{N}THE HOLY SEPULCHRE{/}

Who among the Christians of the West has not heard at one time the 
mention of the Holy Sepulchre? Even the same manuals of history have 
familiarized us with this name, in the chapters dedicated to the 
crusades. However, when the Latin pilgrim arrives in Jerusalem and meets 
with the christian brothers and sisters from the East, one then hears a 
barbaric word: {C}Anastasis{/} (Resurrection), since this is the name of the 
place and of the basilica. It is a completely different way of looking at 
the reality. The believer in Jesus Christ Son of God does not come here 
to make a "visit to the cemetery", but rather to hear the words of Easter 
morning: "Why search among the dead for the one who is living?"
{K}THE PLACE OF CALVARY{/}

This basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, or better said, of the Resurrection, 
has been better known about through the drillings performed at the level 
of the natural rock. On the hill that goes down from west to east, from 
the north of the fortress towards the valley of the Tiropeon, a quarry 
had started being exploited. It was dug and great blocks of rock were 
extracted and the slope of the hill acquired the aspect of a great rocky 
stairway whose steps reached a height of around two meters high. Down 
below, this open-air quarry goes under the rock. In the open cast quarry 
there remained a vertical block of some ten meters high that was not 
used, probably due to the bad quality of the stone. The exploitation of 
the quarry finished with the captivity of Babylon and the place remained 
the same until the hasmonean epoch, with its block of stone rising over 
one of the steps of the abandoned work. This was called {C}Golgotha{/} (in 
Latin: calvarius) or meaning, the bare rock.
When Herod embarked upon the great works of embellishing Jerusalem, he 
had an embankment constructed that was around six meters high in the 
inferior part of the quarry. The lower steps then remained buried under 
ground. The block of stone that went up to around ten meters high, was 
only left with its top part being seen, emerging some four meters from 
the ground. This rock is going to be converted into the gallows of 
Jerusalem, where the vertical posts would be placed to which the 
crosspieces of the crosses would be attached. The lower part of the 
quarry will serve as a pit, while the bottom, covered over, will sustain 
the wall.
In this way, the place where Jesus was crucified was very close to the 
city [Jn_19,20], but it was outside of the walls. Due to the rules about 
the clean and unclean related to the contact with a corpse [Num_19,11] - 
[Num_19,16], the Jews would not have accepted that a gallows be installed 
within the city: the necropolis and the tombs were found outside of the 
walls, distant from the inhabited sections. On the vertical face of the 
steps of the quarry horizontal galleries opened up conditioned as 
necropolis just as in the valley of the Kidron: tombs were private for 
the rich and public or necropolis for the less well to do families.
{K}THE TIMES OF ADRIAN{/}

After repressing the second Jewish revolt incited by Bar Kochba, Adrian 
took upon himself the task of raising Jerusalem up from its ruins and 
making of it, in 135, the roman city of Aelia Capitolina. He extended the 
city towards the north, following probably the outline of the walls of 
Herod Agrippa. With this the Golgotha remained situated within the walls. 
In order to position the forum, over which very soon the temples of Venus 
and Cupid will be constructed, Mount Calvary and Christ's Tomb are 
covered over with an enormous embankment. But this thick layer of land 
will permit the conservation of this venerated place whose localization 
the Christians faithfully guarded in their memory.
The recent clearance of a hidden part of the ancient quarry, behind the 
altar of Saint Helen's chapel, brought to light what seems to be the 
foundations of the temples erected over the forum. On the other hand, a 
strange discovery awaited the Armenians, owners of this section of the 
Holy Sepulchre: a boat, drawn on one of the rocks of these discoveries, 
and underneath it this inscription in Latin: "Domine ivimus" (Lord, we 
came). This discreet "graffiti", is probably the work of some christian 
pilgrim whose faith in Christ brought him to challenge the fury of the 
waves, in order to reach the place where the tree of the cross was 
planted, approaching this through an underground aisle, underneath a 
pagan temple.
{K}THE CONSTANTINE BASILICA{/}

