[48] Charlemagne. We have no other account of Charlemagne's foundations at Jerusalem; but the khalif Haroun-er-Raschid is said to have shown great favour to the Christian pilgrims from respect for the Frankish emperor, and even to have sent him the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and of Jerusalem. A legend prevalent in the twelfth century made the emperor visit Jerusalem in person; and an Anglo-Norman poem on Charlemagne's pretended voyage to the Holy Land, composed in that century, was printed by M. Fr. Michel in 1836. [49] See "Bede's Ecclesiastical History," book v. chaps. 16 and 17. Bede professedly takes his account from Adamnan's narrative of the travels of bishop Arculf, and the description referred to will be found at p. 2 of the present volume. [50] This was a very celebrated miracle in the middle ages, and will be remembered as the cause of the persecution of the Christians in the Holy City, and of the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, by the khalif Hakem, in A.D. 1008 or 1010. An eastern Christian writer, Abulfaragius, tells us that "the author of this persecution was some enemy of the Christians, who told Hakem that, when the Christians assembled in their temple at Jerusalem, to celebrate Easter, the chaplains of the church, making use of a pious fraud, greased the chain of iron that held the lamp over the tomb with oil of balsam; and that, when the Arab officer had sealed up the door which led to the tomb, they applied a match, through the roof, to the other extremity of the chain, and the fire descended immediately to the wick of the lamp and lighted it. Then the worshippers burst into tears, and cried out _kyrie eleison_, supposing it was fire which fell from heaven upon the tomb; and they were thus strengthened in their faith." This miracle was probably instituted after the time when so much encouragement was given to the pilgrims under the reign of Charlemagne. It is not mentioned in the works that preceded Bernard, but it is often alluded to in subsequent writers, and continues still to be practised by the Greeks. [51] Theodosius was patriarch of Jerusalem from 863 to 879. [52] _i. e._ the Mosque of Omar. [53] The event alluded to occurred in the Temple, and not on the Mount of Olives. The notion mentioned in the text must have arisen from a wrong reading of the first verses of John, viii. It is stated in the Gospel, John, viii. 6, "But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not." This writing on the ground was worked up into a popular legend in the middle ages, according to which Christ is represented as writing on the ground the secret sins of all the persons assembled to condemn the woman; and this, we are told, was the cause that they all slunk away ashamed.