In other places in the same ode he makes allusion to the sepulcher, for example, in stanza 44:

There is no doubt, then, that the Celtiberian bard was already familiar with he sarcophagus of the crypt of St. Engracia, and alluded to it in a composition which he probably wrote at the end of the 4th century of the beginning of the 5th, according to the conscientious P. Arévalo. Upon the testimony of Prudentius follows, in weight and in antiquity, that of the Gothic or Mozarabic Missal, approved by the 4th Council of Toledo, the year 633. In the second prayer and in the fifth prayer or inlatio of the Mass of St. Engracia, clear mention is made of the sepulcher of the martyrs (25).

No less explicit is the testimony if St. Eugenio III, Archbishop of Toledo, formerly a monk of the Monastery of St. Engracia. Of his writings we have conserved numerous poetical compositions in Latin, if not elegant, at least loose and full of ingenuity, which won for him great fame as a poet with the Gothic king Chindasvinto. In certain verses upon the Basilica Sanctorum decem et octo Martyrum he expresses himself thus:

All these documents are prior to the Moorish domination. When Spain lost, with its liberty and independence, the treasure of the unity of its faith, and bent its back to the Mohammedan yoke, the monks who cared for the basilica of the martyrs hid the 13 urns, burying them in two deep ditches opened in the floor of the crypt. The Aragonese tradition fixes the date of this event in the reign of the first Caliph of Cordoba. Thus were the precious relics dissimulated and hidden until the 13th of March 1389. On that day, the authorities and illustrious persons of the city reunited, they discovered the pit and the 13 sarcophagi filled with martyrs’ bones. Upon opening them they noticed that in that of St. Engracia were also the remains of St. Lupercus, and in that of the 18 martyrs were conserved the relics of only 17.

Few monuments, F. Guerra will be able to conclude (27), will allege in their favor so many testimonies, so unanimous and convincing, as the marble arc of the 18 martyrs of Zaragoza. Let us pass already to resolving the principal question which we proposed at the beginning of this article: is the Assumption of Our Lady represented in this sarcophagus?

III. The relief of the Assumption of Our Lady

To proceed in order it will be necessary to prove that the central praying woman is a figure of the Virgin Mary, and precisely in her Assumption into heaven.

The mere representation of a woman between the holy Apostles, who, her hands raised to heaven, her modest eyes fixed on it, appears to be engrossed in the consideration of the prize of glory, does not suffice to identify the Most Holy Virgin. For if the Queen of heaven is frequently represented by this figure in ancient monuments, as in the golden rear wall of the Coemiterium majus (28), in the same form we see engraved the image of a saint or a deceased woman, a symbolic representation of prayer, or the Church, etc.

These last interpretations turn out to be vain and insufficient in our case. Of course one must discount any all allegory or symbolism in a relief of real scenes, all taken from the sacred books. Nor is the other opinion less untenable, which sees in this figure a female saint or just soul, even though this sarcophagus was destined for 18 martyrs, all men. The already cited St. Eugenio III has conserved for us their names in these ingenious verses:

Nothing, then, would be more out of place than the image of a female saint on this sarcophagus. She who occupies the preferred place between the two Apostles cannot be other than the woman par excellence, the Virgin Our Lady, clearly announced in the protoevangelium represented on the right side of the sepulcher.

One can make one sole objection against this interpretation, namely, the name of Floria, which one reads above the head of the praying woman (30). It is easy, however, to respond to this difficulty. The incomplete, strange, and incoherent names (31) which one reads on the top and bottom edges of the sepulcher have been chiseled recently, in the second half of the 19th century; until then they were written in black ink, and in such poor state that Hübner scarcely succeeded in deciphering them (32). And this after they had been retouched in 1814! Furthermore, on that date they transferred the name of Floria to the right side, above the figure of Eve. Martón, who in his chronicle speaks of these labels, sees in them the names of 12 Zaragozan martyrs; but as such names appear in no calendar and are written with such inequality of spacing between one and another, F. Guerra believes better that they are the remains of the ancient inscription, which ran perhaps along both borders of the sepulcher, as we see in many others, for example, in the church of St. Francis of Ravenna and in another very beautiful sepulcher in the cemetery of St. Callistus in Rome (33).

These arguments carry still greater force with what I will add to demonstrate that the intention of the artist was to sculpt precisely the Assumption of the Mother of God.

The Most Holy Virgin is supported by two Apostles, in expression somewhat distracted, as if she wanted to mount the flight to the heavens, mysteriously grasped by a hand which appears from among the clouds. The hand represents the right hand of the Eternal; but Christian sculptors never sculpted it save when the dignity and extraordinary character of the event called for it: some times to cast out our first parents from Paradise, others to call Moses from the bush or to give him the tablets of the law on the heights of Sinai, and, finally, to crush the five Canaanite kings under the feet of Joshua. But in none of these monuments, says F. Guerra (34), does the hand of God grasp someone’s right hand. Only in a painting in the Bible of St. Paul outside the walls does it appear, lifting a man set on the peak of a mountain; the legend says this: Ascendit XPS. (Christus) in altum. To this confirmation from the renowned archeologist I make bold to add another, taken from an ancient sarcophagus of the Museum of Brescia. On the left side one sees Daniel in the lion’s den; a hand which emerges from the sky holds in the air the prophet Habakkuk (35).

Rest, then, assured that in the monuments of ancient Christian art, the hand of God grasping another person signifies the material elevation of the body, caught up by the power of God to the high places; and that, therefore, the praying woman of the sarcophagus of the 18 martyrs represents nothing other than the Assumption of Mary body and soul into heaven.

Certainly, one must note that the sarcophagus of Zaragoza is one of a kind, that the mystery of the Assumption is represented in no other (the marble arc of the 4th century, discovered in the 9th century in the little town of San Justo de la Vega, and translated from there to the Cathedral of Astorga, does not display the Assumption of the Virgin, as someone maintained in 1866 (36), but the sacrifice of Abraham). But this should not take away any force from the arguments alleged, but rather give us just reason to glory, because under our ground art sculpted for the first time this glorious mystery, under whose protection the Third Elder of Coroba battled heroically in Flanders, under whose patronage Alfonso el Batallador and Jaime I placed the greatest mosques of the towns conquered from the Saracens, and whose beautiful liturgy, with its prayers filled with love and aspirations, with its majestic and sublime hymns, has resonated in Spanish basilicas since the remote years of the 6th century (37).

