Peter the Hermit was a knight of gentle birth from Picardy: “dwarfish, of mean figure, quick-witted, and with a sharp but kindly eye, he was free spoken, and not wanting in eloquence”495—a man better fitted for the cloister, in which the shy and sensitive found refuge in those rough times, than for the shock of battle. At the age of forty-four he left his monastery at Huy, near Liége, in the year 1094 A. D., and went as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, which was then in the power of the Turk. The misery which Eastern Christians and Western pilgrims had suffered for seventeen years from the wild Tartars and Kharezmians who formed the Seljuk garrison was approaching its culmination. It is said that the Turks often invaded the churches, dancing on the altars, treading under foot the sacred chalices, wrecking their fury on the marble of the sepulchre, and dragging the patriarch from his throne by the beard.496 The only hope for Christians lay in help from Europe. “When the cup of tribulation is full,” said the patriarch Simeon to Peter, “God will send the Christians of the West to help the Holy City.” The time and the man were at hand; and as the little hermit knelt before the sepulchre there came to him a voice that said, “Arise, Peter; the time is come. Go forth and tell the tribulations of My people. The time is come that My servants should be succoured, and that My holy places should be free.”

We all know what was the effect on the history of the world that followed Peter’s determination to obey the Voice: how his passionate faith and “eloquence” set Western Europe on fire; how at the Council of Clermont, in November 1095, the “truce of God” was proclaimed among princes; how the letters from the Eastern Christians were read; how Peter testified to their wrongs; how Pope Urban II. sanctioned his mission; and how the assembly rang with the shout of “Diex el volt.” I have devoted another volume to the story of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, and it is here proposed to treat only the history of the city itself under its Latin kings.497 A few words are, however, needed to give the thread of events preceding the conquest.

Like all great popular movements, the Crusade was due to many motives affecting various classes of men. Faith, and sympathy with the wronged, roused the enthusiasm of those who listened to the passionate appeals of Peter, who was known to have served bravely in 1071 under the Count of Boulogne in Flanders. He was a selfless man; for after his day of triumph, when he was acclaimed as the saviour of Jerusalem by five years of suffering, he returned to his cell at Huy, where he died on July 7, 1115 A. D. But besides outraging Christianity, the Turks had endangered the trade of Italy, which, as we have seen, had prospered under the Egyptian Moslems; and the merchant class had a vital interest in the pacification of the East. To the statesmen of Europe it was also known that the time was favourable for an attempt to crush Turkish power, which threatened the West, because the Seljuk princes were engaged in internecine quarrels, and were the enemies of the Arab and Egyptian Moslems. Pope Urban II. saw also in this popular excitement the means of uniting all Catholic princes under himself, and of extending the power of the Roman Church over the whole of Christendom by reuniting the various Churches of the East. He had been made a cardinal by the great Hildebrand, and was elected Pope on March 12, 1088, but in the struggle with the empire he had been driven out of Rome, in 1091, by Guibert the Anti-pope who was called Celestin III., and he had only regained possession of the sacred city in December 1093, after crowning Conrad, the rebel son of the emperor Henry IV., at Milan. He lived to carry out, in part, the dream of Hildebrand, and died in the year that saw the conquest of Jerusalem.

The ambition of the Normans in Italy was not satisfied with the capture of the south from the Greeks, or of Sicily from the Moslems. They aimed at conquest of far lands, where the younger sons of their princes might carve out kingdoms. Robert Guiscard (“the wily”), a valvassour (or gentleman) of Hauteville in Normandy, had crossed the Alps in 1053, with five knights and thirty men, to join his brothers who were among the mercenaries invited (as early as 1017) by the Pope to conquer Apulia. He became the feudal overlord of the barons of Calabria and Apulia, as duke, in 1058 A. D. He became also the Pope’s master, but the champion of Hildebrand against the German emperor. His brother Roger reigned in Sicily till 1090, and he himself died warring in Greece five years earlier. His eldest son Bœmund was now fighting for possession of Amalfi, when the opportunity arose for winning a new kingdom in Asia. He and his cousin Tancred agreed to lead a force of 10,000 knights and 20,000 foot soldiers to the East. Bœmund became Prince of Antioch, which he left in 1104, and died in Italy seven years later. Tancred became Prince of Galilee, and died at Antioch a year after his cousin.

