The Riddle and the Knight

by Giles Milton

  Little is known of Jerusalem during this time; the city entered one of the few peaceful periods in its history. It seems to have been governed by officials banished from the hierachy in Cairo, and these officials often found themselves arguing with European rulers about the city's churches and shrines: successive governors used their possession of these holy places as a bargaining chip when dealing with foreign powers.

  There must have been a considerable native Christian population living in the city, but few travellers mention it. Surviving records in Cairo, however, reveal that these Christians suffered from regular bouts of persecution—both from the local Muslims and from the

  Jerusalem

  Mameluke officials. They were forced to wear blue turbans, forbidden to ride horses or mules, and not even allowed to raise their voices in public. When the pilgrim Ludoph von Suchem came to Jerusalem in the first half of the fourteenth century, he watched a small force of local Greeks break their way into the Muslim shrine and trample on the religious texts. All were hacked to pieces by the soldiers guarding the building.

  After leaving Father Baratto, I wandered through the old town with a growing sense of detachment. These narrow alleys—now lined with souvenir shops selling religious tat—were the birthplace of Christianity, yet the more I became familiar with their stones and their walls, the stronger that detachment became. As I passed churches and patriarchates, met Coptic monks and Ethiopian priests, I found myself wondering where in the world I was. Only in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem is there any sense of being in the Middle East: the narrow street of Tariq Al-Shaykh Rihan is cluttered with stalls selling worry beads and headscarves; veiled women haggle in Arabic; and the souks are packed with people, donkeys, mopeds, and bands of children in shabby clothes. Turn into Harat al-Yahud, the beginning of the Jewish quarter, and the scene switches to the SoHo district in New York. The pavement cafes and bars are filled with Americans eating falafel and drinking Coke, and the girls—all beautiful—are dressed in jeans and skin-tight tops. Even the streets are beautifully kept, and many of the buildings bear signs recording that they were restored by wealthy American Jews. The Christian quarter is different again; packed with busloads of pilgrims— mostly from western Europe—its churches and priests seemed both familiar and utterly foreign.

  The Franciscan prayer tour recommended by Father Baratto is held every Friday at three o'clock. Starting at the first station of the cross, where Jesus was tried, the tour visits each of the fourteen stations and ends in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.

  We were a curious group gathered at the Chapel of the Flagellation, and included among our number:

  The Riddle and the Knight

  • a party of Slovakians accompanied by their own Franciscan monk

  • a blue-rinse lady from Surbiton

  • five elderly couples (Danish, German, Italian)

  • four Australian backpackers

  • two devout believers

  • two devout atheists

  • some curious

  • one mad

  By the time we had been joined in the shaded courtyard by the group of straggling Slovakian pilgrims, there were several dozen people signed up for the tour.

  I had expected us to be led by one monk who would give a short reading at each station. I couldn't have been more wrong. There were twenty-seven Franciscans leading the procession, with four principal monks giving the readings in Latin, Italian, English, and Slovakian. This was not all. The lead monk—the one reading in Latin—carried on his shoulder a portable microphone and ampUfier so we could all hear clearly. He had no need to test it for loudness; the shrill screech of feedback had us all clapping our hands over our ears.

  The readings began at the second station, the Church of the Condemnation, where Christ was found guilty and carried away to be flogged. The monk began in Latin and Italian, and then there was a moment's pause as the microphone was handed along a line of cassocks before being given to a Filipino at the far end. He read in a thick southern American drawl: "Here ]eeeeesus was condemned . . ."

  Just at that moment the muezzin from the mosque opposite began the evening call to prayer, and the wail of "Allllllllaaaaaaaah Ak-haaaar" —"God is great"—drowned out our prayers. For the second time, everyone clapped their hands over their ears, and a few people allowed themselves an ironic chuckle. There was a moment's break in the Arabic and the Filipino began again. But no sooner had he started than he was once more interrupted by the Muslim muezzin. This time he struggled on bravely before passing the microphone back down the line.

  The second station over, we moved on slowly up the Via Dolorosa,

  Jerusalem

  with the lead monks chanting Dominus, Filiiis et Spiritu Sancto as we went. The Via Dolorosa is the route walked by Christ on His way to the Crucifixion, and I had memories of it from pictures in my childhood Bible. On one page, smiling faces carpeted Jesus's path with palm branches. On the next, they jeered at Him as He fell.

  Quite probably the street hasn't changed much in the last two thousand years. It still weaves its way uphill through the old town, and although the shops that line the street these days specialize in gaudy madonnas and flashing plastic crucifixes, the flagstones themselves date back to the time of Christ.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked round. There was the Filipino, with a beaming smile on his face.

  "Hi," he said as he pressed his plump hand into mine. 'T'm Father Angelo. What brings yon here?"

  I looked at him. Did he know me? Some months earlier I'd been on holiday in Assisi—perhaps I had spoken to him there? But no, he was simply being friendly.

  "And you must be Anglican," he said. ''Woooow. That's maaarvel-lous. You must have a chat with me after; will you have a chat?" Before I could answer he ran off to join the other monks at the head of the procession. We had reached the third station of the cross.