(1) Acta et Decreta Sacr. Concil. Recent. Collect. Lac., t. VIII, col. 870
(2) Super exscribendo Parisienis Ecclesiae Martytologio. Cf. Bened. XIV, l. c., col. 600.
(3) Dissertatio de verbis Usuardi. Cf. Tillem., l. c., p. 472.
(4) Memoires pour servir a l’Histoire Ecclesiastique des six premiers siecles. Venise, 1732, t. I, p. 470ff.
(5) Historia Ecclesiastica, Venetiis, 1776, t. III, p. 285ff.
(6) Discussion Historique, Louvain, 1786.
(7) 3, q. 27, a. 1.
(8) De Mysteriis Vitae Christi, c. XXXVIII, a. IV, disp. XXI.
(9) Theologia Mariana, t. I, palaestra VIII, certamine VI, p. 333.
(10) De Pot., q. IV, a. 1. Cf. C. G., l. II, c. 38.
(11) Dictionnaire d’Archeologie Chretienne et de Liturgie, t. I, 2e part., col. 2,983ff.
(12) Cf. Herder, Bilderatlas zur Kunstgeschichte, 64, 7; 68, 5; 69, 8; 70, 1, &.
(13) Cf. Aureliano Fernandez Guerra, Bellas Artes Cristianas. In La Ciudad de Dios, 1870, t. II., pp. 103, 187, 241, 361.
(14) Mariae Tod und Himmelfart, p. 407, in Leclercq, l. c.
(15) Storia dell’ Arte Cristiana, t. V, p. 121.
(16) Garrucci, l. c., p. 121.
(17) So F. Guerra, l. c., p. 188. Leclercq, l. c., col. 2,991, gives these dimensions: 1.38 long by .84 high.
(18) Real Monasterio de Santa Engracia, 59. In F. Guerra, l. c., p. 109.
(19) M. Armellini, Lezioni di Archeologia Cristiana, p. 213.
(20) Warren-Conder, The Survey of Western Palestine. Jerusalem, p. 385.
(21) L. c., p. 122 b.
(22) Critica Literaria, t. I, p. 14.
(23) Arevalo, M. A. Prudentii Opera, t. I, p. 19ff.
(24) Peristephan. IV, t. II (ed. Arevalo), p. 961.
(25) Dom. M. Ferotin, Le Liber Mozarabicus Sacramentorum, col. 274.
(26) SS. PP. To etanorum Opera (ed. Cardinal Lorenzana), t. I, p. 22.
(27) L. c., p. 107
(28) Kaufmann, Manuale di Archeologia Cristiana, p. 366.
(29) L. c., p. 23.
(30) F. Guerra, l. c., p. 190.
(31) Rossi, Bulletino de Archeologia Cristiana, 1871, p. 124.
(32) Garrucci, l. c., p. 122 b.
(33) Garrucci, t. V, tav. 357 and 380.
(34) L. c., p. 248.
(35) Garrucci, t. V, tav. 323, 1.
(36) Monumentos arquitectónicas de España, 1866.
(37) N. Pérez, S. J., Por la Asuncion de Nuestra Señora, El Mesajero del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús, Agosto, 1908, p. 127.

“An edge surrounds the tomb on its uppermost part (18), which runs above twenty little columns with their corresponding arches, and the edge carries this inscription:

“A cupola (of gold and silver, adds John of Würtzburg) covers the monument, crowned by its golden cross and held up by six pairs of columns; between each pair of columns hangs a lamp. One enters the sepulchral chamber through a door open in the western wall, and leaves through another in the north. In the roof one sees skillfully painted the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin, with a sign which says: ‘Assumpta est Maria in coelum: gaudent angeli et collaudantes benedicunt Dominam.’ One ascends from the crypt to the [upper] church by a stairway of as many steps as there are for descending into the crypt. The church and all its custodians are very well defended against the assaults of the infidels with high walls, strong towers, and other types of defenses, supplied with numerous cisterns. After one leaves from the crypt, a small chapel opens to the left hand, around the middle of the stairway; on its roof are painted the Assumption of Our Lady and the various events which tradition and legend places around her burial.”

John of Würtzburg (19) adds that at the entrance of the crypt one saw St. Jerome painted to the left hand, with the verses: Haeredes etc. To the right was St. Basil, with these:

Furthermore, as much on the exterior as on the interior did one read inscriptions of much honor for the Most Holy Virgin: “Maria Virgo assumpta est ad aethereum thalamum,” etc.; “Vidi speciosam sicut columbam,” etc.

In the vicinity of the basilica of the Assumption some religious lived the eremetical life; these sheltered themselves in the numerous caverns and ancient sepulchers on either side of the valley of Cedron. This property was under the ownership of the Benedictines who cared for the sanctuary.

The church of the Assumption was, without a doubt, among the most famous and venerated in the age of the Crusades. In the year 1100 Wener de Gray, cousin of Godfrey, was buried under the portico, as was Arnulfo de Audernade, who died near Ascalon around 1107. Four years before, according to Robert of Elgín, the wife of Erik the Good, King of Scandinavia, was buried in the chapel of St. Joseph Botilde; and, finally, in 1611, according to William of Tyre, Melisenda, the daughter of Baldwin II and wife of Foulques d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem, was buried in the chapel of Sts. Joachim and Anne (20).

The year 1187 Jerusalem fell under the Mohammedan yoke. Ernoul, in the book Citez de Iherusalem, written at the beginning of this occurrence, “so that good Christians who are interested in knowing and hearing of the holy city of Jerusalem may know what it was like before the Saracens under the command of Saladin conquered it,” tells the fate which befell the sepulcher of the Virgin. “The valley of Josaphat,” he writes (21), “had an abbey of black monks (Benedictines), in which there was a church (mostier) of Holy Lady Mary. In this church was the sepulcher in which she was buried, which is still conserved. The Saracens, when they came to power over the city, destroyed the abbey and made use of the stone to enclose the city, but they did not destroy the basilica (below).”

