festival of Nebu Musa, or the pilgrimage from the Mosque of Omar to the tomb of Moses, came during Easter Week. These celebrations packed the narrow, vaulted, winding streets of Jerusalem with a jam of crushed and crushing humanity. They filled the monasteries which surround the walls with tens of thousands of pilgrims, and clothed the Holy City in a greater variety of colours than were in the coat which Jacob gave to his favourite son Joseph.
The walls of Jerusalem enclose an area of not more than three hundred acres of ground, made up of hill and hollow, all filled with the flat-roofed box-like houses. There is no regularity in the city. The streets wind in and out and up and down, now becoming narrow, murky tunnels, and now roofed with the blue sky of Palestine. They are so narrow that through most of them no wheeled vehicle can go, and standing in the middle of many of them you can touch the walls on both sides with your outstretched hands. It is in such streets that the thousands move to and fro at Easter.
Grandfather and grandson—and both are followers of the ancient profession of begging. Under Turkish taxation the Palestinians were reduced to such dire poverty that asking alms is considered no disgrace
Where Christ rested when carrying the Cross to Calvary pilgrims now stop to pray in the Via Dolorosa
I doubt whether there is a town of five hundred population in the United States which is built upon three hundred acres of land. Here there are over one hundred times that many people, and the Easter visitors swell the number to as many more. During Holy Week the bulk of this mass of humanity crowds into the section of the city surrounding the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There seem to be scores of thousands of worshippers in an area less than that of a city block, and the two or three narrow streets leading to the sanctuary become so crowded that Moslem soldiers must be constantly on guard to keep them in order. The gay colours of the clothes of the Orient turn the streets into a flowing mass of broken rainbows, and the jabber of a score of languages makes a noise quite as remarkable as that heard at the Tower of Babel.
Let me show you David Street as it looked to me the day after Palm Sunday. David Street is the narrow way leading from Jaffa Gate down into the city. It is about ten feet wide, and we go through it into the Christian Street, which, by a second turn, brings us to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. At the top is the Tower of David, a square stone structure one hundred feet high, a part of which was in existence before the Christian Era. In the large square in front of this is the vegetable market of Jerusalem, where pedlars from Bethlehem and elsewhere sit on the stones with their baskets about them. Standing with our backs to the tower, as far as we can see, we look upon a moving mass of pilgrims and natives of all ages and colours and costumes.
Twenty different nations are represented in the faces which look toward us. Here is an Ethiopian priest, in a tall black cap and a long black gown, whose black eyes are set in features as shiny as oiled ebony. He is one of the Abyssinian fathers and has his place in the ceremonies at Easter. That mahogany-faced man in a yellow gown is a Persian, and the fierce-looking Ishmaelite behind him, in a blanket of black-and-white stripes, his bronzed face crowned by a yellow silk handkerchief, is a Bedouin; he is of the Moslem faith, and is on his way to worship at the mosque. Behind him comes a woman in a white sheet. Her features are covered with a yellow gauze cloth with red leaves printed upon it; she is the wife of a Mohammedan merchant, and her face is not to be seen outside the harem. That slender, black-eyed girl, with the dark roses in her cheeks, is the daughter of a Polish Jew. Her cap is black, and, like all of her sisters, she wears a little silk flowered shawl.
Some of the prettiest women in the world are peddling vegetables about you. As you note their complexions you can hardly realize that they live under the fierce sun of the tropics. Their skins are as fair as the cheeks of the girls of Dublin, and their regular features would make them beauties in America. They wear high caps bound round with silver coins, row after row rising up from their foreheads against a background of black velvet.
Here is a crowd of Russian peasants. The honest bronzed faces of the women look out under the brown handkerchiefs tied about their heads in place of bonnets, and their short dresses of cheap cotton or wool come half way down over their high-topped boots. The men have tall fur caps, and their coats are made with skirts as full as the petticoats of the women. The faces of both sexes are strong, with honesty and industry showing in every line. They cross themselves as two Greek priests pass them.
Let us push our way through the crowd. That tall soldier in red fez and European uniform breaks the way for us. We pass good-natured Moslems and Jews; we are jostled by Bedouin girls in gypsy dress, and by Bethlehem shepherds clad in sheep-skins. Going by the market women squatting at the turning, we follow the crowd and pass on to the entrance of one of the tunnel-like bazaars. Leaving this, we turn into another arch at the right, and diving through vaulted, twisting caves of stores, we go down some steps, past the money-changers, who sit at the street corners with little glass-covered boxes of gold and silver coins before them. Brushing by dozens of beggars we arrive at last in the court in front of the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Now we are in the heart of the Jerusalem of Easter.