  Although a Good Friday procession to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has taken place since the fifth century, the stations of the cross are an invention of the west. It was the crusaders who established the Via Dolorosa, and by Sir John's day, it had become a fixed route followed by virtually all western pilgrims who visited the city. This had been made possible by a number of miraculous discoveries: diligent medieval researchers located Pontius Pilate's palace, which gave a starting point to the Via Dolorosa, and it wasn't long before they had unearthed other stations of the cross as well: the fourth, for example, where Jesus faced His mother, and the seventh where He fell for a second time. The trend to visit such places was fuelled by Europe's spiralling spiritual crisis. Churches increasingly stressed the importance of reflecting on the sufferings of Christ, and there was no better way to do this than actually to pray at the place of His death.

  As we followed this well-worn path, the monks chanted and the devout prayed. We had begun our tour as any other tourist group:

  The Riddle and the Knight

  everyone was chatting, exchanging news, asking who had seen what. Shopkeepers stared at us as we passed. Some laughed. Some tried to sell us their wares. Small boys pushed past, and women knocked us with their shopping. I, like most, had signed up for the tour with considerable scepticism, but as we weaved our way through the narrow streets of Jerusalem I became aware that something had begun to change in our group. Despite the commotion and the noise around us, we moved quietly along our slow, inevitable path—a path worn smooth by centuries of pilgrims—and as we did so, we became our own little community, cut off from the bustle just inches from our faces. Slowly, imperceptibly, a hushed silence had descended.

  Others had also joined our tour, and there were now several dozen of us, all following the robed Franciscans in silence. We reached the ninth station, the prayers were read, then we turned the last right-angle twist in the route. And there before us stood the huge Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We had arrived at the very centre of Christendom, the spiritual and geo
graphical heart of the Christian faith.

  Medieval pilgrims called it the centre of the world.

  Wajeeh Yacob Nuseibeh was waiting for me at the entrance. He was wearing a well-cut suit, and his neatly clipped moustache gave him the look of a retired RAF pilot. I held out my hand and he shook it firmly. "You're four minutes late," he reprimanded. I apologized and he acknowledged me with a nod.

  "Now," he said. "You better sit down because I have a lot to tell you."

  Wajeeh is the custodian and doorkeeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it is his job to unlock the church doors every morning and lock them again at night. I'd heard about him from Father Baratto and had already tried to meet him unsuccessfully several times, for rd been told that his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather— and all his forefathers right back to the year 1187 A.D., and possibly much earlier—had performed the sam.e role as Wajeeh. A direct ancestor of his would have opened the door of the church for Sir John Man-deville.

  This in itself was remarkable, but the strangest fact about Wajeeh's

  Jerusalem

  family is that they have always been Muslim. What I wanted to know, and what Wajeeh was only too keen to tell me, was how a Muslim had come to be in charge of the holiest church in the world.

  "When Caliph Omar seized Jerusalem from the Byzantine army in 638 A.D./' began Wajeeh, "a member of my family entered the city with him. His name was Abdullah, and he came from what is now Saudi Arabia. Abdullah's family . . . my family . . . must have been a distinguished one even in those days, for it was they who received the Prophet Mohammed when he fled from Mecca to Medina.''

  He paused for a moment as two Orthodox monks passed. They bowed towards him and he respectfully acknowledged their deference.

  "As soon as Omar and Abdullah had entered Jerusalem, the city's Patriarch—a man named Sophronius—offered to the Caliph the keys to the Holy Sepulchre, a symbolic gesture. The Caliph accepted them and is said to have handed them to Abdullah for safe-keeping."

  I already knew a little about the remarkable Caliph Omar. Unkempt and unwashed, his small band of highly disciplined followers laid siege to Jerusalem and had slowly strangled the city, cutting its supply lines in time-honoured fashion until its exhausted population were forced to capitulate. After entering the city, the victorious Omar, riding a white camel, went straight to pray at the Temple of Solomon. Next, he asked to be taken to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but as he toured the building the hour for Mushm prayer arrived. Sophronius invited him to pray in the church but Omar refused, predicting that if he prayed there his troops would insist the building was turned into a mosque. And if this happened, he would be forced to break the command of his prophet Mohammed—that conquered Christians should be allowed the right to retain their places of worship. And so the Christians kept their church, and for the next four centuries, Wajeeh's family lived in Jerusalem and, according to legend, remained in possession of the keys to the Holy Sepulchre.

  "Our problems began in 1099 when the crusaders stormed the city," said Wajeeh. "Many of my family were slaughtered in the bloodshed that followed. But a few managed to escape to a village near Nablus and sit out the next hundred and fifty years while the crusaders held the city. We still have family tombs in Nablus—I've visited them myself."

  The Riddle and the Knight

  The crusader period almost spelled the end for Wajeeh's family, as it did for many Muslims. But they somehow managed to survive, and when the great Islamic warrior Saladin defeated the crusaders and entered the city in 1187, Wajeeh's ancestors were once again at his side.