Such was the temple of the Assumption, to judge by the records something extensive in that age; but others, such as Fretellus (22), make only one brief mention of it, and others, such as Peter the Deacon, who wrote his book De Locis Sanctis around 1137 (23), do no more than follow the narration of Bede (8th century), who in turn made use of the pilgrimage of St. Arculf (7th century). If we compare the church of the Crusades with the present basilica, we note the destruction of the church above and the loss of the beautiful cupola which covered the sepulcher of the Virgin. In the time of the Crusades, the sepulcher was already separated from the rest of the rock, such as it is now venerated. There are not lacking authors (24) who put this placement of the sepulcher back to the 5th century; I am inclined to believe that this was the work of the Crusaders, as clearly appears from the records of the monk Bernard and of St. Arculf.

B) The Sepulcher in the 9th Century

The French monk Bernard, who visited the Holy Places in the year 870, says this upon treating of our basilica: “In the same garden (Gethsemane) is the church of Holy Mary, in the form of a rotunda, in which her sepulcher is venerated. This has no roof over it, but it never gets rained on” (25).

Those last words have induced some to believe that the French pilgrim found the church reduced to rubble (26), although I, in truth, cannot understand the reason for it. The monk Bernard should not have found the church of Gethsemane in ruins, since the year 808 the basilica of the Assumption was conserved in good estate, to judge by those who attended the divine cult in it. According to the anonymous author of the book Commemoratorium de Casis Dei, “in the valley of Josaphat, in the villa of Gethsemane, where the Virgin Mary was buried and where her sepulcher is venerated, one counts among priests and clerics 13, 6 monks, and 15 women consecrated to God, some cloistered and others put to His service” (27). The church of the Assumption was, then, very flourishing at the beginning of the 9th century; and as in the first half of this century there occurred no assault on the Holy City or any such thing, one may believe with foundation that the French pilgrim did not find it in ruins. To this one may add that in the following century the Spanish saint Teotonio, founder of the monastery of Santa Cruz in Coimbra, devotedly visited the sepulcher of the Virgin on the day following his arrival in Jerusalem (28).

To my understanding, the monk Bernard did not mean that the church was in ruins, but simply to affirm that the tomb of Our Lady was not located in the middle of the basilica, as it is today, but rather that it opened in the manner of a chapel in the eastern wall. And it could not be otherwise, given the circular plan of the temple, whose diameter surely did not exceed eight or nine meters (otherwise, the excavation of the ground would note it). Now then, there is this distance from the foot of the stairway to the door of the sepulcher. Furthermore, this diameter is very small to encompass in the center the tomb of the Virgin, which today scarcely leaves a narrow passageway on either side.

C) The sepulcher in the visit of St. Arculf

In the century prior to the pilgrimage of the monk Bernard, around the year 757, St. Willibald visited, as was custom, the tomb of Gethsemane, but he is very sparing in taking note of it. “In that valley,” he writes (29), “is the church of Saint Mary, with her sepulcher; her sepulcher, I say, not because her body rests in it, but because it has been consecrated to her memory.”

More meticulous and exact in this matter, as in everything, is the bishop St. Arculf, who arrived in Jerusalem the year 669 and dwelt in it for the space of nine months, daily visiting the Holy Places, as he informs at the beginning of his memoirs. Cast by a tempest on the shores of Scotland, when he returned from Palestine the year 670, he gave an account to the abbot of the monastery of St. Iona, Adamnan, of what he had seen in the Holy Land. His narration, transmitted by Adamnan, is indisputably the most meticulous that has come down to us from those times. It says, then, in capitulation XII of book I (30):

“St. Arculf, assiduous visitor of the Holy Places, frequented the church of the valley of Josaphat, dedicated to the Holy Virgin Mary, which church is composed of two churches superimposed. The lower, the whole thing worked with much skill and art, is round. The altar is located at the east side; to its left opens, carved in the rock, the empty sepulcher of the Holy Virgin Mary, in which she was buried and remained some time. How, when, or by whose work the holy body disappeared from this place, or in what place it awaits the resurrection, nobody can say with certainty. At the entrance of the lower church or crypt of Saint Mary one sees built into the wall, on the right side, the rock upon which the Lord prayed on His knees in the garden of Gethsemane the night on which He was handed over by Judas into the hands of sinners. One this rock are seen impressed, as if in white wax, the marks of both knees. Thus recounted our brother Arculf, pilgrim to the Holy Places, who saw with his own eyes everything I relate in this book (Adamnan speaking). Finally, the church above, also of circular plan, has four altars for the cult.”

The description of St. Arculf confirms what I pointed out while speaking of the monk Bernard, since he clearly says that to the right of the altar, which occupied the east side, was the sepulcher, that is, the door of the sepulchral chamber. As this door opens on the right of the tomb, it leaves the center of the wall free for an altar, where the schismatic Greeks have had one until the present day.

I do not want to overlook the words of doubt which the abbot Adamnan uses upon speaking of the resurrection of the Virgin. St. Bede the Venerable summarized in his book De Locis Sanctis the report of St. Arculf, and reproduced his doubt as well.

“To the right hand of this altar,” he says (31), “is the empty tomb, in which, it is said, the body of Saint Mary rested for some time, although we are ignorant of who took it from there and when.”

Authorized with the assent of Bede, it is easy to suppose that the doubt of Adamnan exercised notable influence on later writers of the 9th and 10th centuries. Thus, for example, Atto, Bishop of Vercellis, in the decade of 940, in a sermon on the Assumption of the Blessed Mother of God and ever Virgin Mary, expresses himself thus (32): “In the valley of Josaphat is the place of her burial, in which one no longer finds her body. He who took flesh from her in an ineffable manner, He will be able to say what has become of her holy body,” and he goes on to add good arguments in favor of the bodily Assumption of Our Lady.

