Wanderings -- and photos

I have put most of the photos up on Flickr, and I'm in the middle of the process of labeling them and sorting them, now.  If you'd like to see the raw product, here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/69697114@N00/

There and Back Again

I'm posting this entry -- from the air!!!! -- from somewhere in the skies between Atlanta and St. Louis.  This fills my nerdy soul with delight, that such a thing is even possible.  Felix Fabri probably never even dreamed of such a thing. (Although I have no doubt that he'd have done it too, given half the chance. I bet he'd have been one of the first friars in the Ulm convent with both a Facebook Page and a Twitter account.)

After the formal conference ended on Friday, we were taken to tour Galilee and Nazareth on Saturday and Sunday.  We saw three early synagogues -- one from the 2nd Century (Zippori), one from the 4th century (Hammat Tiberias), and one from the 6th Century (Beit Alpha Synagogue) -- and archaeologists have uncovered the most beautiful mosaics.  Each synagogue floor had a zodiac as its central symbol. What was a pagan representation of Helios, the sun god, and the pagan signs for the months doing in the very heart of a Jewish place of worship?  It was an amazing multi-cultural mix of the kind that you find all over the ancient world.  The Jewish cities of Tiberias and the region were so integrated into Hellenistic culture that the pagan deities had become a part of "good taste" and had lost their religious, pagan meanings. It's interesting, because I think we usually think of people in "ancient times" as being extremely religious, and I think this shows that they were as complicated as we are today. 

The zodiac in the synagogue of Beit Alpha

We also spent the afternoon looking at Capernaum, where there is a beautiful, white marble synagogue, and happens to be the very same town where, as the tradition goes, Jesus called Peter to be a "fisher of men".

The site is owned by the Franciscan Friars, and they make sure you know it's a holy place before you enter --

-- yep, that's right -- no dogs, cigarettes, guns, or short clothing!

After a long day of touring, driving by the Horns of Hattin (which we didn't get to stop at!), we had lunch and later sat in the evening sun on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  Just being in a place that I'd heard so much about, and which seemed so unchanged, gave me the shivers. Big waterbirds flew low over the sea, and the sun turned the sea golden, and 2,000 years ago seemed really close.

Jerusalem, the old and the new

Early morning (before 6:30am) in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre -- the last chance to visit -- the Greek monks were chanting a service behind the tomb in the rotunda, and the Franciscan friars were chanting their own service on top of the rock of Calvary. It was hardly light, and candles glowed in the dark church. Hardly any tourists -- most people in the Church were there for devotion, and it was a *completely* different place this morning.

Then, from out of the shadows, a dozen Knights of Malta walked across the rotunda, dressed in their white, floor-length capes and red Maltese crosses.  They could have stepped from out of time -- crusaders, right there.  And then, they stopped in front of the holy tomb ... and pulled out their digital cameras!  They were just tourists, too.

Not tourists, really, or only ... or completely devout -- but full of contradictions, like the city of Jerusalem.

Knights in Disguise

Leaving the city through the Jaffa Gate to head back, I saw the Knights of Malta just outside the Ottoman ramparts.  But they weren't planning a new crusade -- just taken off their robes and were waiting for their tour bus. The old and the new, together.

Eid Mubarak! (Happy Holidays!) ... hoofprints and footprints ...

From sundown last night and for the next few days, today is a special day in Jerusalem -- a holiday!

(And a holy day [holiday = holy day]) This is the festival of Eid ul-Adha, which Muslims celebrate to honor Ibrahim's (Abraham) willingness to obey God's command and to sacrifice his son, Ishmael. (Those of you who know the Hebrew Bible might be a bit confused -- in Islamic tradition, it's Ishamel, not Isaac, whom Abraham was supposed to sacrifice.) As he was about to obey, God stopped Ibrahim and gave him a lamb to sacrifice, instead. The festival is the second most imporant feast in the year, and it also marks the end of the yearly pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca. The spot where Ibrahim is said to have offered the lamb is a sacred rock, under the golden Dome of the Rock that is in the picture above. The rock is also the spot where Muslims believe Mohammed was taken up into Heaven from Jerusalem on the winged beast al-Buraq during his miraculous Night Journey from Mecca. Al-Buraq is supposed to have left a still-visible hoofprint in the rock. 

If a family can afford it, they sacrifice a sheep on this holiday, and divide the meat between themeselves, their neighbors, and the poor.

