Photos of the Holy Land from Fr Lew

Our long-time contributor Fr Lawrence Lew, who is an extremely talented photographer, was on pilgrimage in the Holy Land recently, and has very kindly shared with us some of his pictures.

A view of the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem, with the church of the Holy Sepulchre at its heart. The tower on the right is one of the newest churches in the Old City, that of the Lutherans.

The icon of Christ Crucified on Calvary

The Aedicule of the Tomb and the rotunda.

The votive lamp directly in front of the icon of the Resurrection that surmounts the entrance to the Aedicule.

Enamelled icons of the Resurrection of Christ and of the Apostles above the entrance into the Aedicule.

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A Visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

Our Ambrosian writer Nicola’ de Grandi recently visited the Holy Land; our thanks to him for sharing with us these photos of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The main entrance, in the area known as the ‘parvis’, or courtyard, with the Crusader-era façade and bell-tower, the latter now half of its original height.

Next to the main door is the Chapel of the Franks, which dates from the Crusader period, and is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. This place is also the 10th Station of the Via Dolorosa, at which Christ was stripped of His garments.

Under the right window above the doors stands the so-called “Immovable Ladder”, which has been in its place since at least 1728, when it appears in a drawing of this part of the church. The agreement that governs the use of the Holy Places by the various Christian confessions specifies that none of them may move any of the furniture without the consent of the others, and the ladder has often been referred to as a symbol of the divisions among Christians, but in point of fact, it is just a useful way for the Armenians, who own the ledge on which it rests, to get to their rooftop garden.

Ethiopian pilgrims at a tiny chapel between the site of Golgotha and the Sepulcher.

The Stone of Anointing, said to be the place where Joseph of Arimathea prepared the body of Christ for burial.

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The Tomb of Christ Reopened in Jerusalem

This morning, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, presided over the reopening of the shrine over the tomb of Christ within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, after many months of restoration work. (The shrine is known as the Aedicule, from the Latin “aediculum - a small building,” and is contained within a large rotunda which forms the back half of the church.) The Jerusalem Patriarchate has a fairly active Youtube channel, and just posted a video of the ceremony; after about 30 minutes of milling around, there is some nice music, and representatives of the various communities that use the church speak, including the superior (I assume) of the Holy Land Franciscans.

It is especially appropriate that this should take place this week, right after the Third Sunday of Lent, which the Byzantine Rite dedicates to the Veneration of the Holy and Life-Giving Cross. Here is a much more interesting video, excerpts of the Divine Liturgy celebrated by the Patriarch on Sunday at the Holy Sepulcher, with the participation of some of the other Orthodox churches. (The Gospel is sung in Greek, Old Church Slavonic, and Arabic.) Very splendid, although rather chaotic at times; there are a lot of bells ringing during the Gospel, and at times it seems that there are other liturgies going on in different parts of the building.

Opus Sectile work in the Holy Land - Does anyone have any information about these patterns?

I was contacted by an archeologist who is on site in Jerusalem, who wondered if I knew anything of the origins of two opus sectile floor patterns that appear in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. They were laid down during the 11th/12th century Crusader renovations of the church. The architect, Frankie Snyder, tells me that the first one shown below appears in 4 places:

1. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Chapel of the Apparition (just north of the Rotunda) -- late 11th century (with 20th century repairs to the starburst patterns)

2. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Chapel of the Franks -- 12th century

3. St. John the Baptist Church in Ein Kerem, under central dome -- 12th century

4. St. John the Baptish Church in Ein Kerem, grotto, birthplace of John the Baptist, home of Zachariah -- 12th century

5. Remnants of these tiles have been found on the Temple Mount, so there was evidently another chapel with this same floor built by the Crusaders on the Temple Mount during the 12th century.

Click for larger view

The second appears in 2 places:

1. Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Latin (Franciscan) Chapel of Calvary -- 12th C (20th C replica of original)

2. Inside the Dome of the Rock -- used by Crusaders as a church during the 12th C

Click for larger view

All are made of local black bituminous limestone and hard red limestone, and imported white marble. All tile sizes seem to be based on the inch.

If anyone has any information please let us know. You can email Frankie at: frankie.snyder@gmail.com

Grüssau Abbey

For my birthday this year, I went on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Grüssau (Krzeszów) in Silesia, Poland. Perhaps some of you remember that Grüssau was mentioned on the NLM before, when a Solemn Mass in the usus antiquior was celebrated there in the Abbey Church. This is what I wrote then about Grüssau:

Grüssau (about whose history full of vicissitudes you can read a very brief entry here; you can find a bit more in German on the pages of the Apostolic Visitor for the priests and faithful of the old German Archdiocese of Breslau here) and its pilgrimage to the sacred image of the Mother of God, venerated there since the 14th century, play in important role in the piety of Silesia and the neighbouring regions, including Berlin, which until the erection of the diocese in 1930, was part of the diocese of Breslau (prince-episcopal delegature of Brandenburg and Pomerania). The Grüssau Litany ("Mutter Gottes, wir rufen zu dir") and the pilgrimage hymn ("Sei gegrüßt, du Gnadenreiche") are still regularly sung here.