Godfrey of Bouillon (in the Ardennes) was descended on his mother’s side from Charlemagne. He was the eldest son of Count Eustace II. of Boulogne, and nephew of the duke of Lorraine. He was about thirty-five years old, and had distinguished himself fighting for the emperor Henry IV. against the Pope, but now vowed as penance to aid the Christian cause. Like Bœmund, he was taller than most men, strong and ruddy bearded, loved and respected by all—a true knight, faithful and pure of life, brave and just, courteous to all, and humble of heart. With him came his brother Baldwin, who was the first to establish a Latin province in Asia as Count of Edessa, and who succeeded him as King of Jerusalem. The Lorrainers whom they led numbered 10,000 knights and 24,000 foot. Raymond of Toulouse, who had fought in Spain beside the Cid, led 100,000 men by land to Byzantium with Godfrey. He became Count of Tripoli, and died fighting there on February 28, 1105. Besides these future princes, Robert of Flanders and Robert of Normandy took part in the conquest, and the total force of trained fighting men, assembled at Constantinople in the winter of 1096 A. D., numbered about 200,000 in all. To them fell all the honour and profit, and the wild mobs of 100,000 pilgrims who preceded them, under Peter the Hermit and Walter Lackland, with 20,000 Germans besides, never reached Palestine at all, being massacred by the Turks near Nicæa.

Such were the great actors and such their motives. They knew not what they did, and the results of enthusiasm and of ambition alike were far different from what they hoped. The masses may have found consolation in absolution from their sins, but no priestly blessing could alter the nemesis of conduct that came on them and on their children. The traders who hoped to dominate the commerce of Asia found it necessary, in the end, to make treaties with Moslem rulers. The proud princes of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem were, within a century, to become outcasts dependent on their kinsmen at home. The emperors of Byzantium found, not allies, but masters, in the Franks. The Eastern Churches were dispossessed of their chapels and property by Latin bishops. The power of the Papacy was not in the end secured, nor was the union of Christendom, under the bishop of Rome as its feudal head, established more than a hundred years. Pride led to the fall of the Roman Church; and education gained in Asia led to the Renaissance and to the Reformation. The Eternal Purpose which works for the rise of man guided these unwitting agents by ways which they followed with unwilling feet, and a half-savage Europe became a new centre of civilisation in consequence mainly of the Crusades.

It is remarkable, also, that the success of the Latins was not due solely to hard fighting, but was also brought about by the policy of their leaders. Melek el Afḍal, the vizier of the Fâṭemite khalîfah El Must’aîla, was eager to ally himself with the Latins against the Turks, but was dissuaded by the emperor Alexius Comnenos.498 El Ghâzi, son of Ortok, sought aid of the Crusaders, at Mardîn, against Radhwân, son of Tutush, his rightful lord at Aleppo. Tancred took the side of Radhwân, but Baldwin I. (in 1110 A. D.) accepted the aid of El Ghâzi against the Seljuks of Môsul; and Roger of Antioch was allied, in 1115, to this same son of Ortok, whose misgovernment of Jerusalem had been the immediate cause of the Crusade. Treaties with Moslems were made by Godfrey and by his successors, and after the fall of the county of Edessa, in 1146 A. D., the Latins were often in peaceful relations with the sulṭân of Aleppo and Damascus. In 1127 ’Imâd ed Dîn Zanghi, the atabek (or “father chief”) who had become Emîr of Emîrs, as protector of the ’Abbaside khalîfah, was a formidable foe of the Latins,499 and under his son Nûr ed Dîn (1146–74 A. D.), who ruled the West, while his elder brother Ḳutb ed Dîn ruled in Môsul, it became evident that there was no prospect of enlarging the borders of the kingdom of Jerusalem. There was a tacit understanding that the Afrîn, the Orontes, and the Jordan, were to mark the boundaries of the Franks, who never occupied Aleppo or Damascus, but held a precarious sway in Gilead and Moab.