Families also visit each other on the holiday, dress up in their best clothes, walk around, eat, see the sights, and do fun things together.  We saw this family doing just that, with Dad and son getting a camel ride (sister leading) on the top of the Mount of Olives. [Yes, I played hooky from a session this afternoon -- shhh, don't tell.  I just had to see more of Jerusalem!]

From there, and the beautiful, iconic view of the city of Jerusalem, we walked down through the Jewish cemetery (where people want to be buried because it's thought that that valley will be the site of the Last Judgement) ....

... to a sacred space on the Mount of Olives that is holy for both Christians and Muslims --

 the Rock of the Ascension, where Christians believe Jesus ascended bodily into heaven, and Muslims revere as a spot sacred to Jesus, God's prophet.

Today, it's part of a mosque and not always open -- but it was open during the festival.  The building around it was probably built by the first crusaders. The first reference from the site comes from a crusader sermon the night before they captured Jerusalem in 1099. The crusaders had made a procession around the city to gain God's grace for a victory, and it was at this place that they stopped and said, from here Jesus ascended into heavem. The crusaders modelled the building around the site on the rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Later, the site was rebuilt by the Ottomon Turks and made into a mosque. We managed to wait out two noisy tour groups and finally got to explore it all by ourselves.

crusader-era column capital

Fabri says about this place:

"... we returned along the road on the top of the ridge of the Mount of Olives, and walked southwards on that high ground towards a great half-ruined church. When we came to it, we went up some stone steps into the vaulted porch, which stands before the door of the church. Before the church-door a Saracen had placed himself with a club, and would suffer no one to enter unless he gave him a madinus, twenty-five of which make a ducat. [We had to pay 5 sheckels ($1.36) to enter today. --Dr. B]  Now in the midst of this church there stands a great chapel-fair, round, and vaulted, wherein is the exceeding holy place of the footprints of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He left stamped into the rock when He ascended from that place into heaven. We stood before this chapel, and with loud and cheerful voices chanted the hymns and prayers appointed in the processional for the place of the Lord's Ascension; and entering in, as many of us as could go in at one time, we fell down upon our faces, kissed the most holy footprints of our Saviour, and received plenary indulgences. 

After this we betook ourselves to viewing the place. It stands upon a high peak of the Mount of Olives at the southern end thereof, even as Galilee aforementioned is at the northern end of the mountain, and the place of the annunciation of the death of the Virgin Mary is below the ridge, half way between Galilee and the place of the Ascension. In this holy place there stands a great round church, beautifully built in such sort that on the top it is not covered by a vault, but the vaulted roof has a wide opening purposely made in it, beneath which opening stands the chapel of the Lord's Ascension, even as doth the chapel of the Lord's Sepulchre. [The vault was covered over by the Ottoman Turks in the 16th century. All that is left now is the "chapel" that Fabri mentions, and the bases of the columns for the missing outer church. --Dr. B]

On this rock are to be seen the prints of both the feet of the Lord Jesus, though the print of the right foot is the plainer of the two. These prints are kissed by Christians and Saracens alike. Now one of the pilgrims, moved by a pleasant spirit of piety, having with him a flask of exceeding sweet wine, poured some of it into the hollow formed by the footprints, and the rest licked it out as they kissed them, and as fast as the place was emptied he poured more in. On the north side of this church there is a hole in the wall so high up that a tall man can only just reach it with his uplifted arm. Pilgrims raise themselves up to this hole and put their hands upon it, declaring that there in the wall is some of that very stone whereon Christ stood when He ascended into heaven; but whence they get this idea I know not."

--Fabri, Wanderings, vol. II, pp. 484-5

After visiting this place (And getting lost -- so many helpful people pointed us to the right way! We didn't speak Arabic, and they didn't speak English, but they could tell we were lost. So much can be said with just a kind gesture.) we walked down the Mount of Olives, and through the Garden of Gethsemene.

There, while watching everyone go into a spot holy to Christians, having walked through a Jewish cemetery, we drank Turkish coffee and listened to the evening prayers (one of the Five Pillars of Islam) ring out over the city in the gathering dusk.  I love this movie below, because you see an ancient, sacred site of the city, and hear the devotion that still moves people here -- and then, you hear a traffic jam from just around the corner, which reminds you that this place is still alive, with normal, vibrant (and impatient!) people.