Similar vacillations, and perhaps even greater, may be noted in the martyrologies of Notker, Ado, Usuard, etc. Do not believe, however, that this is the only source of these doubts, for they also appear in the writings of some ancient authors. Before Bede composed his book De Locis Sanctis, and even before St. Arculf made his pilgrimage, the Archbishop of Seville St. Isidore had already written in his tract De ortu et obitu Patrum, speaking of the death of Our Lady: “This alone do we know with certainty: that nobody knows the manner of her death, nor when she departed from this life, but that her sepulcher is definitely in Jerusalem” (33). It would be easy to accumulate more documents, but what I have said should suffice to take away any surprise which the words of Adamnan might cause someone.

D) The sepulcher in the 6th and 5th centuries

In the 6th century the anonymous Piacentino visited the holy city of Jerusalem, around the year 570, as did the African archdeacon Theodosius, who wrote his small work De Situ Terrae Sanctae, around 525. The first says this: “In that valley (Gethsemane) is the home (basilica) of the Holy Virgin Mary, from where, it is said, she was caught up into the heavens” (34). It is true that other codices, where the codices of Brussels, Monaco, and Bern read: “domus Sanctae Mariae, de qua eam dicunt ad coelos fuisse sublatam,” put these words (35): “basilica Sanctae Mariae, quam dicunt domum ejus fuisse, in qua et de corpore sublatam fuisse,” an obscure sentence which is manifestly not that of the Piacentino, since the rest are all clear and simple. Perhaps another third reading, which Fr. B. D’Alsace brings (36), may appear preferable: “In the same valley is the basilica of Saint Mary, which it is said served her as her (last) home; and in it is displayed the sepulcher, from which, as is well known, the Holy Virgin Mary was caught up into the heavens.”

The confusion which the words of the anonymous Piacentino can engender, mixing the terms sepulcher, basilica, and home, are undone with the brief report of Theodosius. According to the codex of St. Gall, written in the year 811, the African archdeacon gave an account of his visit to Gethsemane with this words (37): “There is the valley of Josaphat; there Judas betrayed his Master; there is the church of Holy Lady Mary, Mother of the Lord, and there is conserved her sepulcher.” In Geyer’s edition (38) the clause “et ibi est sepulcrum ejus” is omitted; but one must note that Geyer did not consult the codex of the famous monastery of St. Gall.

Let us enter already into the 5th century, to which belong the most ancient and disputed testimonies, to wit: the reports of the Bishop Juvenal, of the Breviarius de Hierosolyma, and of an unknown Armenian pilgrim. I will prescind completely from the words of Juvenal, conserved by St. John Damascene, which could give material for a long work, and will limit myself to the other two documents.

The Breviarius de Hierosolyma is an extremely brief description (it scarcely occupies two pages in 8.°) of the Holy Places. Gildemeister publicized it, such as it is found in the Ambrosian codex, at the end of the book De Locis Sanctis, by Bede. Afterward another, even briefer, redaction of the Breviarius was found in codex 732 of the monastery of St. Gall. Geyer, and with him other authors, put this Breviarius in the 6th century (39); but Fr. B. D’Alsace maintains that it belongs to the 5th century, and even to the beginnings of the 5th century (40). To prove this he notes that the Breviarius, according to Calvario’s description, says nothing of the oratory or church that St. Melania the Younger erected on the top of the mountain through the years 419 to 436; rather, it describes it just as the Spanish Virgin Eteria (the supposed St. Silvia), left it at the end of the 4th century. It is certain that upon carefully examining the obscure and almost senseless text (41), upon taking into account the variants of the codex of St. Gall, this argument loses a little of its force. But to it are added others which suffice to determine the date of the Breviarius, once one notices that it mentions neither the church of St. Stephen in the valley of Josaphat, the work of Theodosius II and Eudoxia, consecrated the 15th of May the year 438 by St. Cyril of Alexandria, nor the beautiful basilica dedicated also to the glorious protomartyr the year 455 by the same Empress, to serve as her place of burial. On the other hand, it is posterior to Eteria, since it speaks of the church of St. Sophia, constructed over the ruins of the Praetorium of Pilate.

It is advisable, therefore, to fix the date of the Breviarius Hierosolyma in the first third of the 5th century. At this time the sepulcher of the Virgin was already venerated in its own basilica. Thus it expressly says almost at the end of the report: “There is the basilica of Saint Mary, and there is her sepulcher, and there Judas handed over our Lord Jesus Christ” (42).

The Breviarius Hierosolyma is the most ancient document which speaks of the basilica of the Assumption, since the description of the Holy Places, by an Armenian pilgrim, makes allusion to the sepulcher, but not to any church in the valley of Gethsemane.

I have not been able to see the entirety of this curious report, which in the 10th century Moses Kagankavatsi inserted in his history of Agvan, and was translated into Russian at the end of the century by Nisbet Bain. I will content myself, then, with summarizing what the defender of the Jerusalem sepulcher Fr. B. d’Alsace argues at greatest length in his work on the sepulcher of the Virgin (43). After proving that the Armenian pilgrim’s narration dates to the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century, and not to the 7th, since it gives account only of those basilicas constructed up to he 4th century and says nothing of those constructed later, not even of St. Sophia, he adduces the text which bears on our purpose: “Behind the city, in the site where the Jews detained the coffin of the Most Holy Virgin, wanting to disrupt her burial, there is a monument in the form of a cupola, held up by four marble columns with encrusted crosses of bronze. From there by 250 steps one descends to the tomb of the Virgin in the Valley of Gethsemane. From Gethsemane to the summit of the Mount of Olives, where Christ ascended into heaven, there are 800 steps.” The devout Armenian, who so meticulously described the other churches, gives not a single fact about the basilica of the Assumption, which makes one suppose that it had not yet been constructed; but already then the sepulcher of the Most Holy Virgin was known and venerated.

To these facts we find ourselves reduced to determining the time in which the first church was constructed over the sepulcher of Our Lady. It was not, certainly, in the time of Constantine and St. Helen, as Fernández and Freire say (44), borrowing from Nicephorus (45), nor even in that of Theodosius the Great, as affirms Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria († 939) (46), but better during the reign of Theodosius II, in the first third of the 5th century.