The Crusaders took Nicæa from the Seljuk prince Ḳilij-Arslân on May 5, 1097; and, when Antioch was betrayed on June 2 of the next year, they defeated the Turks of Môsul under Kerbogha, the general of Borḳiyaruk, after which they set out for Jerusalem, and reached it unopposed in June 1099 A. D. The force sent south did not exceed 1,500 knights and 20,000 foot-soldiers; but, including camp-followers and irregulars, it amounted to about 40,000 men in all. Jerusalem was protected by a single wall, apparently on the lines of Hadrian’s fortification, and it was attacked as usual from the north.500 The forces of Godfrey were arrayed towards the east, and were separated by those of Count Robert of Flanders and Duke Robert of Normandy from Tancred’s Italians, with whom the men of Lorraine had quarrelled at Tarsus. Tancred attacked on the north-west, at the tower which afterwards bore his name. Raymond of Toulouse was opposite the west wall; and part of his force afterwards took up a position on Sion, opposite the south wall of the city. Tancred’s mad attempt to take Jerusalem by assault, using only a single ladder, failed, and regular siege works became necessary for the reduction of the Egyptian garrison. Wood for siege machines was brought from a valley six miles away, but was found small and useless. In the heat of summer the Franks suffered terribly from want of water: for the wells were choked, and some said were poisoned; the Siloam stream was insufficient and difficult of access; and the foraging parties, sent to Bethlehem and Tekoa, were often cut off by the Saracens, who sallied southwards till they were invested on Sion. The cattle and horses died in great numbers, and a pestilence was caused by their unburied corpses. At length the Genoese fleet reached Jaffa, and sent wood and artificers to aid the exhausted besiegers. Storming towers were made, and were covered with the hides of the dead beasts. After four weeks all was ready for the assault, and on July 12 (the Feast of the Visitation) a solemn procession was made to the ruined church on the summit of Olivet, where Peter the Hermit and Arnold, the ambitious chaplain of Robert of Normandy, preached to the army. The first assault, on July 14, was repelled; for the heavy towers stuck fast, and three witches, weaving spells on the ramparts, were believed to have succeeded, though they were slain, while an apparition of St. George, seen by Godfrey and his brother Eustace, failed to excite the valour of their men. But during the night Godfrey took down his tower, and moved it farther west to the postern of the Magdalen (now called “Herod’s Gate”) where the ditch was less deep. Here it was re-erected, and at 3 p.m. in the afternoon of Friday, July 15 (the Moslem day of rest), the bridge fell on the rampart, and Godfrey stood on the wall—the first to enter the captured city, which, by the custom of the age, he could claim for his own, as Baldwin claimed Edessa and Bœmund claimed Antioch.

A terrible scene of carnage followed when the gates were opened, and the wild Franks, Normans, and Italians poured into the town. lt is said that—in strange contrast to the clemency of Omar and (afterwards) of Saladin—10,000 Moslems were slain in the Ḥaram, when the knights rode in on a pavement soaked with blood. The massacre went on for seven days. Tancred in vain promised security to fugitives in the Aḳṣa, for all were slain by the lawless soldiers. Only those who took refuge in the Tower of David were saved by Raymond of Toulouse, and sent with their families and baggage to Ascalon, which long remained an outpost of the Egyptians in Palestine. After this conquest the success of the Latins was so complete that no Moslem foe appeared before the walls of Jerusalem for eighty-eight years; and when Saladin began to become formidable in 1178 A. D., nine years before the fall of the kingdom, it was found that the ramparts had fallen into ruins through age, and they were hastily repaired.501 The Frank rule in Palestine, from 1099 to 1187 A. D., was strong and prosperous, and gaps of many years occur in the chronicles, during which we read of no wars, even on the frontiers, which were secured by a line of mighty castles. Notices of Jerusalem, in chronicles and legal documents and letters, thus refer mainly to gifts of land made to the churches and to the military orders, or to internal disputes between the regulars and the patriarchs.

Godfrey, being elected, refused to take the title of king in a city where his Master had only worn a crown of thorns. Within a year he died of fever at the early age of forty on July 18, 1100, and was succeeded by his brother Baldwin, the first Latin king, who ruled successfully till 1117 A. D.502 The third king was Baldwin II. (de Burg), a cousin of Godfrey, who married an Armenian princess. He was captive from May 30, 1123, to August 24, 1124, at Ḥarrân, having been seized by Balak, nephew of El Ghâzi, the lord of Mardîn, and was only delivered after Balak had been slain by Jocelyn of Edessa. But this event did not affect Jerusalem. He left four half Armenian daughters, the eldest (Melisinda or Milicent) being a famous queen, married to Fulk of Anjou, under whom Palestine reached the summit of its prosperity as a Christian kingdom. Fulk503 reigned from 1131 to 1144, and left two sons, of whom the elder, Baldwin III., was a gallant youth, long held in ward by his crowned mother Melisinda. She founded the Benedictine nunnery at Bethany—of which the tower still dominates the hamlet—in 1147, and rebuilt the Church of the Virgin’s Tomb in the last year of her life; for she died at Nâblus on September 11, 1161, and was buried on the stairs leading down to the cave-chapel of this restored church. Her son survived her only five months, and died on February 10, 1162. He was succeeded by his gloomy brother Amaury, who weakened the kingdom by making war on Egypt. His son Baldwin IV. was only eleven when Amaury died in 1173, and had already been found to be afflicted with leprosy. His reign was rendered miserable by the quarrels and intrigues of the decadent Latins, and he died in 1185, leaving no child. His elder sister Sibyl504 married William of Montferrat, and afterwards Guy of Lusignan, the unfortunate last king of Jerusalem, whom Saladin defeated at Ḥaṭṭîn on July 3, 1187. The victorious sulṭân hastened to Jerusalem, which thus after eight days of siege fell again into Moslem hands, on Friday, October 2, 1187 A. D.