While the pictures I took do not nearly compare to those of the solemn Mass - it was a rather misty day of January with very little light - some of you may be interested to see more from that beautiful basilica (click images to enlarge).

The exterior of the current church built 1728–1735:


The interior as it presents itself upon entering:


Looking up, you see one of the most beautiful organ façades I know (like the other most important scuptural elements such as the choir stalls or the high altar, it was created by F. M. Brokoff and A. Dorazil):



The ceiling frescoes by Neunhertz present mysteries of the childhood of Our Lord in very unusual forms. This is the flight to Egypt, where nevertheless the Saviour is represented in his glory surrounded by angels:


Approaching the high altar, beneath the crossing, one comes upon the splendid choir stalls. They consist of four segments on top of each of which is represented one of the four groups which the Te Deum mentions as praising the Lord. Here is the Prophetarum laudabilis numerus (Moses with the serpent of bronze at the centre):


And here to the left the sancta Ecclesia (recognisable by the papal cross) and the Martyrum candidatus exercitus (recognisable by the martyr's palm):


And now we come to the high altar, where directly above the tabernacle sits the sacred image of Our Lady of Grüssau, first mentioned in a document of Pope John XII in 1318 and canonically crowned by Pope John Paul II in 1997.




For a better view of the sacred image, here is one of the pictures taken at the solemn Mass last year:


On the vault of the northern transept is a fresco of the trnaslation of the Holy House of Loreto:


This hints to the fact that adjacent to the transeot (in fact, from the outside it is not distinguishable as a seperate structure) is a replica of the Holy House itself:


To have such replicas at pilgrimage sites was rather widespread in the Baroque epoch. Here is another example from the Schönenberg near Ellwangen, southwestern Germany, where I went some years ago:


There, the Holy House is visible through a window in the predella of the high altar, directly above the tabernacle:


Returning to Grüssau, here is a detail on one of the side altars which caught my attention, because I think it is rather uncommon to find a statue of a holy pope vested in choir dress (including camauro) rather than cope or chasuble:


Behind Grüssau's high altar is the mausoleum where the two Silesian Piast dukes Bolko I and Bolko II are buried. Sadly, this is the best pictures the scarce lighting allowed me to take of this splendid room (however, here is a link to a picture I found online):


Behind the mausoleum is yet another chapel, that of St. Mary Magdalen, which contains a replica of the Holy Sepulchre, which serves as the last station of the Way of the Cross (you may remember an outstanding example of such replicas of the Holy Sepulchre at Görlitz, likewise in Silesia, about which I wrote some time ago here):


Leaving the abbey church itself, to the north of it with the façades forming a right angle, is the church of St. Joseph built 1692–1695 by Abbot Bernhard Rosa O.Cist. for the confraternity of St. Joseph exsisting there for the laity. It is completely painted by Michael Willmann and his son of the same name (his grandson is Georg Wilhelm Neunhertz, who painted the frescoes in the abbey church):



The ceiling shows the ancestry of St. Joseph:



There is a unique set of lateral altars dedicated to different mysteries (the Seven Joys and Seven Sorrows) of the life of St. Joseph, which have not only wall frescoes as altar paintings, but the stipes itself is also painted. Here is the altar of the flight of Egypt (an different version of which by Willmann's grandson we have seen above):


The presbytery with its quite unusual elongated form. The entire apse is covered by the painting of the Nativity of the Lord (with its typical fantastical combination of camels in a Silesian landscape). The altar was expressly designed particularly low in order not to block any part of the fresco:


One of the two side altars left and right of the sanctuary, with tha altar painting showing the unusual sujet of the grief of St. Joseph over the pregnancy of Mary:


To finish, a nice detail of a Seraph:

FSSP Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

In April, roughly a month before Pope Benedict, the seminarians of the European seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter at Wigratzbad, Germany, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They now have published some images. Here is a selection:

Mass in the Holy Sepulchre:


In the Catholic chapel of the Nailing of the Cross on Golgotha:


In the Austrian Hospice of Jerusalem:


On Mount Carmel:


In the Church of the Primacy of St. Peter in Tabgha where Jesus appeared the third time after his resurrection (John 21:1-24) and said to St. Peter "Feed my sheep!":


In Qumran:


They also were received by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem:

The Holy Sepulchre of Görlitz

Last Sunday, I made an excursion to the lovely town of Görlitz in the last bit of Silesia that has remained German. While it is a city altogether worth visiting, it has one unique monument which should be of special interest to NLM readers. This is the Holy Sepulchre. It was built around 1500, as a copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where its donor, the Görlitz merchant Georg Emmerich, had been on pilgrimage in 1465 (which is a fascinating story of its own). It is an almost exact copy (with slight modifications, which will be described below) of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre as it was at that time, and had been since 1099. As the Jerusalem original was first much changed at the restorations of 1555, and then exteriorly destroyed at the fire of 1808, the Görlitz chapel is thought to be the best extant example of what the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre had looked like since the times of the crusaders. The Holy Sepulchre is part of a larger layout which inlcudes a chapel of the Cross, a Mount of Olives garden and a Via Crucis from the main church of Görlitz. All this has to be seen in the context of late medieval spirituality, for which it was paramount to relive as closely and as visually as possible, the Passion of the Lord.