The narration of the Armenian pilgrim is the last which tells us about the sepulcher of the Virgin Mary. Neither in the letter of Sts. Paula and Eustochium to Marcella, which figures in the works of St. Jerome (47), nor in the itinerary of the pilgrim of Bordeaux (48), nor in the pilgrimage of Eteria (49), nor in the letter of Eucharius to the presbyter Faustus (50) is mention made of it. This is natural, since it had not even a basilica or other construction which would attract the faithful.

But I do not want to pass by this point so hurriedly, since while the documents indicated may not inform of some particulars, they can serve to put the truth in greater clarity, and take away force from the argument which one might deduce from them against the venerable sepulcher of Gethsemane.

For that which the letter of St. Paula says concerning the Holy Places, it will be well to advert that it also omits many other sites of devotion, such as, for example, that of the martyrdom of St. Stephen, and no one will say therefore that the site where the glorious deacon was stoned had been lost from memory. It could very well be, nevertheless, that the tomb of Our Lady was not even known; since, otherwise, she would have mentioned it, at least, beside those of Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah.

In the report of the pilgrim from Aquitaine one sees very clearly that there was not even any temple or basilica; he still saw in the garden of Gethsemane the rock on which Christ Our Lord prayed (51), which St. Arculf says was venerated in the crypt of the church of the Assumption, a manifest sign that in the place where the pilgrim of Bordeaux found it the basilica of Gethsemane was excavated.

The letter of Eucharius, composed, according to Conder (52), between the years 427 and 440, that is to say, after the Armenian pilgrim visited the Holy Places, offers a greater difficulty. But even granted that this date is correct, one must take note that Eucharius is not an eyewitness; he does not speak of what he has visited, but of what he has heard from others and what he has read in old books, principally in Josephus and St. Jerome. This is clear from reading the letter, extremely scarce in facts concerning Christian monuments, and from the preface with which he heads it.

With this the difficulty of the epistle of Eucharius is dissipated. Based on what previous reports say, I readily admit that their authors were not familiar with the basilica of the Assumption, which was constructed later, nor even the tomb of Our Lady. But this takes away nothing from the force of the testimony of the Breviary and of the Armenian pilgrim. Supported by these documents, it is compulsory to conclude that before the Council of Chalcedon, and even before the Council of Ephesus, the sepulcher of the Mother of God was venerated in Jerusalem.

E) The sepulcher before the year 431

With this there yet remains to be refuted the accusation, a hundred times repeated, against the bishop Juvenal, of having constructed, in order to deceive the faithful and augment the luster of his Church, the tomb of Gethsemane. I do not wish to speak of the loyalty or disloyalty of the patriarch of Jerusalem; but I do wish to establish that there is nothing in the sepulcher of Gethsemane which does not induce us to see in it an ancient sepulcher, constructed still in evangelical times.

The site in which it is placed and the depth at which it is found are very powerful arguments in this matter for me. The eastern slope of the Valley of Cedron, where the tomb of the Most Holy Virgin opens, could be called the cemetery of Jerusalem, from the most remote centuries on (53). The soft cretaceous rock offers itself like nothing else to the excavation of dugout houses, which even today one sees in great number from beyond Sitty-Mariam to the high point of Shiloh, which houses, in general, are lightly modified Jewish or Roman tombs. It is possible to identify few of these sepulchers, due to the great scarcity of funerary titles and inscriptions; but it is manifest that, in the great majority, they existed already in the time of Jesus Christ. It will be said that it fits very well with the astuteness of Juvenal to dig the tomb in this site; but then, why not open it more to the North or more to the South of the valley, or even anywhere a bit higher on the slope of the mountain, where the rock appears openly?

But what cannot be explained if the tomb was dug in the 5th century can be understood perfectly if we move its construction to the beginning of the Christian era. If we pay attention to the cross-section of the basilica of the Assumption, we notice, on the one hand, the different level of the floor in the present age and in the age of the crusades, and on the other hand the notable depth (some 10 meters) to which the tomb of the Virgin has come to be located. This is precisely the natural location which corresponds to a tomb of the 1st century. The region of Gethsemane is, perhaps, the one that has changed the most during the Christian centuries in the vicinity of Jerusalem. When the Romans, under the command of Titus, besieged the holy city, dug out the mount of Olives, opened in it their trenches, and constructed the famous surrounding wall around the city, they must have produced an enormous amount of sediment, which made the bed of the river rise rapidly. Furthermore, due to the inclination of the city towards the Southeast, the rains never cease to carry rubble and sediment to the valley of Cedron, in not insignificant quantities. Those who have seen or read the little or no policy of modern Jerusalem will not admire the plans which Fr. Vincent presents in the work cited; in them one sees that, precisely in the region of Sitty-Mariam, the fall of rubble and trash has elevated the bottom of the valley on the side of the city 10 meters above the opposite side. With this, the bed of torrent or river Cedron has risen more than 20 meters above the ancient level, which it would have had at the time of Jesus Christ (54).

According to these facts, in the 1st century the sepulcher of Gethsemane would have been located some 10 meters above the bed of the torrent, with its natural entrance on the eastern face of the mountain. Thus the sensible and erudite writer Victor Guerin checked it, who, examining the rocky mass in which the tomb of Our Lady is opened, concludes that this would make it, without a doubt, among the other tombs of the valley of Josaphat, of the vestibule and of the sepulchral chamber, the only one that is conserved today (55).