The old French account, called the “Citez de Jhérusalem,” gives us a very full description of the Holy City “au jor que li Sarrazin et Salahadinz la conquistrent sur les Chrestienz”—in the “day when the Saracens and Saladin conquered it from the Christians”; and, taken with other contemporary documents, and with the earlier accounts by Sæwulf, John of Würzburg, Theodorich, and several more, it enables us to recover the names of every main street, every gate and important building that existed in Jerusalem in the latter part of the twelfth century. Further information as to the churches of the Greeks within the town is also afforded by the accounts of the Russian abbot Daniel, and of the Greek pilgrim John Phocas. To the description of the city we may thus now turn.

The pilgrim could enter the Bethlehem Gate (now called the Jaffa Gate) freely; for the grievous toll was taken off by Baldwin II., at the request of the Latin patriarch Guarmund.505 He saw on his right the “Tower of David,” or as it was called later the “Castle of the Pisans,” and in the market square, to its east, he mingled with a crowd such as had never before been seen in the Holy City.506 Knights of four orders rode by on hardy Armenian or Cyprian steeds, clad in long hauberks of chain mail, with iron caps and shoes, and mail leggings, wielding the long Norman sword and the lance, their shields painted with simple blazons. Over the hauberk the Templars wore a long belted white dress with red cross, the Hospitallers wore black with a white eight-pointed cross, the Teutonic order white with black cross; and the Knights of St. Lazarus—who tended the lepers at their hospital outside the city—had black and white robes with a green cross. The tall noble from Normandy was dressed in silk and miniver (the skin of the grey Siberian squirrel); he wore his hair and beard long under his furred cap. The tall, slim Norman ladies were robed in white samite and cloth-of-gold. The pages with them had slashed doublets of yellow and crimson. The men-at-arms wore the quilted gambison which, when steeped in vinegar, was said to resist iron weapons; with them marched the Turcopoles—a mixed race, Turko-Greek, in origin—who made excellent light horsemen, not despised like the “Poulains,” or half-bred Syro-Greeks, who had an evil reputation as extortionate inn-keepers and cowards. The Europeans were mainly Franks and Italians, with a smaller proportion of Germans, but you might also see Hungarians, Navarese, Bretons, Scots, Englishmen, Ruthenians, Bohemians, Greeks, and Bulgarians,507 mingling with the red-sashed Armenian in camlet cloth, the Georgian, the Nestorian, and the Syrian Christian, the Moslem Fellâḥ and the Arab from the desert who were contented serfs, the scowling Mullah, the Egyptian in his blue gown, the Persian and Hindu, with ruddy Maronites from Lebanon, and dark Copts from the Delta. All these were ruled, according to the feudal laws of the kingdom, in fiefs held by the Norman, Italian, Frank, and Provençal knights from Lorraine, Auvergne, Burgundy, Apulia, and Sicily. The peasant market was inspected by the mutaḥaseb or “accountant”; the traders from Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi, and Marseilles had their privileges and agreements with the king. The Church established in the kingdom was that of Rome, and its rites and vestments were Latin. The Oriental bishops were only at most recognised as suffragans, and bitterly resented the dominance of the “intruding” hierarchy from the West. But they too were under the protection of the king, like the Jewish dyer in his yellow turban, his hands stained blue with indigo, who still clung to his sacred city; “two hundred,” says Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela (in 1163 A. D.), “dwell in one corner of the city under the Tower of David.” But there must have been others, for the north-east quarter (the ancient Bezetha) was called the “Juiverie”—a ghetto transferred later to the present Jews’ quarter on the south-east.508 The Jews were both Sephardim from Spain and Africa and also probably Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe. They were ranked lower than the Moslems, but the nobles were often in debt to Jewish bankers.

