After the massacre of the Christians in 1244 A. D., the Franciscans were allowed by the Sulṭân of Egypt to return to Jerusalem, and they alone--for about five centuries--represented Latin Christianity in Palestine. The Latin churches were in ruins, and were either appropriated by Greeks and Armenians, or in other cases were turned into mosques. The Franciscan monastery of St. Saviour was in the north-west corner of the city, where the Latin Patriarchate now is. The friars were the guides of pilgrims after the fall of Acre in 1291 A. D., but they were only able to show sites outside the city, or in the streets, with exception of those in the Holy Sepulchre Cathedral, which, by treaty, was reserved to Christians. This seems to have been the reason why the sites in the Via Dolorosa--which are unnoticed before 1300 A. D.--came to be established. The capital of a pillar has been found, on which the legend of St. Veronica and the “holy handkerchief” is represented,[40] which may be as old as the twelfth century. The Chapel of the “Spasm” of the Virgin, with its mosaic floor, has also been recovered at the point where the Via Dolorosa turns south,[41] and this station is mentioned in the fourteenth century[42]; but only eight stations are noticed in the sixteenth century out of fourteen now shown by the Latins.[43] The “Stone of Unction,” west of Calvary, is first noticed by Ludolph of Suchem, about 1330 A. D., as a Latin site, and “Herod’s House”--still extant, near the “red minaret” in the north-east of the town--is mentioned by Sir John Maundeville in 1342 A. D. Two footprints of Christ continued to be here shown down to the present century, and this place was still known in 1846, but has now ceased to be reckoned among the sacred sites.[44] The place where Christ wept for Jerusalem on Olivet, and the ancient tomb in the Hinnom Valley (probably that of Ananus), which was converted into a chapel with a frescoed roof and called the “Retreat of the Apostles,”[45] seem to be first noticed by Zuallardo in 1586 A. D., as are also the “House of Dives” and the “House of the Pharisee,” in the Via Dolorosa. [Sidenote: LATER SITES]