After the bloody persecution that Diocletianus made the Christians suffer 
in the last years of his reign (284 - 305), the roman emperor Constantine 
appeared as the savior of christianity. Saint Helen, the mother of 
Constantine, went to Jerusalem, and with the support of Macarius, bishop 
of the city, had the foundations of the forum cleared away in the part 
where the pagan temples were raised up and brought to light the Mount 
Calvary and the Tomb.
Constantine first made the tomb isolated by separating it from the rocky 
mass where it had been dug. What originally was no more than a gallery 
dug into a step, was converted into a cube of rock over a semicircular 
place. Constantine had a group of buildings raised up around the Tomb. It 
included: a round building completed with a crowned vaulted ceiling, 
called Anastasis (Resurrection), that covered the Tomb of Christ; an 
atrium with porticos which had on one of its angles the Gloat rock; and a 
basilical type church, built over the grotto where Saint Helen believed 
to have found the true Cross.
Burned in 614 by the Persians, this architectural complex was plundered 
in 1009 by the soldiers of the egyptian sultan Hakim; his successor, 
defeated by the Roman emperor Argiros III (1028 - 1034) in 1031, was 
forced to permit the latter to realize the reconstruction of the 
basilica. But judged to be too old by his wife Zoe, she has him 
assassinated and the work is suspended. In 1042, a venerable senator, 
Constantine Monomacos, recuperates the wife and takes over the work.
{K}THE ROMAN CHURCH{/}

In the last year of the same eleventh century, the crusaders arrive, 
soldiers determined to wrench away from the Muslims Christ's Tomb. They 
find no more than a superficially restored sanctuary and decide to join 
into only one church the Tomb of the Lord and Mount Calvary.
After the fire in 1808 and the earthquake in 1927, a serious restoration 
was made urgent, but this proved to be truly problematic, even thorny. 
The different religious communities that shared the task of guarding the 
Holy Place did not always live together in the evangelic way of 
fellowship, not even with the simple mutual correction that was desired 
for this place. It was finally necessary for Pope Paul VI to make a 
pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in order for an agreement to be reached: 
this happened in 1959.
{K}FROM MOUNT CALVARY TO THE SEPULCHRE{/}

To the right of the entrance a few stairs lead to the high chapels of the 
Calvary, the Latin chapel of the crucification to the right and the Greek 
chapel to the left. Behind the altar of this chapel, a representation of 
the Virgin and the most loved disciple of Jesus, at the foot of the 
cross, recalls that Jesus, before dying, made of his mother, "the" mother 
of all the believers: {C}Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his 
mother's sister Mary, who was the wife of Cleophas, and Mary of Magdala. 
When Jesus saw the Mother, and the disciple, he said to the Mother, 
"Woman, this is your son." Then he said to the disciple, "There is your 
mother." And from that moment the disciple took her to his own home. 
{/}[Jn_19,25] - [Jn_19,27]
Under the altar of the Greeks, and between the two altars, the upper part 
of the rock on which the cross of Christ was placed can be seen. Retaking 
the ambulatory that extends along the choir of the Greeks, one arrives 
under the rotunda of the Anastasis where the Tomb is found, which was 
separated from the rocky mass, as already mentioned, during the reign of 
Constantine. It is known also how the sultan Hakim made it disappear at 
the beginning of the eleventh century. The crusades replaced it with a 
small temple that was destroyed by a fire. With the object of evoking the 
primitive tomb the floor plan was designed according to what has been 
deduced from the gospel texts. It is due to this that we find two small 
rooms. The first, called "the angel's chapel" is like the vestibule to 
the second; right away the reconstitution of the "Tomb" comes, 
characteristically done with the bench on which the body wrapped with a 
linen cloth was deposited.
According to the custom, frequent in ancient times, Joseph of Arimathea, 
a member of the Sanhedrin, had prepared his own tomb while he was alive, 
in this necropolis. There he deposited the body of the Lord.