The new rulers brought with them a new and beautiful style of architecture from Italy and Sicily. It was distinguished by its lightness and its boldly carved ornamentation, with a finish to the hewn ashlar more perfect than any other. It was based on the Lombard Romanesque, but was influenced by Saracen art. The clustering pillars, groined roofs, and ribbed arches, the coupled dwarf columns, and even the “dog-tooth” moulding, of which a bold example remains in the west window of the cloister south of St. Mary Latin, had appeared earlier among Saracens, and—as we have seen—in some cases these were features of Arab art as early as the ninth century.509 Fine examples of this Italian-Norman style—which we find also at Palermo in 1185 A. D.—are still to be seen at the south entrance of the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral, or in the Hospital close by, in the Templar’s porch added to the Aḳṣa Mosque, as well as at Gaza, Ramleh, Nâblus, Tortosa, and elsewhere in Palestine and in Syria. The arches at first were round, but after 1130 A. D. the pointed Saracenic arch was used. The general appearance was lighter than that of our Norman architecture in England: for the glories of the style wrongly called “Gothic” in France and Britain and Germany, developed (from this earlier art of Italians and Normans) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The “mason’s marks,” or lucky signs on the stones, which distinguish Norman work in Palestine, are the same that we find in French and English cathedrals, after the return of Templars and others to the West, when Acre fell in 1291, and the orders were expelled from Syria.

From the Bethlehem Gate, David Street descended east, leaving on its left Patriarch Street (now called “Christian Street”), named from the Patriarch’s house farther north; and farther east there were three roofed streets to the left, which are the present bazaars: they were called “Herb Street,” “Covered Street,” and “Malquisinat.”510 In the latter cooked food was sold to pilgrims. The groined and ribbed vaulting over the bazaar is Norman work here still standing, and the short Latin text, “Sca Anna,” carved on a wall, shows that one of the shops once belonged to the Church of St. Anne.

Beyond these cross streets, after a short sharp turn to the right, David Street became Temple Street, and ran to the “bridge”—Justinian’s old causeway then rebuilt, leading to the “Beautiful Gate” of the Temple, now called the Gate of the Chain. The streets to the right, leading south, were—first, Sion Street, which was the old pillared street, a continuation of the line of Herb Street, leading to the Sion Gate; secondly, the Street of Judas’ Arch (where Judas hanged himself); and, thirdly, farther east, German Street, leading to the German (or Teutonic) Hospice in the east part of the upper city. Herb Street continued north as St. Stephen Street, passing east of the cathedral to the north gate of St. Stephen. On the south side of the cathedral a street ran east from Patriarch Street to Herb Street, passing north of St. Mary Latin. This was called Palmers’ Street, where the pilgrims bought palms. The parallel street north of the cathedral was the Street of the Holy Sepulchre. The name Via Dolorosa was as yet unknown, and the east part of this line was called “Street of the Repose”—from the legend of the Virgin’s rest under the arch of Hadrian—leading to the Gate of Jehosaphat in the east wall of the city, and passing on its right the “Gate Dolorous,” which was that of the Antonia citadel. The old street running south, on the west side of the Temple area, was that of the Tannery, leading to the gate now called (wrongly) the “Dung Gate,” but then known as the “Postern of the Tannery.” Besides these main streets, and that which led south past David’s Tower to St. Sion, there were others called “Marshal’s Street” (or that of St. Anastasia), Tresmailles, Gerard, and Cocatrice Street, the positions of which are not very clear.511

The main gates of the city512 were four, including the Bethlehem Gate on the west, and the “Gate of St. Stephen of the Column” on the north, the latter bearing a name which shows that the pillar marked on the fifth-century mosaic map was still known: this gate is called “the Gate of the Pillar” to the present day.513 On the east was the “Gate of Jehosaphat,” now called St. Stephen’s Gate, and on the south the Sion Gate in its present position. Between these there were posterns, that of St. Lazarus being west of the north gate and no longer existing. It led to the Lepers’ Hospital, close to the city outside. East of the north gate was the Postern of the Magdalen, so called from the church of the same name inside the walls in this quarter: it is now called “Herod’s Gate,” or by Moslems, Bâb ez Zahirah (“Flower Gate”), a corruption of the old Bâb es Ṣahrah, or “Gate of the Plateau,” which in the fifteenth century was the title for the flat ground north of the city towards the east. The Golden Gate was closed, but to its south was a little postern in the east wall which still exists.514 The fourth postern was that of the Tannery already mentioned.