Eid Mubarak!

The Veneration of Absence

Spent the entire day (9am to 9pm) at the conference, so no excursions into the city today. But we did hear the bells of Jerusalem ring out in the morning, just when the sun was coming up.

Several papers pointed out that pilgrims' experience of Jerusalem was one of absence -- the hole of the cross, said to be in the middle of the world; the empty tomb of Jesus; the holes carved in the side of the tomb; the core without a center.  But in the wandering, veneration, and actions of the pilgrims themselves, they filled the absence with their faith (at least some of them).

Today, all day in the conference room, was a day of absence -- the absence of the real city of Jerusalem -- but that absence was also filled -- with lots of thinking and talking about representations of Jerusalem.

Fabri writes:

"If anyone wishes to see the form (formam) of this church [The Church of the Holy Sepulchre], let him look at the `Pilgrimage,' written by that eminent lord and clever man, Lord Bernhard of Braitenbach [sic], Dean of the Metropolitan Church of Mainz, where he will be able to see its image drawn clearly as if he were standing in the courtyard and beholding it with his eyes (ac si in atrio ecclesiae staret et videret)."
                                                       --Fabri, Evagatorium (The Latin edition of his Wanderings), I, p. 344.

I couldn't see the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today, but you can:

Bernhard von Breydenbach (with woodcuts by Erhard Reuwich), Peregrinatio (Mainz, 1486)

Enjoy. (Still working out the kinks in presentation, but at least the sound should work.)

Bells of the Holy Sepulchre

Jerusalem, the Second Day: through the Via Crucis to the Holy Sepulchre

Early in the morning, through St. Stephen's Gate...

Then along the via crucis (Way of the Cross)

To the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Felix Fabri says, "Indeed, no one should think visiting the holy places to be a light task; there is the intense heat of the sun, the walking from place to place, kneeling, and prostration: above all, there is the strain which everyone puts on himself to earnest piety and comprehension of what is shown him in the holy places, and to devout prayer and meditation, all of which cannot be done without great fatigue, because to do them fitly a man should be at rest and not rambling about. To struggle after mental abstraction whilst bodily walking from place to place is exceedingly toilsome..." (Wanderings, vol. I, p. 299.)

 .... when you're in Jerusalem, it's good to take a break from all the toil --
slow down, relax, talk to a friend:



Jerusalem, The First Day



The Dome of the Rock and the Western (Wailing) Wall

Much of today was spent inside the conference room, listening to one great paper after another. We heard about everything from the transportation of rocks from St. Katherine's monastery on Sinai to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to the exchange network of the many relics of the true cross, to the Russian pilgrimage lamps designed to catch the miraculous Holy Fire of Orthodox Holy Saturday -- so much fun! But we spent all day talking about Jerusalem, without actually seeing it. So, after the evening lecture, a few of us ventured into the Old City of Jerusalem to begin our pilgrimage proper.  Here below are a few things we saw, with a bit of what Felix Fabri had to say about them:



 The Citadel of David: "It stands there at the present day, an exceeding strong and fair castle and place of strength, on the top of a steep rocky crag...So now we stood still and gazed at the citadel of David...and there we mused upon how Jerusalem must have looked in the days of old..." (Wanderings, vol. VIII, p. 324)

 

"When Titus besieged Jerusalem he first of all burned the temple and afterwards the whole city. He overthrew the walls of the temple down to their very foundations, caused the mount whereon it stood to be cut away, and ordered it to be cast down into the brook Cedron, and filled up the ditches thereof, levelling it with the earth, as we read in the `Jewish War,' Book VII., ch. xvi., and in many other places." (Wanderings, vol. VIII, p.234.)



Praying at the Western Wall





The Western Wall of the Temple of the Lord is all that is left of the Jewish Temple that stood at that site at the time of Jesus. It (the second Jewish temple to be built on the site) was destroyed by the Romans in 68 CE (Common Era). According to the souvenir flyers (which Fabri certainly would have collected if they had been available when he visited), the Western Wall is "the most sacred structure of the Jewish people."  Devout jews gather from all over the world to pray there and to leave slips of paper inscribed with prayers between its stones. It is a place, like many pilgrimage sites, where memory, identity, and time (both divine and earthly) come together. Pilgrims can run their fingers over the rough surface of the stone, hear the prayers of those around them, and connect, all at the same time, with the past, the present, and the future.