Church of the Holy Sepulchre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and for nearly seventeen centuries it has drawn pilgrims from every corner of the world. Within its walls, tradition holds two of the most significant locations in Christian belief: the rock of Calvary, where Jesus was crucified, and the tomb where he was buried and, according to those traditions, rose from the dead. The original Greek name for the building tells the whole story in a single word: the Church of the Anastasis, meaning Resurrection.

  What makes the church remarkable is not only its age or its sacred associations. It is a building that has been torn down by a caliph's decree, rebuilt under treaty negotiations spanning empires, shaken by earthquakes, ravaged by fire more than once, patched together by rival Christian communities who have not always been on speaking terms, and held together, literally, by iron scaffolding for seven decades. The church is a fourth-century structure layered over a first-century tomb, which was itself buried under a second-century Roman temple.

  Who built it, who destroyed it, and who fought to keep it? How did the keys to the holiest site in Christianity end up in the hands of a Muslim family? And what does it mean when monks from different denominations throw stones at each other over the right to sweep a staircase? Those are the questions the next sections will answer.

• 2. Constantine's Foundation

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  In 312, Constantine the Great saw a vision of a cross in the sky. That vision, as the historical account runs, pushed him toward Christianity and led him to sign the Edict of Milan, which legalized the religion across the Roman Empire. The consequence for Jerusalem was enormous.

  The site where the church now stands had not always been accessible. Around 135, the emperor Hadrian ordered a cave containing a rock-cut tomb filled in to create a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. That temple stood for nearly two centuries. When Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem asked Constantine for permission to excavate the tomb beneath it, Constantine agreed.

  With the help of Eusebius, a Bishop of Caesarea, and Macarius, three crosses were reportedly found near the tomb. One was said to have cured people near death and was presumed to be the True Cross on which Jesus died. About 326, Constantine ordered the Roman temple demolished and a church built in its place. When the soil was removed from the cave, a rock-cut tomb was revealed, which Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus.

  The architect Zenobius designed the church as two separate constructs over two holy sites: a rotunda called the Anastasis, believed to be the place of burial and resurrection, and a great basilica to the east known as the Martyrium, with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner. The entire structure was consecrated on the 13th of September 335. In 327, Constantine and Helena had separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, but Jerusalem remained the spiritual center of the project.

• 3. Destruction and Diplomacy

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  On the 18th of October 1009, the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as part of a broader campaign against Christian and Jewish places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive. Little of the early church survived. The rock-cut tomb was almost entirely destroyed, with only portions of the northern wall containing the burial bench and the southern wall remaining intact.

  The reaction in Christian Europe was one of shock. The destruction was cited as a justification for the Crusades and as a spur to the expulsion of Jewish communities in some regions of Europe, an ugly chain of consequences that the original order had not anticipated.

  Rebuilding the church required years of careful diplomacy between the Byzantine Empire and the Fatimid caliphate. In negotiations spanning 1027 and 1028, al-Hakim's son, the caliph Ali az-Zahir, agreed to allow reconstruction and redecoration of the church. As part of the arrangement, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. The Byzantines also released 5,000 Muslim prisoners and demanded that other churches destroyed by al-Hakim be restored. Muslim sources noted that one by-product of the agreement was the return to Christianity of many people who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions.

  The rebuilding was completed in 1048 during the tenure of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem. It was a partial reconstruction at best. Contemporary sources record that the emperor spent vast sums on the effort, yet "a total replacement was far beyond available resources." The great basilica remained in ruins. What pilgrims found instead was "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it," which served as a miniature Via Dolorosa for devoted visitors.

• 4. The Crusader Chapter

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  On the 15th of July 1099, knights of the First Crusade took the rebuilt church site from the Fatimids, who had recently recaptured it from the Abbasids. The First Crusade had been envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete without praying at the Holy Sepulchre.

  Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, chose not to use the title of king during his lifetime. Instead he declared himself Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri, meaning Protector of the Holy Sepulchre. The gesture was deliberate: to wear a crown at the site where Christ wore a crown of thorns was, in Godfrey's view, unacceptable.

  The Crusaders thoroughly remade the church. They investigated the eastern ruins, excavating through rubble to reach a cistern they believed was where Helena had found the True Cross. That space became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross. They also added a bell tower and began refurnishing the structure in Romanesque style. All the separate chapels were brought under one roof for the first time, and the renovations were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149.

  Eight of the first Latin rulers of Jerusalem were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam: Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV, and Baldwin V. The church also became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and housed the kingdom's scriptorium. The royal tombs were looted during the Khwarizmian sack of Jerusalem in 1244, and the remains may still lie in unmarked pits beneath the church's pavement, possibly destroyed in the fire of 1808 or in renovations carried out in 1809 and 1810.

• 5. The Keys and the Status Quo

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  After Saladin retook Jerusalem in 1187, he made two decisions about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that shaped its administration for centuries. He entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, an iron key some 30 centimetres long. He then gave door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family as a neutral party to the competing Christian denominations.

  The arrangement was practical. No single Christian community could be trusted by the others to control access. The Muslim families, with no stake in the internal disputes, could open the door without favouring any faction. The Nuseibeh family's own tradition claims the role dates to the seventh century, though documents held by the Christian denominations only confirm their role from the 12th century onward.

  For centuries after the Crusader period, control of the church shifted between the Franciscans and the Greek Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favourable firman from the Ottoman sultan, often through bribery. Violent clashes were not uncommon. The situation began to crystallize during the Holy Week of 1757, when Orthodox Christians reportedly took over portions of the Franciscan-controlled church. The episode may have prompted the sultan's decree that became the foundation of the Status Quo.

  The Status Quo was formally solidified by a decree in 1852 and 1853 from Sultan Abdulmecid I, which pinned down permanent arrangements for property and the roles of each denomination. The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, and Syriac Orthodox hold lesser responsibilities. Critically, none of these communities controls the main entrance. That right remains with two Muslim families, an arrangement now over 800 years old.

• 6. Squabbles in a Sacred Space

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  The Status Quo agreement did not end friction. In 1902, eighteen friars were hospitalized and monks were jailed after a dispute over who had the right to clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. The immediate cause was whether Franciscans or Greeks could sweep that single step. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, the Franciscan custos, the Ottoman governor, and the French consul general all had to sign a convention specifying that both communities could sweep it.

  In 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed position into the shade on a hot summer day. The Ethiopians interpreted the movement as a territorial provocation, and eleven people were hospitalized after the fight that followed.

  In 2004, a door to the Franciscan Chapel was left open during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Orthodox took it as a sign of disrespect. A fistfight broke out, and some people were arrested.

  On Palm Sunday in April 2008, police were called after a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected by a rival faction. The officers who arrived were themselves attacked by the brawlers.

  The so-called "immovable ladder" on the church facade has become a quiet symbol of the whole arrangement. Placed below a window, it has not been moved since the 18th century because no denomination will accept another denomination's right to move it. Reaching consensus on even minor changes requires agreement from all parties, a condition that the 1853 decree made a formal requirement.

• 7. Opening the Tomb

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  From 1947 until 2016, the Aedicule, the small shrine enclosing the tomb of Jesus within the rotunda, was held together by an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities. The cladding of red limestone applied in the early 19th century had deteriorated badly and was pulling away from the underlying structure.

  After the Israel Antiquities Authority declared the structure unsafe, a restoration project was agreed upon and carried out between May 2016 and March 2017. Much of the 4 million dollar cost was covered by the World Monuments Fund, with 1.3 million dollars contributed by Mica Ertegün and a significant sum from King Abdullah II of Jordan.

  On the 26th of October 2016, for the first time since at least 1555, the marble cladding protecting the supposed burial bed of Jesus was removed. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, workers found only a layer of debris. The following day, a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved into it was revealed. By the night of the 28th of October, the original limestone burial bed was confirmed to be intact. Mortar taken from just above the burial bed was later dated to the mid-fourth century.

  The presence of moisture during the work led to the discovery of an underground shaft carved into the bedrock, apparently leading from the tomb and resembling an escape tunnel. Whether its purpose was practical or ceremonial remains unclear. The tomb was resealed shortly after the examination, and the restoration was completed, finally removing the iron scaffolding that had been a fixture of the facade for nearly seven decades.

• 8. An Influence Beyond Jerusalem

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  From the ninth century onward, churches inspired by the Anastasis spread across Europe. The idea was straightforward: pilgrims who could not travel to Jerusalem could visit a local replica and encounter the sacred geography in some form.

  In Bologna, Italy, Santo Stefano is an agglomeration of seven churches that recreate shrines of Jerusalem. In Görlitz, a "Holy Tomb" was constructed between 1481 and 1504. In Moscow Oblast, Patriarch Nikon built the New Jerusalem Monastery between 1656 and 1666. In Washington, D.C., the Franciscans built Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery in 1898.

  The church's physical fabric also holds unexpected historical traces. Near the church entrance, in the parvis, is a ledger stone marking the tomb of Philip d'Aubigny, who died in 1236. He was a knight, tutor, and royal councillor to Henry III of England, and a signer of Magna Carta. His is one of the few crusader tombs not removed after the Khwarizmian capture of Jerusalem in 1244. In the 1900s, monks threw stones from the roof during a dispute between Greeks and Latins, and d'Aubigny's tomb was damaged. A stone marker was placed on it in 1925.

  During renovations in 2022, workers moved a stone slab covered in modern graffiti and found Cosmatesque-style decoration on its reverse face. An IAA archaeologist identified it as the frontal of the church's high altar from the Crusader era, dating to around 1149, later used by the Greek Orthodox until it was damaged in the fire of 1808. The altar slab had been hidden in plain sight, repurposed as a wall stone, for more than two centuries.