The Church of the Resurrection in Its Third Phase

This is the period in which the building of Modestus was raised upon the ruins of the Byzantine structure

The churches that Constantine had built in the Byzantine style remained for nearly three hundred years, towering into the sky in their majesty. The fourth day of the month of May in the year 614 was the last morning on which the sun of Jerusalem greeted that noble Cross standing upon the dome of the Tomb. For on that day the Persians assaulted Jerusalem under the command of Sarius; they seized the city and put the inhabitants to the sword, slaying of the Christians, as it is said, ninety thousand. In this the Jews assisted them, and they slaughtered those who had taken refuge in the churches as one slaughters sheep, and burned the churches and monasteries in Jerusalem as they burned the rest of the churches of Palestine. Then they stretched out their hands to the Church of the Resurrection and destroyed it utterly. Thus were the pillars of that lofty edifice brought down, and the torches of destruction reached the holy places; its treasures were plundered and its precious things carried off, and those columns standing about the Tomb bowed down when they beheld the feet of the invading conquerors defiling stones that the tears of the faithful had once washed. Indeed, the Resurrection became a barren waste, and mourning women rose over the ruins to lament and weep. Sophronius the Wise composed for the city of Jerusalem an elegy so tender that it rivals the Lamentations of Jeremiah. The invaders broke the stone of the angel in the grotto of the Tomb, thinking there was a treasure within it, and took a large portion of the wood of the Cross, and led the Patriarch Zacharias and the notables of the Christians away captive to Babylon. This calamity that befell the Resurrection was among the greatest of calamities; whoever wishes to learn its events in detail should consult the history of Eutychius [Saʿid ibn Bitriq], one of the trustworthy historians. After the departure of the Persians, Modestus, abbot of the monastery of Saint Theodosius, arose and gathered the alms of the faithful in Syria and Palestine and undertook the restoration of the Resurrection; John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, aided him with money, men, and supplies. Since it was impossible for him to restore the building to its former splendor, he contented himself with erecting the Anastasis (the church over the Tomb) and also built the shrine of Golgotha. The construction that Modestus raised was very simple compared with what it had been before. He exerted his utmost to clothe the building in a touch of beauty, aided in this by what remained of the traces of the Byzantine structure, for the picks and axes of the Persians had not been strong enough to obliterate its remains. The building took twelve years and was most likely completed in the year 629. The Emperor Heraclius could not bear this dreadful defeat with patience, and as his treasury was empty of money he minted the vessels of the church of Constantinople into coin with the consent of its patriarch, and renewed his resolve; he attacked the Persians and defeated them near Nineveh on the 12th of December in the year 627, recovered the wood of the Cross, and returned with it to Jerusalem, entering it barefoot and humble. The people received him with joy, tears of gladness falling from their eyes, and the Christians established a commemoration of this feast; to this day, every year at the Feast of the Cross, they renew it with displays of piety and the kindling of the fires of rejoicing. In the year 637 the Caliph Umar entered Jerusalem as a conqueror, and history bears witness to his respect for the Patriarch Sophronius, his good treatment of the Christians, and the freedom he granted them to practice their religious duties. The famous historian Eutychius [Saʿid ibn Bitriq] related that he did not wish to pray within the courtyard of the Resurrection, lest Islam should covet it after him, but rather prayed upon the step at the door of the church of Constantine. He gave the Patriarch the charter known as the Umariyya Covenant, then asked him to show him a place where he might build a mosque for the Muslims. The Patriarch directed him to the site of the Temple of Solomon, where the great Rock stood, upon which filth had accumulated; and Umar began to clean it with his own hands, and the Muslims followed his example until they had removed all the filth, and there he built the mosque known as the al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet the successors of Umar did not follow his example in their treatment of the Christians; rather they violated the covenants time and again and transgressed against the Resurrection. You will find the details of these transgressions in the history of Yahya of Antioch, of Eutychius [Saʿid ibn Bitriq], and of others. These transgressions necessitated the repair of the building of Modestus more than once. With the entry of the Arabs into Jerusalem, the shadow of Roman rule contracted after its banners had fluttered for nearly 600 years, and the traces of their protection of the holy places vanished.

The building that Modestus raised endured the ravages of time a hundred years longer than the building of Constantine, down to the days of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, one of the Fatimid caliphs of Egypt, whose habit it was to erase the landmarks of the churches from the face of the earth and to obliterate their traces. This caliph ordered the destruction of the Resurrection, and his order was carried out in the year 1099 [1009]; all its buildings were razed, the utmost effort was made to remove the traces of the holy places, and its treasures and stores were plundered. This eccentric caliph persecuted the Christians for ten years, then ceased his persecution of them and permitted them to build their churches and to hold prayer upon the ruins of the Resurrection. When al-Hakim was succeeded by his son al-Zahir, a treaty was concluded with the kings of Constantinople, and among its conditions was that the king should release the Muslim captives and receive from al-Zahir in return permission to rebuild the Church of the Resurrection. The provisions of this treaty were renewed in the days of the Caliph al-Mustansir bi-Allah, and the kings of Constantinople continued to await opportunities to fulfill their desires, until King Constantine Monomachus was able to begin the building, thirty years after its destruction. Throughout the period in which the Resurrection remained in ruins, the Frankish [?] pilgrims did not cease to come and visit it. They would carry back to their lands the reports of the violation and desecration of the holy places and the details of the various torments the Christians endured, and they themselves witnessed such harshness and cruelty as filled their hearts with rancor.