The walls of the city ran practically on the present line—Tancred’s Tower515 (now called “Goliath’s Castle”) on the north-west being inside the Turkish line, while farther east the foundations of the Crusader’s wall appear just outside the present one. They show that kind of rubble set in hard cement which was used in the twelfth century as the core of a wall, and which was faced with cut stones drafted with a bold rough boss. At the north gate Sir Charles Warren excavated the remains of the older entrance just outside the modern one, and concluded that it represented the work of Crusaders who used older materials; a stone was found with a Templar’s cross cut upon it, which belonged to this older wall.516 This is important, because the remains in question have been rashly assumed to be those of the “second wall” described by Josephus.

We have seen that, on the south, part of Sion was outside the city (as in 680 A. D. also), when the Crusaders beleaguered Jerusalem. Mr. Bliss,517 however, discovered a wall which, starting from that of Eudocia on Sion, was carried north on the east side of the hill to the present wall, thus enclosing the Cœnaculum Church and the “House of Caiaphas.” He supposes this to have been built by Frederic II. in 1229 A. D. There is no doubt that it is mediæval work of the twelfth or thirteenth century, but it might be as late as 1243. A Norman moulding has been built in among the stones, and they have the characteristic diagonal dressing of Norman work. This wall is shown on the old map of 1308 A. D., and its ruins seem to have been still traceable in 1586, according to Zuallardo’s picture. It may, however, have existed even in the twelfth century, for Theodorich clearly describes a “barbican,” or fortified out-work, on Sion, added to the main wall, with a ditch and towers, which account answers well to the remains of this extra wall.518

The pilgrim naturally first went to visit the Holy Sepulchre. The fullest account of the cathedral, which was probably built in the time of Baldwin II. to include all the eleventh-century chapels described in the preceding chapter, is that of Theodorich. The main entrance was, as now, on the south, where the fine double gate, with two windows above, led into the church. Under the pointed arches, supported by clustered pillars, we still see the two carved lintels, one representing the entry into Jerusalem, the raising of Lazarus, and the Last Supper, to the left, and the other with a centaur and various figures surrounded by elaborate arabesques, being an allegorical subject, as explained by de Vogüé. The later pilgrim custom, which dates back to the fourteenth century, of carving names on these pillars, was probably not permitted in the twelfth century. The later visitors used to sketch their coats-of-arms on the walls (as can still be seen at Bethlehem), but this was regarded as an objectionable practice by the better educated.519 The courtyard in front of the gate, having on its west the three chapels built in 1048, and on its east the Coptic and Armenian chapels, and that supposed to mark the site of Abraham’s sacrifice, was entered through a screen, formed by arches on six pillars, of which only the bases now remain. It did not yet contain the tomb of Philip d’Aubigny (before the gate), over which so many feet have trodden, for he only died in 1236 A. D.520 The belfry tower was, however, built early in the twelfth century, and the domed Chapel of St. Mary of Egypt, with its large window and outside steps, is of the same age with the façade of the cathedral.

The cathedral included the old “Paradise” under its roof. A fine “choir of canons” east of the rotunda occupied part of the site of Constantine’s basilica. It had an apse to the east, and part of the rotunda wall was removed, and an arch, called “Arch of the Emperors,” built to give free passage to this choir, which had a semi-circular walk behind the apse; three apses, forming small chapels, were made in the outer wall of this walk, and the “pillar of derision” was shown, as it still is by Greeks, in the southern of the three apses close to Calvary: between this and the central apse the steps led down to the crypt, where the three crosses were said to have been found. This was now under the cloisters of the canons’ houses, and a dome in the middle of these cloisters lighted the cave-chapel below. The groined roof of the choir still shows remains of fresco painting, representing the vine of David, which are probably ancient.

The building over the sepulchre itself remained till 1808, and was very different in style from the neo-Byzantine chapel now standing.521 The often-copied picture by Zuallardo, taken with his description, shows that the building was pentagonal, the walls, adorned by ten pillars, forming five recessed panels under round arches. On the flat lead roof rose an open cupola, with clustered columns at the four corners, supporting a copper dome, which was first covered with silver, but in later years with gold.522 According to Abbot Daniel, the silver statue of Christ was on this cupola. It was no doubt taken down by the Greeks after 1187 A. D., and it does not appear in Zuallardo’s picture. The ante-chapel of the Angel, to the east, had also a flat roof, supported on groined arches, the stone on which the angel sat being shown in the centre. The whole building was Romanesque in style, and remarkable for its severe beauty. It was probably as old as 1048 A. D. There was an altar on the west side of the pentagon, surrounded by painted iron rails and reticulated screens of cypress wood, where now the Coptic altar stands within its iron grille. The dome of the rotunda above was funnel-shaped and open to the air, being also made of cypress wood. The rain thus fell on the sepulchre chapel, and gutters on the roof carried it off below. On the inside there was an ancient fresco of the Resurrection.