This court is where the multitude stood to see the crucifixion of our Lord. On the opposite side from the entrance, in a corner of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is the Rock of Calvary, and the buildings which surround it are the convents and monasteries of the various Christian sects.
A stream of worshippers of all nations passes continuously among the hordes of beggars and pedlars squatting on the stones. Here a young Syrian is selling candles of all kinds and sizes, from tapers no bigger than your little finger to great cylinders as thick as your arm, to pilgrims who go to burn them before the altars within the sepulchre.
There is a rosary pedlar doing a rushing business. She is a Bethlehem girl with two bushels of beads. They are made of olive wood and of the pips of the olive itself, as well as of mother-of-pearl. All around you are the characters of the Scriptures. Here is a dark-brown man whose face reminds you of that of Judas in Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” He is peddling little crosses of mother-of-pearl. Here is a woman with a face as beautifully sad as that of Mary Magdalene, and there is an old man selling pictures of the church dignitaries, whose patriarchal beard and honest eyes make you think of Abraham. There are pedlars of brass rings and glass bracelets from Hebron. The crier of drinks in bare feet and blue gown, with his skin water bottle on his back, passes along announcing his wares by clinking his two brass drinking-cups together.
The crowd moves on in a never-ending stream toward the door of the church. It is the same, morning and evening, day in and day out. Thousands upon thousands of footsteps have worn the flag stones to the smoothness of marble, and on and on they come, year after year and generation after generation. We enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the church which these people believe covers the spot where Christ was crucified and where His tomb is kept. It is the church that Constantine built, the church for which the Crusaders fought, the shrine where the religious of all Christendom would bow.
It is a vast building of yellow limestone rising out of and above a jumble of houses in front of the court, with a dome a little smaller than that of our Capitol at Washington. At one side a chapel rises above the other parts of the structure to the second story, and the whole stands upon hill and valley so that the chapel rests upon a rock high above the level of the ground floor. This rock is supposed to be Calvary, upon which stood the cross of Christ. Around the rotunda extends a series of buildings, consisting of gaudily decorated churches and chapels of a dozen different denominations and sects. A wide vaulted aisle runs around between these and the rotunda into which they open.
Entering, we go through a high-arched door past a ledge cut into the wall at the right where Mohammedan officers smoke long-stemmed water-pipes while they sit with their legs crossed and direct the soldiers posted here to keep the crowds in order. We go into a great square vestibule in the centre of which, with rows of immense candles at its head and foot, there lies under a long row of beautiful brass lamps a rectangular stone of rose-coloured marble about eight feet long and four feet wide. It is four inches above the floor, and around its edges burn the wax tapers of worshippers. This is the Stone of Unction on which it is said the body of the Lord was laid when it was anointed for burial.
Pilgrim after pilgrim walks forward and prostrates himself before it. Each one gets down on his knees, and bows his head to the floor, then leans over and kisses the stone. As we come closer we see that the marble has been worn rough by the pressure of human lips. As we stand and watch the earnest worshippers who pray before it, we cannot but be impressed with their faith. An old peasant woman in black, who trembles as she puts her long thin hands caressingly on the marble, bends over and touches it again and again with her withered lips. A pretty boy of ten crosses himself and kneels beside his Armenian mother while they go through their devotions together. Another pilgrim lays his beads on the slab, that they may be blessed by the contact, and crosses himself as he rises. Now there kneels a family of Greeks, the men in the ballet-girl costume of the Albanians, followed by a richly dressed lady who lays some cakes of incense on the slab, and prays long before it. Behind her come two Russian women with long strips of white linen in their hands. Waiting until the crowd has partially thinned, they measure the stone with this cloth, and cut it into strips of just the size of the slab. They rub these strips over the stone, praying as they do so, for these are to be their winding sheets, and they believe that, buried in them, they will rest more easily in their graves. It is difficult to appreciate the solemnity of the worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
There is superstition mixed with earnest, honest faith, as is so often the case in the poor, weak human brain, even in those who lay claim to greater intellectuality than these poor pilgrims.
These tens of thousands of pilgrims continue to pray as they rise from the Stone of Unction, and then with bowed heads walk on into the great rotunda of the church itself. Here in the very centre rises an oblong marble structure about thirty feet high, twenty-five feet long, and seventeen feet wide. The marble is yellow with age and the architecture of the building is rude rather than artistic. This is the tomb of Christ. It is more like a chapel than a tomb, and its fronts and sides are covered with candles. Curious brass lamps, with glass globes of different colours, hang like a frieze around its alabaster top, and between these are oil paintings of scriptural scenes. In its front, in gold pillars as tall as a man, are columns of painted wax each six inches thick and twelve feet high. At the top of each of these a flame trembles.