(1) I take these topographical facts from H. Vincent, O.P., Jerusalem, t. 1, fasc. I, pp. 66ff.
(2) M. L., t. XXIV, col. 315.
(3) Diario de una peregrinacion, t. II, p. 285
(4) In these facts I follow Fr. B. Meisstermann, Nueva Guia de Tierra Santa, pp. 191ff.
(5) Jerusalem, p. 402.
(6) Perez Arregui, S. J., El Santo Sepulcro, November 1918.
(7) Hurter, S. J., SS. PP. Opuscula Selecta, t. XXXIV, p. 149
(8) Le Tombeau de la Sainte Vierge en Jerusalem, p. 277.
(9) Ephese ou Jerusalem, pp. 25ff.
(10) Memoires, t. I, p. 472.
(11) Thomassinus, Vet. Et Nov. Eccl. Disc., p. II, l. III, c. 36.
(12) Vetus Martyr. D. Hieron., p. 754.
(13) De Festis, l. II, c. VIII, n. 7-11.
(14) Fernández and Freire, l. c., p. 290.
(15) Professeurs de N. D., La Palestine, p. 187.
(16) Professeurs de N. D., La Palestine, p. 187.
(17) Warren-Conder, Jerusalem, p. 45.
(18) Thus I translate Theodoric’s obscure sentence, which such as it reads in Warren scarcely makes sense: “Quod in circuitu XX columnis arcus gestantibus circundatum limbum in cicuitu et tectum desuper habet. In ipso limbo,” etc.
(19) Warren-Conder, Jerusalem, p. 80.
(20) B. Meisstermann, N. Guia de T. S., pp. 193ff.
(21) Warren-Conder, l. c., p. 65.
(22) De Locis SS. Terrae Jerusal., M. L., t. 155, col. 1,050 D.
(23) Geyer, Itinera hierosolymitana saeculi IIII-VIII, pp. 106, 109
(24) Meisstermann, N. Guia, p. 195.
(25) M. L., t. 121, col. 502 (12).
(26) Professeurs de N. D., La Palestine, l. c.
(27) B. D’Alsace, Le Tombeau de la S. V., p. 201.
(28) Acta SS. Februar., t. III, p. 112.
(29) B. D’Alsace, Le Tombeau de la S. V., p. 201.
(30) Geyer, Itin. Hier., pp. 240f.
(31) Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 309.
(32) M. L., t. 134, col. 856.
(33) S. Isidori Opera. (ed. Arevalo), v. V, p. 179; VIII, p. 387.
(34) Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 203.
(35) Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 170.
(36) Le Tombeau de la S. V., p. 193.
(37) B. D’Alsace, Le Tomb., p. 192.
(38) Itin. Hier., p. 142.
(39) Itin. Hier., p. 26.
(40) Le Tombeau de la S. V., p. 160.
(41) “Et inde intras in Golgotha. Est ibi atrium grande, ubi crucifixus est Dominus. In circuitu, in ipso monte, sunt cancellae argenteae, et in ipso monte genus silicis admoratur. Habet ostia argentea ubi crux Domini exposita, de auro et gemmis ornata tota coelum (sic) desuper patente.” Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 153.
(42) Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 155.
(43) L. c., p. 168ff.
(44) Diario de una peregrinacion, t. II, p. 289.
(45) Historia Ecclesiast., l. VIII, c. 30.
(46) Professeurs de N. D., La Palestine, p. 186.
(47) M. L. t. 22, col. 483ff.
(48) Geyer, Itin. Hier., pp. 1ff.
(49) Geyer, Itin. Hier., pp. 37ff.
(50) Geyer, Itin. Hier., pp. 125ff.
(51) L. c., p 23.
(52) Jerusalem, p. 17.
(53) Cf. H. Vincent, Jerusalem, p. 61 and following.
(54) Meisstermann, N. G. de T. S., p. 194.
(55) Jerusalem, p. 347.

For our joy God has since arranged things quite differently. The year 1898, on the occasion of the trip of the now dethroned emperor Wilhelm II to the Orient, the Sultan ceded this ground to the Kaiser, who in turn gave it to the Catholics of his country (3). The Catholic Palestinian Society of Cologne founded a monastery of the Benedictines of Beuron, who took in their charge the new basilica. In the fall of 1900 the first stone was placed, and the 10th of April 1910, in the presence of Prince Eitel Friedrich, the German church of the Assumption was consecrated. The new sanctuary, of Romanesque style (an imitation of the celebrated church of Aachen), consists of a monumental crypt, whose construction was made necessary by the rubble and ruins accumulated in the ground since the 13th century, and in the church properly so called. The interior decoration is all of marble and mosaics, with much taste and richness, as one could already appreciate in 1912 in the two entirely completed chapels. The political change in Palestine has put in the church of the Dormition in other hands. At the end of last February, His Holiness Benedict XV separated the Belgian Benedictines of the abbeys of Maredsous, Louvain, and Andre-lez-Bruges from the monastic congregation of Beuron, and confided the basilica of the Assumption to the monks of Maredsous. Four religious formed the first expedition: D. Manuel Valet, D. Feullien Mercenier, D. Hugo Delogne, and D. Gregorio Fournier, as Superior (4).

A) The primitive church of mount Zion

The German church is, as we have just seen, of recent construction, but built over the ruins of other ancient basilicas, which have succeeded each other without interruption since the first Christian centuries.

Before we begin it is fitting to note that although the church of the Dormition and the Cenacle currently form two separate and independent buildings, this was not the case in times past. According to tradition, the house where the Savior celebrated the Last Supper with His Apostles (of such capacity that in one room on the first floor St. Peter could preach to 120 people) became the home of the Virgin Our Lady, who yielded in it her precious soul, as Modestus and Sophronius, the patriarchs of Jerusalem, say, echoing the common opinion among the faithful of Palestine (5). To write, then, the history of the Cenacle is to write the history of the ancient church of the Dormition of Our Lady.

I do not think it venturesome to affirm with Leclercq (6) that few Christian buildings, and perhaps even none, will be able to offer such a numerous series of explicit testimonies as the church of the Cenacle; but one would be mistaken in hoping to find meticulous descriptions, since all the testimonies are limited to short and general sentences.

St. Epiphanius relates that when Adrian, the conqueror of the Jews, entered into Jerusalem (117-118), among the ruins of the city he found standing only a few houses and the tiny Christian temple, build on mount Zion, in the place where the Apostles withdrew themselves after the Ascension of their Master (7). Now then, it is most probable that this church had been constructed by the Christians who had been refugees in Pella, when after the destruction of Titus passed (the year 70) they returned to the capital of Judea. This first church should have had two floors or superimposed churches, an arrangement which was in the Constantinian basilica, to judge by a sentence which escaped from the pen of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (the year 350), upon speaking of the coming of the Holy Spirit: “Here, in Jerusalem, in the upper church of the Apostles” (8).

