On Sundays the Christians of various churches--Greek, Latin, Armenian,
Coptic--hold their services simultaneously, under the dome and in the
side chapels which open off it. On one occasion when I was present
the Greek patriarch was preaching under the dome of the rotunda, at
the east end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre, when suddenly the Latins
struck up their instrumental music and singing, drowning the preacher’s
voice. I was prepared to sympathise with the Greeks, when presently
they formed a procession and marched round the rotunda, passing right
through a little band of Copts who were engaged in their own way of
worship at the west end of the Chapel of the Sepulchre. This want of
consideration for the members of other churches seemed so calculated
to lead to quarrels that I was not surprised to find a hundred Turkish
soldiers drawn up in front of the church to keep the peace. This was
a fortnight before Easter. At Easter time itself, when the so-called
miracle of the “holy fire” is enacted, and Christians of all churches
struggle with one another to be the first to light their tapers at
the sacred flame, quarrels do actually arise, and the place is a
pandemonium. Woe to the owner of the taper first lit; it is snatched
from him, and extinguished by having a dozen others thrust into it.
Strong men struggle with one another, and even delicate women and old
men fight like furies. We may well join with Conder in wishing that the
evidence may finally prove Calvary to have been somewhere else.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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