On Calvary is shown the spot where the Redeemer was nailed to the cross, the hole into which the end of it was fixed, and the rent in the rock. All these are covered with marble, perforated in the proper places, so that they may be seen and touched. Near at hand a cross is erected on an elevated part of the ground, and a wooden body stretched upon it in the attitude of suffering. Descending from the Mount, the traveller enters the chapel of St. Helens, the mother of Constantine, in which is the vault where the true cross is said to have been found,--an event that continues to be celebrated every year on the third of May by an appropriate mass. The place is large enough to contain about thirty or forty individuals, and on that annual solemnity it is usually crowded to the door. The spirit in which these commemorations are sometimes performed is by no means honourable to the Christian character. An ancient rivalry between the members of the Greek and those of the Roman communion continues to imbitter their disputes in regard to their respective privileges and procedure. Maundrell informs us that in his time each fraternity had their own altar and sanctuary, at which they had a peculiar right to celebrate divine services and to exclude all other nations. But, says he, that which has always been the great prize contended for by the several sects, is the command and appropriation of the holy Sepulchre; a privilege contested with so much unchristian fury and animosity, especially between the Greeks and Latins that, in disputing which party should go in to celebrate their mass, they have sometimes proceeded to blows and wounds, even at the very door of the sepulchre, mingling their own blood with their sacrifices. The King of Franca interposed about the end of the seventeenth century, and obtained an order for the grand vizier to put that holy place into the possession of the Western Church; an arrangement which was accomplished in the year 1690, and secured to the Latins the exclusive privilege of saying mass in it. "And though it be permitted to Christians of all nations to go into it for their private devotions, yet none other may solemnize any public office of religion there."[82] The daily employment of these recluses is to trim the lamps, and to make devotional visits and processions to the several sanctuaries in the church. Thus they spend their time, many of them for four or six years together; nay, so far are some transported with the pleasing contemplation in which they here entertain themselves, that they will never come out to their dying day; burying themselves, as it were, alive in our Lord's grave.