The most ancient description of this basilica that I have seen is that of the Armenian pilgrim, which gives an account of it with these words: “The church of Zion, one stadium’s distance from the Anastasis, is 100 codos [an ancient unit of measurement equaling 42 cm] long by 70 wide; the church is held up by 80 columns, joined together by arches (or vaults). There is no upper floor, but a light wooden roof, from which hangs the crown of thorns which girded the temples of the Savior. To the right is the hall of the Mysteries, in whose wooden cupola is represented the Last Supper. There is the altar for the celebration of the liturgical offices. The floor above has fallen into disuse” (9).

Leclercq (10) omits these last words and gathers from the previous that the Armenian speaks of a church distinct from the Cenacle, since it had a floor above. But the Armenian informs us that the hall of the mysteries, which corresponds to the Cenacle, had two floors. Moreover, if we are to believe Nicephorus Callistus (11), the Cenacle was located in the portico of the church raised by Constantine. This being the case, Leclercq’s difficulty loses all its force. Finally, it will be well to warn that in the ancient reports great confusion reigns whenever they speak of the two churches of mount Zion: to wit, that of the Cenacle and that of St. Peter, in the house of Caiaphas (12).

B) The cult of the Assumption in the church of mount Zion

It will be noted that in the testimonies adduced up to this point no mention is made of the death of our Lady on the hill of Zion. The first documents which unite the church of the Cenacle with this most sweet memory date from the 7th century (13). Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem in the year 638, says this in a pretty (albeit obscure) anacreontic, in which he speaks of his love for the Holy Places:

Epi ten Sion apelzo
Hozi glossopursomorphos
Katebe chara Theoio…
Potamon dichen iaseis
Apo tes petres echeines,
Theopai; hopou tanusze,
Marie bruousa pasin.
Chaire, Sion, phaezon helie chosmou… ch. t. l. (14).

St. Arculf, although he says nothing expressly in the text, has left us a rudimentary plan of the church of the Cenacle. In the center one reads: “hic coluna. marmoreal stat cui dns. adherens flagellatus est”; in a corner: “hic spr. scs. sup aposol. discendit”; in another: “locus coene dni.”; in another, finally, “hic sca. Maria obiit” (15). The Ven. Bede, who made use of the report written by Adamnan, also affirms that in the basilica of Zion the place where the Most Holy Virgin expired was venerated (16), and after this date testimonies abound (17).

It is, then, undeniable that the Assumption tradition, at least as far as one can verify with documents, is not united to the church of Zion until the 7th century. To explain this fact three hypotheses have been proposed. Theodore Zahn (18) explains it by the confusion of John Mark, owner of the Cenacle, with St. John the Evangelist, and of Mary, mother of John Mark, with Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ Our Lord. Fr. Lagrange undoes these conjectures of the laborious Protestant investigator and in turn proposes another explanation (19). The ancient church of the hill of Zion was for the first Christians of Palestine like the first of the churches of the world: “Ecclesiarum matre S. Sion,” says William of Tyre (20) following the pilgrim Theodosius. Because of this veneration of the church of Zion, the Christians gathered in it the most precious relics: the crown of thorns, the column of flagellation, the rocks which were thrown at St. Stephen, the cross of St. Peter, the horn with which King David was anointed, the cornerstone (21), etc. “There is nothing strange then,” concludes Lagrange, “that as the cult of the Most Holy Virgin in her glorious Assumption increased, the Christians would carry to the church of Zion the bed of rock or some other object related with the death of Our Lady.” For his part, Fr. B. d’Alsace rejects, perhaps with too much harshness, the opinion of Fr. Lagrange, and maintains that if the faithful began to venerate the death of the Virgin Mary in the basilica of the Cenacle, it was because ancient tradition made the Cenacle the home of Our Lady (22).

C) The Church of the Crusaders

The beautiful Constantinian church would have suffered, like all the other Christian temples of the holy city, the devastations of Hakim the year 1010. When the crusaders came to power over Jerusalem they found it half in ruins (23), but they hurried to rebuild it, conserving the Cenacle’s own two floors. John of Würtzburg and Theodoric tell us meticulously about the restored basilica:

“In the southern part of mount Zion” writes the latter (24), “outside the walls of the city, is the church of Our Lady Saint Mary, very well provided with walls, towers, and defenses against the attacks of the infidels; in it there is community of religious with their prelate. After you enter into the church, on the left hand, in the middle of the apse, you will see the venerable place where Our Lord Jesus Christ received the soul of His most beloved Mother and Our Lady Saint Mary to carry it with Him to heaven. The monument, adorned on the outside with precious marbles and inside with rich mosaics, is of square plan, crowned with a ciborium.”

John of Würtzburg (25) completes these facts, saying that in this part of the temple there was an altar, and in a fresco on the wall was represented the Lord receiving the soul of His Mother in the presence of the Apostles. This inscription was read on the monument: “Exaltata est Sancta Dei genitrix super choros angelorum.”

D) Ruins of the church of the Dormition

The beautiful church of the crusaders did not last long. When Jerusalem returned to Mohammedan power, the sanctuary of Zion began very soon to declare itself in ruins. In the year 1342 the king of Naples, Robert d’Anjou, rescued what was left of the Cenacle and entrusted it to the religious of St. Francis, who rebuilt part of the church and founded a hospital, where for a space of two centuries pilgrims to the Holy Land found shelter (26), until in 1551 the Moslems threw out the Catholics and profaned the Cenacle, converting it into a mosque. But the northwest corner of the church, consecrated to the death of Our Lady, came to the ground very soon, after the fall of the King of Jerusalem. Among the shapeless ruins tradition would indicate the bed of rock upon which the Queen of Heaven had concluded her life on earth.

CONCLUSION

It is now time to sum up what I have expressed in these articles about the Jerusalem monuments and to clarify their value in the Assumption tradition.

Based on what the documents tell of it, interpreted with all rigor, it is mandatory to conclude that the church of the Dormition is the ancient basilica of Zion, which dates back to the beginnings of the 2nd century; but no mention of the cult of the Assumption appears until the 7th century. Certainly, there is no positive reason to deny that already in the previous centuries the faithful came to Jerusalem, offering in it this cult to the Virgin Our Lady; but neither do we have proof to the contrary. Therefore, the value of this precious monument in the tradition is not as great as one might have suspected. On the other hand, its influence must have been of very notable force. Situated very near the monastery of the Holy Virgin Mary, the hospital of the Jerusalem pilgrims which the anonymous Piacentino describes (27), the church of the Dormition continually brought the glorious death of the Most Holy Virgin, whose last breath sanctified the hill of Zion, to the memory of the pilgrims who since the 7th century had visited the Holy City.

