And That Was
The Very Cross Assayed; For They Found Three Crosses, One Of Our
Lord, And Two Of The Two Thieves; And Saint Helen Proved Them By A
Dead Body That Arose From Death To Life, When That It Was Laid On
It, That Our Lord Died On.
And thereby in the wall is the place
where the four nails of our Lord were hid:
For he had two in his
hands and two in his feet. And, of one of these, the Emperor of
Constantinople made a bridle to his horse to bear him in battle;
and, through virtue thereof, he overcame his enemies, and won all
the land of Asia the less, that is to say, Turkey, Armenia the less
and the more, and from Syria to Jerusalem, from Arabia to Persia,
from Mesopotamia to the kingdom of Aleppo, from Egypt the high and
the low and all the other kingdoms unto the depth of Ethiopia, and
into Ind the less that then was Christian.
And there were in that time many good holy men and holy hermits, of
whom the book of Father's lives speaketh, and they be now in
Paynims' and Saracens' hands: but when God Almighty will, right as
the lands ere lost through sin of Christian men, so shall they be
won again by Christian men through help of God.
And in midst of that church is a compass, in the which Joseph of
Arimathea laid the body of our Lord when he had taken him down off
the cross; and there he washed the wounds of our Lord. And that
compass, say men, is the midst of the world.
And in the church of the sepulchre, on the north side, is the place
where our Lord was put in prison (for he was in prison in many
places); and there is a part of the chain that he was bounden with;
and there he appeared first to Mary Magdalene when he was risen,
and she wend that he had been a gardener.
In the church of Saint Sepulchre was wont to be canons of the order
of Saint Augustine, and had a prior, but the patriarch was their
sovereign.
And without the doors of the church, on the right side as men go
upward eighteen grees, said our Lord to his mother, MULIER, ECCE
FILIUS TUUS; that is to say, Woman, lo! thy Son! And after that he
said to John, his disciple, ECCE MATER TUA; that is to say, Lo!
behold thy mother! And these words he said on the cross. And on
these grees went our Lord when he bare the cross on his shoulder.
And under these grees is a chapel, and in that chapel sing priests,
Indians, that is to say, priests of Ind, not after our law, but
after theirs; and alway they make their sacrament of the altar,
saying, PATER NOSTER and other prayers therewith; with the which
prayers they say the words that the sacrament is made of, for they
ne know not the additions that many popes have made; but they sing
with good devotion.
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