The high altar of the choir, on the east, had behind it the throne of the patriarch—according to the Greek and ancient Latin custom. Images of the Virgin, the Baptist, and the angel Gabriel stood under the arches which opened into the ambulatorium, or walk; and above the altar, on the ceiling, was the great picture of the exaltation of Adam: “Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, bearing the cross in His left hand, holding Adam with His right, leading majestically to heaven with a giant’s stride, His left foot raised, His right still planted on earth.”523 Beneath this picture were verses in Latin. The rotunda had a gallery, with a door on the west leading to the palace.524 Godfrey and Baldwin I. had lived in the Aḳṣa Mosque, but after the establishment of the Templars the Latin kings held their court where the Greek patriarch now lives, west of the cathedral. An arch over Patriarch Street seems to have led to the gallery door (still visible, though now blocked up), and through a window the kings could look down on the sepulchre. The palace had many vaulted rooms, and a courtyard filled with orange trees and pomegranates. It could contain a household of an hundred persons.

The present groined roof of the Calvary Chapel, supported on heavy piers, is also probably Crusaders’ work. Two pictures in this chapel represented the Crucifixion and the Descent from the Cross. The ante-chapel of Golgotha beneath (built in 1808) did not exist, nor apparently did the flights of steps now leading up on the west from the floor of the church. For, facing Calvary, the first two rulers of the Latin kingdom were buried, and the monuments of their six successors were against the south wall of the choir. Godfrey’s tomb was to the right, and that of his brother Baldwin I. to the left, in front of the Golgotha Cave. The former was marked by a plain block on which stood a stone roof or pediment, supported by four twisted dwarf pillars at the corners, according to Zuallardo’s picture. It bore the simple Latin text, in “Lombard” letters, “Hic jacet inclitus Dux Godefridus de Bullion, qui totam istam terram acquisivit cultui divino. Cujus anima requiescat in pace. Amen.” The tomb of Baldwin I. was probably much like Godfrey’s, with the inscription:

These tombs apparently escaped the fury of the Kharezmians, and were only removed by the Greeks in 1808, but they were ransacked in 1244 A. D. There is some doubt as to the exact position of the six later tombs, but the description by Theodorich (about 1172 A. D.) seems to show that Baldwin II. lay immediately north of Baldwin I., in the same line with Godfrey, and the remaining five kings were to the west, in line with Baldwin II., in proper order, Fulk next to him, followed by Baldwin III., Amaury, Baldwin IV., and Baldwin V., the latter being a child, and placed farthest from Calvary. Their graves are distinctly stated to have been “contiguous to the choir.” The same writer says that the vaulted roof of Calvary was painted with representations of David, Solomon, Isaiah, and other prophets, and that the pilgrims laid wooden crosses on the rock, where the holes for the three crosses were shown (as now); these votive offerings were removed and burned in a great bonfire at Easter-time.

The Easter ceremony of the Holy Fire is described by the Russian abbot Daniel in the reign of Baldwin I. On Good Friday the church was cleansed, and all the lamps put out and filled with fresh oil. Every candle in Jerusalem was extinguished, and on Easter Eve the rotunda was crowded with pilgrims holding unlighted tapers. The cathedral rang with their cry, “Lord, have mercy upon us,” and the Syrians perhaps already sang as they still do:

The abbot of St. Saba stood before the sepulchre, while services in Greek and in Latin went on. The Fire was sometimes delayed three days, or appeared in the Temple or in the Hospital. It was believed to fall from heaven through the open roof. On the occasion described a fine rain was falling on the densely packed crowd round the tomb. They sang the Song of Moses, and at length “a small cloud coming suddenly from the East rested over the open dome of the church.... It was at that moment that the Holy Light illuminated the Holy Sepulchre, shining with an awful and splendid brightness. The bishop and four deacons then opened the doors of the tomb, and entered with the taper of Prince Baldwin.”

The canons of the Holy Sepulchre were of the Augustinian order. They received from Godfrey twenty-one villages lying near Jerusalem on the north in the royal domain, but other kings and barons added many other lands “for the saving of their souls” till they numbered seventy “casales” in all, besides fishing rights on the Sea of Galilee, and churches at Bari, Brindisi, and in Sicily.525 Five of the villages were in Lower Galilee, and all the other Palestine property of this church was lost for ever in 1187 A. D.