The Resurrection in Its Fourth Phase

Until the year 1009, the Church of the Resurrection still contained some traces of the Byzantine structure despite the misfortunes and disasters that had befallen it in succession; but the destruction inflicted upon it by al-Hakim stripped it of all its ancient traces, and it fell into a state in which it became impossible for the architects to restore it to its original design. Monomachus restored the grotto of the Holy Tomb to its former state, then raised over it a beautiful church surrounded by twelve columns, separated the church of Golgotha from the Holy Tomb, and built over the rock of the Cross a shrine whose walls were inlaid with mosaic; as for the grotto of the Cross, he contented himself with repairing it, using ancient columns for the purpose. In this state the Crusaders found the Resurrection on the day they took possession of it. The greater part of this building remains standing to this day.

From what was written by the traveler called Nasir Khusraw, who visited Jerusalem in this period, it may be inferred that the decorations of Monomachus's building were of a fairly high standard.

The Resurrection in Its Fifth Phase

This is the period in which the Crusaders unified all its buildings, so that it took on its present form

The Crusaders took possession of Jerusalem on the 15th of July in the year 1099, and entered the Church of the Resurrection barefoot, chanting hymns and canticles; their leader refused to be crowned with a golden crown in the place where the Savior had been crowned with a crown of thorns. Following their seizure of the city, they founded a Latin kingdom that lasted 88 years, whose protectors bore the title of Protectors of the Holy Sepulchre. Throughout this period the Resurrection remained under Latin authority. As for the Eastern communities, a small portion of their rights in the Resurrection was left to them, and they continued to practice their rites beneath its roof. The Crusaders resolved to preserve what existed of the buildings in the Church of the Resurrection, and so turned to adorning and beautifying it and unifying its scattered parts within the walls of one great church, and set about the work. After nine years they succeeded in uniting all the buildings of the Resurrection beneath the roof of a towering dome, whose construction they completed in the year 1149. The present form of the Resurrection therefore dates from the age of the Crusaders, if we except certain slight changes that necessity has called for.

In the year 1187, Saladin the Ayyubid took Jerusalem from the Crusaders, and some of his followers advised him, as Imad al-Din related, to destroy the Church of the Resurrection so that it might no longer remain a means for the Christians to make pilgrimage to it; but he did not do so. Rather, he followed the example of what Umar had done on the day he entered Jerusalem as a conqueror. He contented himself with removing the Cross standing upon its facade and shattering the bells upon its tower, and he removed every Crusader trace from the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, breaking the statues and images that had been carved there. In the year 1229 the Crusaders recovered Jerusalem a second time under the leadership of Frederick II, king of Germany, and it remained in their hands for only ten years, 1229–1239; then it was wrested from them, and their rule over Jerusalem came to a final end. With the end of their rule ended the absolute Latin sovereignty they had enjoyed in the administration of the holy places, and some of the properties that had been usurped during the Crusader phase were returned to their owners. From the thirteenth century down to our own days, the church left by the Crusaders has been repaired many times on account of the earthquakes, fires, and invasions of nations that befell it. In the year 1244 the Khwarazmian Tatars invaded Jerusalem, demolished the Resurrection, and plundered its treasures, but it was rebuilt again at the end of that century. In the year 1719 the dome of the church of the Tomb, which dated from the age of Constantine Monomachus, collapsed, and it was repaired, and a large part of the buildings and shrines of the Resurrection was restored. In the year 1808 a fire broke out in the church of the Armenians whose flames spread to the rest of the areas of the Resurrection and consumed the buildings; nothing was spared from the fire but the dome of the Tomb, the church of the Latins, and the grotto of the Cross. The Greeks obtained a firman from Sultan Mahmud to renew the building, and in the year 1810 they raised over the Tomb the present structure, then erected walls around the church of Half the World and set over the church of the Tomb a dome whose construction the architects did not make sound, so that it collapsed before fifty years had passed over it. From the inscription found upon the Tomb it may be inferred that the architect who carried out the renewal of these buildings was called Koninos [Comnenos] from the island of Midilli (Mytilene). In the year 1869 Russia, France, and Turkey agreed to renew the building of the dome over the church of the Tomb, and each of them sent an architect for this purpose; they raised the present towering dome and painted upon it elegant images, some of which the hand of time has begun to efface.

From the foregoing it becomes clear to the reader the great importance of this church and the intense devotion of the Christians to it throughout all the generations. It has been, and still is, the object of the gaze of the Christians in East and West, the focus of their sight and the axis of their hopes, and so it shall remain for as long as God wills.