Читать книгу Tent Work in Palestine: A Record of Discovery and Adventure - C. R. Conder - Страница 10

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PAST Gilboa, Jezreel, Shunem, Nain, and Endor, we sped to the foot of the great cliff 1000 feet high, which rises straight from the plain by the narrow pass to the Nazareth hills. From the middle ages down, this cliff has been shown as that from which the Nazarenes would have precipitated the Saviour. Old Maundeville quaintly terms it “the Leap of our Lord,” and other pilgrims were shown a hollow where the rock had become soft as wax, and formed a hiding-place where Christ was said to have been concealed.

Up the pass a long train of camels and of black donkeys toiled, laden with the rich crop of sesame just reaped. Ascending the steep and slippery track, we reached the soft white chalk which forms the upper portion of the range, and which produces all round Nazareth a neighbourhood of bare, white, rolling hills, quite distinct from the bold mountains of Upper Galilee and from the oak-clad downs near Carmel. Here in the valley which we were following is a beautiful garden or orchard; oranges, figs, nuts, lemons, and pomegranates grow beside a spring, the rich green contrasting with the glaring white of the chalk and the brown of the burnt grass between the ledges. Still riding north-east a busy scene greeted our eyes—a great threshing-floor, on which horses and cows were being driven round, some dragging the rude threshing-sledge, some trampling only with their feet, while great cones of corn were being winnowed with a fork. Here we turned a corner, and suddenly all Nazareth was before us, gleaming white and new-looking on the side of the hill.

The position of the village is secluded, and it is only visible from its immediate neighbourhood. The range of hills runs north-east, and the south slopes are steep; a valley comes down westward on this side, and then gradually burrows south to its mouth, at the pass by which we had come up. At the point where it turns an open dell or hollow plateau is formed, where are the gardens of Nazareth—a sort of little mountain-plain, shelving down southwards. On it stand the Greek Church of the Annunciation and the Virgin’s Fountain; the town itself climbs up from it westwards, and hangs on the side of the steep hill, on the summit of which is the Moslem Chapel of Neby S’ain. The total extent of the village or town is only about a quarter of a mile either way, but the houses stand close together, so that in this small area a population of nearly 6000 souls is crowded, of whom one third only are Moslem.

Very characteristic of the history of the Holy Land it is to find within so small an area the sacred places of no less than six sects. The most ancient building is the Latin Church over the Holy House, in the strong monastery with its shady garden and palms. North of it the graceful minaret and the dark cypresses of the mosque rise close to the Governor’s house. On the west, yet higher up the hill, white and new stands the Gothic tower of the English Church; still farther west is the Maronite chapel. In the main street by the market the Greek Catholics hold possession of the chapel where they believe the synagogue of Nazareth once to have stood; high above the town on the north a large orphanage, built by German labour with English money, has been erected by the Society for Female Education in the East. Farther east is the palace of the Greek bishop, and above the fountain is the church (also on the foundations of a building mentioned as early as 709 A.D.), where the Greeks hold the Salutation of Mary to have occurred beside the springhead beneath the hill.

Thus we see at a glance how the little town is the centre of Christian love and veneration, and the goal to which men’s thoughts have been attracted from the west, from the north, from the east, and from the south, from civilised Europe, from rough but believing Russia, from the hills of Lebanon, even from the plains of Mecca.

Twenty years ago Nazareth was a poor village, now it is a flourishing town. The freedom given to religious worship by the Turks has been indeed remarkable compared with the tyranny of Arab or Egyptian governors; thus two Latin Churches, a Latin Hospice, the English Church, and many fine houses have been built within the last dozen years or so, and hence the very white and new appearance of the town of which they are the most prominent buildings.

Past the fortress convent, where a monk was alighting from a richly-caparisoned horse, up the narrow lanes, between the little hovels of the older part of the town, up rubbish-heaps, and over slippery cobbles, we rode to the parsonage, and were hospitably entertained by Mr. Zeller, the clergyman. The next day we returned early, and thus a more intimate acquaintance with the town was reserved until later, when I spent nearly three weeks in the Latin Hospice, and again visited the city twice for a few days in 1875.

Nazareth is probably not a very ancient place, for it is not noticed in the Old Testament, though situated very near the boundary of Zebulun; nor was it probably ever a very large town, for it has but one spring. Its name is most likely derived from the colour of the hills around, and may mean “white,” though the early fathers loved to render it “flower,” and others make it to mean “watchtower.” Ancient Nazareth probably stood rather higher on the slope than modern Nazareth; the place, in fact, has slid down the hill, as is indicated by the position of the old cisterns and tombs. Thus the “brow of the hill” is more probably one of the cliffs now above the town, or perhaps another hidden beneath the houses, and there is no necessity to seek it at so great a distance as that of the Saltus Domini precipice.

It is curious that Jerome scarcely seems ever to have been in Nazareth, though travelling far and wide over Palestine. In 700 A.D. Bishop Arculph found it an open village, with two churches—one over the grotto, one over the spring, both very large; but soon after troubles began, and it was not till the time of the Crusades that Nazareth became a bishopric. In 1102 Sæwulf found it entirely wasted, only a few columns remaining at the fountain, and though enjoying a temporary prosperity under the Christian monarchy, it was again devastated by the Moslems, and in 1322 Sir John Maundeville writes of it that it was “formerly a great and fair city, but now there is but a small village;” whilst of its inhabitants he says, “they are very wicked and cruel Saracens, and more spiteful than in any other place, and have destroyed all the churches.” It is not only Sir John, unfortunately, who can attest this fact: the zealous missionaries who have seen Moslem and Christian, Latin and Greek, shedding one another’s blood, Captain Burton who there nearly lost his life, and my own party who fared but ill in the neighbourhood, will alike bear witness to the turbulence of the Nazarenes—an evil character for which they seem to have been notorious ever since the days when they sought to stone our Lord, and gave cause yet earlier for the Jewish proverb, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?”

The people of the town are remarkable for the gay colouring of their dresses, and the Christian women for their beauty. Many a charming bit of colour, many a shapely figure set off by picturesque costume, many a dark eye and ruddy cheek, have I seen in the streets or by the spring. This beauty is peculiar to the Christians of Bethlehem and Nazareth, and various reasons are given which agree, however, in supposing a mixture of European blood. As to the dress, the causes are manifest; the costume is that commonly worn by Christians, and is only striking by contrast because the villagers of the neighbouring places are Moslem; the townsmen are also richer, and can afford better dress, and this partly accounts for the superior beauty of the better-fed women when contrasted with the worn faces of the overworked and half-starved peasant women of the surrounding poor hamlets.

A more special description of the people, their dress, customs, and religion, must, however, be reserved until they can be treated with the rest of the natives in a future chapter: suffice it here to notice that they present a far more pleasing and picturesque appearance than most of the inhabitants of Syrian towns. Leaving the question for the present, we may next turn attention to the two sacred places of Nazareth—the Grotto of the Annunciation and the Virgin’s Spring.

The site of the Holy House was shown, as noticed above, as early as 700 A.D. in a rock-cut grotto. The pillars of the Crusading church built round it were still visible in 1620 A.D., but the new building erected in 1730 A.D. with the rest of the present monastery, has no connection with the plan of the former, the foundations of which still exist beneath. The modern church is a whitewashed, square structure, seventy feet long and fifty broad, directed north and south. The high altar above the sacred grotto is reached by a flight of stairs, from each side of the seventeen marble steps which lead down to the vestibule, called the Chapel of the Angel, where left and right are the altars of St. Joachim and the angel Gabriel. Behind the high altar is the choir, dark and roomy like that at Bethlehem. Descending into the grotto and passing through the vestibule, the old Franciscan led me into the little rock-cut chamber, with marble floor, and an altar on the north wall. This is the outer half of the grotto, and a wall of separation divides it from the inner half. The outer is called Grotto of the Annunciation, the inner that of St. Joseph. From the roof of the former, which measures twenty feet across and seven feet in depth, hangs pendant near the west side the shaft of a red granite pillar, apparently a column of the old chapel in the grotto, and believed to be miraculously suspended over the very place where the angel stood when bringing the message to Mary. Lighting the little taper on the altar, and kneeling for a moment in prayer, the monk drew the veil from before an Italian picture of the Annunciation, soft and mellow in colour, with a sweet Virgin face, and tawdry silver crown and nimbus sewn on above her head and that of Gabriel.