  Saladin smashed the bells of the church, took down the cross, and expelled the Latins. For a short time the church was locked, but documents record that when the doors were reopened, it was Wajeeh's ancestors who performed the honour.

  For many pilgrims, entering the church during the Middle Ages was expensive: not only was there a special tax imposed on foreign Christians but many of the doorkeepers were unscrupulous characters who thought nothing of abusing their position by extorting vast sums of gold from the pilgrims. Some believed such a rip-off to be penance for past sins, and when the Franciscan monk Antonio de Reboldis came here in 1331, he recorded his satisfaction at spending the last of his money to enter the church: "Blessed indeed, those seven florins that I gave. O how much sweetness from those florins."

  Once they had negotiated themselves past the doorkeepers, pilgrims often spent several days inside the church, while the courtyard outside—where I was now sitting—would be packed with merchants selling foodstuffs to be eaten within the Holy Sepulchre.

  Wajeeh stopped talking and brushed his moustache. Two Franciscans came up and shook his hand. A Coptic priest bowed deeply. Wajeeh appeared to enjoy the respect he was shown, yet despite a thousand years of deference, he acknowledged their greetings with a gracious charm.

  He unlocks the door at 4 a.m. and closes it again in the evening unless there is a special festival. Once a year the key is reoffered to him by the Greek Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox, and the Catholics.

  "This is a symbolic act to show that they wish the tradition to continue. To have a Muslim unlocking the doors is symbolic of the friendship between Christianity and Islam. It is also fulfilling Caliph Omar's pledge, even today. But most importantly, it cuts down the wrangles between the different Christian groups. If the Greeks had the key, it would be a Greek church. If the Armenians had it, the church would be Armenian. But I am completely neutral and never take sides."

  He paused for a moment and placed his hand upon his heart. "It is

  Jerusalem

  an honour and a privilege for me to hold the keys to the Holy Sepulchre, and I am thankful to God that I have a son to continue the tradition."

  He finished speaking, fell silent, and reached backwards to unlock a cupboard behind the great church door: "Here," he said, handing me a bundle of faded sepia photographs. "This is my father unlocking the church . . . and that is my grandfather." They both had moustaches, and both looked like Wajeeh. 'Tf you would like to take a picture of me," he added, 'T will be only too happy to pose for you."

  He stood outside the door while I took a photograph. But he wasn't happy with the first picture and, once again brushing his moustache, asked me to take another. Then he shook me by the hand and I entered the church.

  In the early years of Christianity, the Church stressed Christ's divinity rather than His human nature, and the fact that He had lived and died in the Holy Land was overshadowed by His teachings and prophecies. It was not until the time of the fourth-century Byzantine Emperor Constantine the Great that Jerusalem became every pilgrim's desire and goal, for during his reign there were a series of spectacular discoveries made in the Holy City.

  Constantine's mother, the Empress Helena, travelled to Jerusalem at an extremely advanced age determined to find the true site of the Crucifixion before she died. At first her search proceeded slowly and fruitlessly, and chroniclers record that it was only when she threatened all the Jewish inhabitants of the city with torture or death that relics miraculously began to appear. Her own version of the story is somewhat different. On her return to the imperial capital, she told Constantine how an elderly Jew named Judas was in the midst of a prayer when the earth began to tremble and emit a sweet perfume. Her Byzantine guards immediately began digging and had soon unearthed three crosses which instantly restored to life the corpse of a young man who was about to be buried. Sir John repeats this story about Helena's discovery, recording that "the Jews had hidden [the cross] in the earth under the rock of Mount Calvary; and it lay there two hundred years and more up to the time when Saint Helena found it."

  Whatever the truth, her mission was heralded as a triumph by the

  The Riddle and the Knight

  emperor, who ordered a huge church to be buih over the site. It wasn't long before thousands of pilgrims began to follow in Helena's footsteps, flocking to sacred sites all over the region. Venerating holy relic
s became widespread, as church authorities taught that such relics could cure the sick, and richer pilgrims began buying up these healing souvenirs and carting them home with them. Bones, hair, limbs, even tiny fragments of the true cross reached western Europe, and Sir John himself claims to have a fragment of the Crown of Thorns in his baggage.

  The trickle soon became a flood, and monasteries—with one eye on the finances generated by such relics—claimed to possess ever more ludicrous items. Walsingham boasted of having acquired the Virgin's milk. Next to arrive was Christ's breath in a bottle. Then the tip of the Devil's tail turned up, and in Venice one of Goliath's teeth was miraculously unearthed. Most famous of all was Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire, which became a huge centre of pilgrimage because of the phial of the Blood of Christ that was held there. Given by a wealthy magnate, and personally authenticated by the Pope, it drew tens of thousands of pilgrims to the abbey.

  Today it is hard not to be cynical about such relics, and I found it impossible to imagine the excitement felt by medieval pilgrims arriving at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For months they had travelled across dangerous and hostile territories, suffering great hardship and constant hunger, and now their goal was at last before their eyes. Crossing themselves, weeping, and chanting the Te Deum, they entered the holiest site in Christendom.