DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27910#0051
ENTRANCE OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE.
closely on the demolition for it to be likely that any alteration would then have been made. It would
more probably have followed the destruction by El-Hakim, when the site was longer desolate, and the city
remained in the hands of the Muslims, so that the Christians might have been forced to choose some new
position.
The interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is far less interesting in aspect than its exterior.
Filled with supposed sacred sites, impossibly near to one another, divided among the adherents of several
churches, and ornamented in bad taste with many-coloured marbles, it has no general unity of effect in
either form or colour. After the noble simplicity and venerable aspect of the exterior this is especially
disappointing. Under the great dome is the principal part of the church, which is reached, through a
vestibule, from the entrance. In the midst stands a structure of white marble, supposed to cover the Holy
Sepulchre itself. It contains two apartments, in the further of which is a sarcophagus of white marble,
held to mark the site of the place of entombment. A subterranean rock-cut chapel, under the alleged
site of Calvary, has a better claim in its character to this distinction, but we may well doubt all such
attributions here; and, in the midst of superstition and strife, it is most satisfactory that we should not
have the pain of believing that the true sites, for which all Christians would feel the deepest interest,
are so scandalously desecrated. More than doubtful as are the sacred sites, it is impossible to forget that
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the great object and the central place of worship in Palestine of
the Crusaders. The tombs of Godfrey of Bouillon, and Baldwin, his brother, commemorate this noble period
of our history.
closely on the demolition for it to be likely that any alteration would then have been made. It would
more probably have followed the destruction by El-Hakim, when the site was longer desolate, and the city
remained in the hands of the Muslims, so that the Christians might have been forced to choose some new
position.
The interior of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is far less interesting in aspect than its exterior.
Filled with supposed sacred sites, impossibly near to one another, divided among the adherents of several
churches, and ornamented in bad taste with many-coloured marbles, it has no general unity of effect in
either form or colour. After the noble simplicity and venerable aspect of the exterior this is especially
disappointing. Under the great dome is the principal part of the church, which is reached, through a
vestibule, from the entrance. In the midst stands a structure of white marble, supposed to cover the Holy
Sepulchre itself. It contains two apartments, in the further of which is a sarcophagus of white marble,
held to mark the site of the place of entombment. A subterranean rock-cut chapel, under the alleged
site of Calvary, has a better claim in its character to this distinction, but we may well doubt all such
attributions here; and, in the midst of superstition and strife, it is most satisfactory that we should not
have the pain of believing that the true sites, for which all Christians would feel the deepest interest,
are so scandalously desecrated. More than doubtful as are the sacred sites, it is impossible to forget that
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the great object and the central place of worship in Palestine of
the Crusaders. The tombs of Godfrey of Bouillon, and Baldwin, his brother, commemorate this noble period
of our history.