Upon entering the compound, one first comes to the chapel of the Cross (built in stages from about 1482 and dedicated in 1504; all pictures were taken by me, which explains their rather poor quality):

While this is not an exact copy of Calvary in Jerusalem, its interior arrangement mimicks its main features and is meant to represent it spiritually. It is divided into two chapels, one above the other. The lower one, which is entered through the front door on the ground level, is the chapel of Adam, symbolising the burial site of Adam which tradition says was on Calvary:



The artificial split in the wall behind the altar leads up the Golgatha chapel above and corresponds to the crack in the rock in Jerusalem, which was caused by the earthquake at the death of the Saviour, which is underlined by the - unfortunately fragmentary - inscription of the altar of the chapel of Adam: "And behold the veil of the temple was rent" (Mt 27, 51, which continues "in two from the top even to the bottom, and the earth quaked, and the rocks were rent."). Here in the chapel of Adam Masses for the departed were read (by an altarist); in this context it is interesting that the site where the Görlitz chapel was built was a burial ground for unbaptised children and executed convicts.

By the little stairway on the left of the chapel, one enters the Golgatha chapel above:



In the following picture we see two of the three holes in the ground which represent the holes for the posts of the crosses of the Lord and the two thieves. In front of the Lord's Cross, "INRI" has been carved in the ground. To the right of it, there is a drain in the ground, the "Blood drain", which is connected to the artificial crack in the chapel below. It symbolizes again the crack in the rock at Calvary where the Precious Blood run, and was used as a piscina at Masses celebrated at the altar to the left. Thus it gave a tangible expression to the graces of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass flowing to the souls of the departed. The altar, which like at Golgatha is in the corner, originally had a relic of the True Cross in its sepulchrum.



Later, after the Reformation, when people still came to visit, but the living tradition had been disrupted, they thought the altar was meant to be table upon which the soldiers had rolled the dice for the Lord's tunic, and so in place of the relic of the Cross which had been destroyed, they put three dice in the sepulchrum. As you can see in this picture, they began writing their names upon the altar:



Now for the Holy Sepulchre proper. As mentioned, it is a fairly exact copy of the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem of that time, in precisely the same distance from the chapel of the Cross.



In front of the chapel you see a big stone, which represent the stone which sealed the grave. One difference concerns the arches of the dome superstructure, which are pointed rather than round. Another is the entrance, which has late Gothic characteristics. The two rectangular slabs upon the roof with ointment vessels upon them are actually misinterpretations of an engraving depicting balusters:





Above the entrance you see again inscriptions. One of them is, as you can see, from 1522, although the Reformation was only introduced in 1525.



The interior is very narrow and therefore difficult to photograph. To the right is the stone on which the Angel announced the Resurrection with a baroque statue, and on the left is the door - only to be passed kneeling - to the burial chamber itself.



I am happy to say that the medieval tradition has been resumed by the Protestant parish, and the Via Crucis procession is held every year on Good Friday. This is how it goes (obviously from end to beginning, since we have started at Golgatha). It runs through this wonderful little street; in the background you can already see the main church of Görlitz, St. Peter's, where the Via Crucis begins:



Before the Reformation there were wayside shrines for the stations. The last to survive is this one; the name of the baker's alludes to this, and the baker takes part in the procession:



Now the way goes up this street:



past some beautiful portals:





and arrives at St. Peter's, where the procession begins. The entrance which we see here is therefore called the House of Pilate - like in Jerusalem, 1000 steps from Golgatha.



Some pictures of the interior of what is the largest Gothic hall church of Saxony:



The original Catholic interior, including 32 altars, was destroyed by a fire in the 17th Century, which entered through the "eye of heaven", an opening in the ceiling, thorugh which before the reformation a statue of the Lord was pulled up on Ascension, and a dove was let down on Pentecost. You can see it in this picture, surrounded by Seraphim:



The church also has a phantastic organ from 1703 by Eugenio Casparini (Eugen Caspar):



Lastly, and what might surprise many of you, it has three baroque confessionals. Confession was practiced by Lutherans before participating in the Lord's Supper well into the 19th Century. This is the confessional of the archdeacon (note the putti holding the keys):



And the confessional of the subdeacon:



To conclude, a nice view of the church and part of the beautiful town from the other side of the River Neisse: