The Histories Which They Are Called Upon To Reverence
Are Of The Same Period And Order, - Savage Gothic Caricatures.
In
either a saint appears in the costume of the middle ages, and is
made to accommodate himself to the fashion of the tenth century.
The different churches battle for the possession of the various
relics. The Greeks show you the Tomb of Melchisedec, while the
Armenians possess the Chapel of the Penitent Thief; the poor Copts
(with their little cabin of a chapel) can yet boast of possessing
the thicket in which Abraham caught the Ram, which was to serve as
the vicar of Isaac; the Latins point out the Pillar to which the
Lord was bound. The place of the Invention of the Sacred Cross,
the Fissure in the Rock of Golgotha, the Tomb of Adam himself - are
all here within a few yards' space. You mount a few steps, and are
told it is Calvary upon which you stand. All this in the midst of
blaring candles, reeking incense, savage pictures of Scripture
story, or portraits of kings who have been benefactors to the
various chapels; a din and clatter of strange people, - these
weeping, bowing, kissing, - those utterly indifferent; and the
priests clad in outlandish robes, snuffling and chanting
incomprehensible litanies, robing, disrobing, lighting up candles
or extinguishing them, advancing, retreating, bowing with all sorts
of unfamiliar genuflexions. Had it pleased the inventors of the
Sepulchre topography to have fixed on fifty more spots of ground as
the places of the events of the sacred story, the pilgrim would
have believed just as now.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 175 of 240
Words from 47786 to 48052
of 65663
