Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY: PALESTINE 583
and the Apostles by a gap of well-nigh three hundred years,
a striking fact, and one that in the interest of Palestine research
is in many ways deeply to be deplored.
How supremely indifferent that early period was towards
such historical spots, and how completely their exact location
was forgotten, is best illustrated by the history of the
chief sacred place of Christianity, the Sepulchre of Christ.
In his letter to Makarius, the emperor Constantine regards
the discovery of the cross and sepulchre of Christ as a
miracle; and according to still later accounts the empress
Helena needed a divine inspiration in order to find the
holy sepulchre. Not even the situation of this spot could
therefore be given with certainty at that time ; much less,
then, were men still able to point out other less important
places. Jerusalem had become a new city ; the old one
lay deep under ruins. And yet, in spite of this, tradition
thrived, and became the most prolific source of legends-
From century to century the number of sacred places increased,
while the more important
ones were gradually surrounded
by a web of tradition so dense as almost to defy
disentanglement. We cannot blame the monks of the
Middle Ages who, often in good faith, were constantlv
finding new sacred places. The pilgrims compelled them
so to do, and did not cease compelling them until they were
shown the precise spot for everything imaginable. This
sort of tradition was in a certain sense terminated in the
sixteenth centurv, when the scholar Francesco Ouaresmio
collected and reduced the existing material to writing in his
great work Elucidatio Terra Sancta. That tradition has,
however, not become entirely torpid, but that it still possesses
enough vitality to send forth new shoots, has been
strikingly demonstrated in the last few years. Scarcely had
the German Emperor presented to the German Catholics a
piece of land
on Zion, where tradition locates the so-called
Dormitw, i. e. the place of Mary's demise, when it was
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