One ought to form a different judgment of the sepulcher of Gethsemane. To judge by all the indications, it is not the work of Juvenal, nor of the Christians of the 5th century, but a Jewish tomb constructed already in the evangelical era. Ignored until the 4th century, as the silence of St. Jerome, Eteria, and the pilgrim from Bordeaux prove, it must have been discovered at the beginning of the 5th century, that is to say, before the Council of Ephesus (431). Now then, the empty tomb of the Most Holy Virgin was preaching to all the resurrection of the Mother of God and her Assumption into the heavens. Thus the reports of the pilgrims adduced in this work declare more or less openly. We can, then, look at the sepulcher of Gethsemane as a certain sign that before the year 431 the glorious mystery of the Assumption of the Virgin was known and venerated.

As one sees, I prescind in these conclusions from the authenticity of the sepulcher; for my intent it suffices that since the beginnings of the 5th century it has been seen as the tomb of the Virgin Mary. Others do not do this, and take another step forward. For them, the tomb of Gethsemane is not only a monument which accredits the tradition at the dawn of the 5th century, but a direct argument of undiminished value for the bodily Assumption of Mary (28). This supposes the arguable and argued question of the true place in which the Virgin Our Lady died and was buried to be already resolved in favor of Jerusalem.

Above all one must remember with Fr. de la Broise (29) “that the circumstances of place, time, etc., of the Assumption in no way touch on the substance of the universal belief received in the Church,” a belief that has very deep roots in Scripture, the Holy Fathers, and the ordinary teaching of the ecclesiastical Magisterium. Taking this into account, no one will be amazed that among Catholic authors, fervent defenders of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, there should not be conformity of opinions concerning the place in which Our Lady died. Almost all the ancients and the majority of moderns incline in favor of Jerusalem; some of the ancients and not a few modern writers maintain as more probable the tradition of Ephesus, and point to the recently discovered house of Panaghia-Capuli as the last home of the Virgin, and the place of Bulbul-Dag (mount of the Nightingale) as the site of her burial.

The resonance which these disputes had in the last years of the 18th century would reclaim for them a preferred place in every study on the origins of the Assumption tradition, much more than in that which I have aspired to do; since the pretensions of the partisans of Ephesus being legitimate, the house of Panaghia-Capuli would be the most ancient monument of the tradition. But as the study of the arguments alleged for one or the other side require sufficient time and space, I will refrain from examining them in this work, contenting myself with referring my readers to the work of the Franciscan Rev. Fr. Bernabé d’Alsace on the sepulcher of Gethsemane, so many times cited in these pages.

Mauricio Gordillo

Note – The first part of this article (August, 1919) already published, I took notice of the booklet: “The Poet Aurelio Prudencio and the Temple of the Pillar,” by Fr. Fray Pedro Corro del Rosario, O. S. A. (Madrid 1919). In various passages of his interesting little work (chs. V, VI, IX, X, XII) the author speaks of the church of St. Engracia and of the sarcophagus of the eighteen martyrs. Interpreting the work of Prudencio cited in these pages (p. 456), he concludes that the eighteen martyrs were sacrificed before the persecution of Diocletian, and buried first in the basilica of the Pillar. This opinion (it is not my intention to discuss the arguments with which he supports it) moves the age of the sepulcher of the martyrs back even further and unites the origins of the Spanish Assumption tradition to the sacred Pillar of Zaragoza. M. G.

(1) Guerin, Jerusalem, p. 288.
(2) Diario de una peregrinacion, t. II, p. 179.
(3) Meisstermann, Nueva Guia de T. S. , p. 143.
(4) Les Nouvelles Religieuses, 15 Mar., 1919, 2.e ann., p. 186.
(5) Meisstermann, Nueva Guia de T. S. , p. 143.
(6) Cenacle, Dictionaire d’Archeologie et Liturgie, t. II, second part, col. 3,032.
(7) De Ponder. Et Mensur. , c. XIV, M. G., t. 43, col. 261.
(8) Catech., XVI, 4, M. G., t. 33, c. 924.
(9) B. D’Alsace, Le Tomb. de la S. V. , p. 170.
(10) Cenacle, l. c., col. 3,034.
(11) Ecclesiastica Historia, l. VIII, c. 30.
(12) Cf. Germer-Durand, La Maison de Caife, Revue Biblique, 1914, pp. 71, 222.
(13) I prescind from the apocryphal accounts, which put the death of the Virgin on mount Zion although without determining any site.
(14) M. G., t. 87c, col. 3,822. The translation of this passage, whose construction does not fail to offer its difficulty, could be this: “I start out towards Zion | where in the form of tongues of fire | the glory of God descended… | From that stone | on which the daughter of God reposed | Mary makes gush out for all | abundant rivers of grace | Rejoice, Zion, splendorous sun of the world,” etc.
(15) Geyer, Itin. Hier. , p. 142.
(16) Geyer, Itin. Hier. , p. 306.
(17) Cf. M. L., t. 121, col. 572, &.
(18) Die Dormitio S. Virginis und das Haus des Joh. Marcus. – Leipzig, 1899.
(19) Revue Biblique, 1899, p. 597.
(20) Hist. , l. XV, c. IV
(21) See this curious legend in (pseudo) Antonius of Piacenza. – Geyer, l. c., p. 173.
(22) Le Tombeau de la S. V. , pp. 141ff.
(23) V. Guerin, Jerusalem, p. 287.
(24) Warren-Conder, Jerusalem, p. 56.
(25) Warren-Conder, Jerusalem, p. 76.
(26) V. Guerin, Jerusalem, p. 287.
(27) Geyer, Itin. Hier., p. 175.
(28) Thus insinuated the postulate, cited at the beginning of this series, from the Vatican Council.
(29) Les derniers annees de la Sainte Vierge, Etudes, t. 72, p. 302.