At Easter there flows through its low door an endless stream of humanity. We enter through a vestibule so dark that we can hardly see the features of the people around us, and find the same kissing and praying going on. Upon the column of marble about three feet high, standing in the centre of the vestibule, thousands of kisses are pressed every day. Into its top is set a piece of the stone which was rolled from the door of Christ’s tomb. The stones walling the tomb are very thick, and the door is so narrow that only one man can enter it at a time, and so low that even boys bow their heads in going in. The space within is so small that it will hold only four persons at once. It is dimly lighted with candles, and a Greek priest in cap and gown is always on guard. At the right of the room, set into the wall, there is a marble slab of purest white resting upon another slab about four feet high and forming a box or ledge. This box is supposed to have been the sepulchre of Christ, to the people of the Christian world the holiest of the holy places of the earth. The worshippers here pray and drop their tears, and men reverently back their way out to give place to others. All of the Christian sects claim a right to the tomb, and it is free of access to every denomination.
The chapels of the various churches opening into the rotunda are gorgeously decorated, and each sect has some relic of the Crucifixion which people consider their especial charge and which they guard with the greatest reverence. One chapel contains the stocks in which some of the saints were imprisoned, and the chapel of the Syrians has the tomb of Nicodemus and of Joseph of Arimathea. The Latins have the column of the scourging. The Greeks, who have the finest chapel of all those surrounding the rotunda, are first, both in wealth and power, in the Church of the Sepulchre.
The Oriental Christians are very superstitious, and have implicit faith in all the stories connected with the Sepulchre. They believe that the ceremonies of Easter carry with them saving grace, and during this Holy Week they are in a state of religious frenzy. The officers of the various churches do all they can to increase this excitement, with the result that there is a series of religious pageants in which each patriarch and his bishops try to outshine the other churches in splendour and gorgeous ceremonials. The competition is so great that at times the various sects break out into unchristian fights, and once there was a riot in the Holy Sepulchre in which more than three hundred pilgrims were suffocated or trampled to death.
During the ceremonies of Easter, companies of soldiers are stationed in the more holy places of Jerusalem, and several companies surround the various patriarchs in their church exercises.
Waiting for the Holy Fire to come down from Heaven, a “miracle” celebrated by the Greek Church during Easter Week. From the candle mysteriously lighted inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, others are lighted in rapid succession
The use of ladders to gather the olive crop has replaced the old, wasteful method of beating the trees to shake off the fruit. The olive grows best where its roots can find their way into the crevices of a rock
The celebrations begin with Palm Sunday. The patriarchs bless the palms which are distributed by the thousands to the people. Every man, woman, and child in Jerusalem seems to be waving palm branches, and the court and Church of the Sepulchre are filled with green. The Greek Patriarch and his bishops march three times around the grand aisle outside of the rotunda of the church, bearing a cross of gold and preceded by clouds of incense from urns carried by the bishops in gorgeous white brocaded silk gowns covered with roses of red and gold. In the procession there are a score or more of bishops with crosses of diamonds six inches long upon their breasts, and with their long hair flowing from under their high caps and down upon their shoulders. The Greek Patriarch, the central figure of all of these celebrations and the head of the Greek Church in Palestine and Arabia, carries the gold cross-like staff of his office. He is dressed in the most gorgeous of gowns of cloth of gold and silver, and upon his handsome gray head is his cap of high place—a great dome-like tiara of silver and gold, fairly blazing with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, each of them worth a fortune.
Every day of Holy Week has its ceremonies, and between times the pilgrims visit the spots made sacred by association with Christ’s life about Jerusalem. They kiss the ground on which Stephen was stoned; they visit the monastery which now stands on the floor of the house of Pontius Pilate; they pray before Christ’s prison, and they hold services all along the Via Dolorosa, kneeling and praying at the various stations.
The Easter festival itself is not so wonderful in comparison with the services of the week. The day is ushered in with the ringing of bells. The Russian pilgrims rush into each other’s arms and give the “kiss of peace.” The Easter celebrations are more notable for the display of fine vestments and gorgeous plate than for the excellence of the music or unusual features in the ceremonies. The Latin churches hold their services in front of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, the Latin Patriarch officiating. There is a solemn high mass in front of the Sepulchre, and after this the Patriarch and bishops, followed by the crowd bearing lighted candles, march around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, chanting and offering up their prayers on the spots made sacred by their association with the Saviour’s death and burial. The ceremonies of the Greek Church come later, when all over the hills about Jerusalem can be heard the voices of the people and the sound of the bells pealing forth the song of the risen Saviour.