South of the cathedral was the large block of buildings belonging to the Knights of St. John. It occupied an area of 500 feet side, or nearly 55 acres. It was bounded by Patriarch Street on the west, Herb Street on the east, Palmer Street on the north, and David Street on the south, while a narrow lane (in which the Latin goldsmiths had shops) ran north and south in the middle of the area. The east half was excavated by the German Government in 1872, and the west half by the Greek patriarch some thirty years later. Thus the whole of the remaining buildings are now visible. In the north wall the fine Norman gateway, with an arch carved with the signs of the twelve months, still remains, and in the north-east corner is the Church of St. Mary Latin, now rebuilt and consecrated as the German cathedral. Under its foundations, rock was found at a level 60 feet lower than that of the Calvary rock, showing how steeply the north bank of the Tyropœon Valley here falls south. The cloisters of the Benedictine monastery, with their fine west window, are to the south of this church, and in the south-east part of the area was the Benedictine nunnery, under which is a great tank, the rock floor in the bed of the valley being more than 70 feet lower than Calvary. In the west half of the area the remains of a larger church—St. Mary Magna—exist, with buildings belonging to the Hospital proper. The Chapel of St. John Baptist526 is in the south-west part of the block, close to Patriarch Street and David Street. It is a basilica, with a narthex on the west, an apse on the east, and two other apses facing north and south respectively. The stone altar is still in situ, and the building forms the crypt of the later Greek church of St. John the Forerunner. The floor of this chapel of the knights is on the same level as that of the cathedral, and 10 feet above the rock; but the rubbish of later demolitions has now raised the street 25 feet higher, and the mediæval buildings were, till recently, quite covered over above their roofs.

Such was the home of the most popular of the military orders.527 It was first supported by tithes granted by the Church in the diocese of Cæsarea, in Tripoli, Nazareth, and Acre. Baldwin I., in 1110, made a large grant of lands, and the master owned villages in the plains, and bought property in Nâblus. The knights were even given “tents of Beduins” by Baldwin III., and one of the results of the distribution of their lands was, that while the canons of the Holy Sepulchre lost all their villages in the mountains, the Hospitallers retained their property in the plains for nearly another century, and were not greatly concerned in imperilling this, in 1192, for the recovery of the Holy City by the Church. Even as early as 1155 they were at feud with the patriarch, and rang all their bells to annoy him when he preached in the cathedral.

Near the hospital were the two exchanges: that of the Latins (called Khân es Ṣerf—“inn of exchange”—by Mejîr ed Dîn in the sixteenth century) at the turn where David Street joined Temple Street; and that of the Syrians (now Khân ez Zeit, “the oil inn”), east of the Street of St. Stephen.528 Other churches in the north part of the city included St. Chariton, north of the cathedral, the Chapel of the Spasm farther east, with St. Mary Magdalen and St. Anne in the Jews’ quarter. All these still remain, showing Norman origin by their style. The tank west of St. Anne, in which traces of frescoes on the walls are still visible, was, as already said, shown as the Pool of Bethesda. The Chapel of the Flagellation, opposite Antonia, already existed, and a Chapel of St. Gilles was at the causeway near the “Beautiful Gate” of the Temple.

The order of the Templars529 grew out of the Augustinians. The canons of this order were established in the Temple by Godfrey; and in the reign of Baldwin II., in 1118 A. D., eight Burgundian knights, under Hugh de Payen, vowed to poverty, obedience, and chastity as tonsured monks, were established in the Aḳṣa Mosque as their hospice. A rule was given them by Pope Honorius in 1128. The Templars were the richest and proudest of the four orders, and it is curious that they were always unpopular, and constantly suspected of treachery. They seem to have been willing to establish good relations with Moslems in time of peace, and to have studied Oriental philosophy; and for such reasons, as also because they were independent of the patriarch, they were coldly regarded by the Church. Their records were destroyed when the order was suppressed in 1312 A. D., but their possessions in Europe were yet more numerous than in Palestine or Syria. They held castles near the coast, and escorted pilgrims. They had also a castle on the Jericho road, and built ’Athlit under Carmel in 1218, or seventy-three years before the fall of Acre. They acted as bankers, and they were given, or bought, many properties in the later times when the barons of Palestine and Syria were eager to get rid of their lands.