On the Holy Places 1

I. ON THE SITE OF JERUSALEM. The site of the city of Jerusalem, laid out almost in a circle, rises within no small circuit of walls, by which it also takes in within itself Mount Zion, once neighbouring, which, set on the south, towers over the city as a citadel. And the greater part of the city lies below the mountain, situated on the plain of a lower hill. For after the Lord's passion it was destroyed by the emperor Titus, but it was restored by Aelius Hadrian Caesar—from whom even now it is called Aelia—and made much larger. Whence it comes that, although the Lord suffered and was buried outside the gates of the city, now the places of His passion and resurrection are seen within its walls. In its great circuit of walls eighty-four towers are seen, and six gates:

The first is the gate of David to the west of Mount Zion; the second the gate of the fuller's farm; the third the gate of Saint Stephen; the fourth the gate of Benjamin; the fifth a postern, that is, a little gate (from this one descends by steps into the valley of Jehoshaphat); the sixth the gate of Tekoa. Yet the more frequented of these are three issues of gates, one to the west, another to the north, the third to the east. On the south, however, the northern brow of Mount Zion overhangs the city, and that part of the walls, with towers set between, is found to have no gates, that is, from the above-mentioned gate of David as far as that face of the same Mount Zion which, with its sheer cliff, looks toward the eastern region.

Indeed the site of the city itself, beginning from the northern brow of Mount Zion, is so laid out on a gentle slope down to the lower places of the northern and eastern walls, that rain falling there in no way stands still, but, flowing down like rivers through the eastern gates, sweeping away with it all the filth of the streets, it swells the torrent Kidron in the valley of Jehoshaphat. II. ON THE HOLY PLACES WITHIN IT. To those, then, entering the city from the northern side, one must first turn aside, as the layout of the streets allows, to the Constantinian church, which is called the Martyrium. This the emperor Constantine, because there the Lord's cross was found by his mother Helena, built with magnificent and royal splendour.

Then to the west is seen the church of Golgotha, in which there also appears that rock which once bore the very cross with the Lord's body affixed to it; it now supports a very large silver cross, with a great bronze wheel hanging above bearing lamps. Beneath that very place of the Lord's cross there is a crypt hewn in the rock, in which upon an altar sacrifice is wont to be offered for honoured departed ones, their bodies meanwhile being laid in the open square.

To the west of this church too is the Anastasis, that is, of the Lord's resurrection, a round church encircled by three walls and supported on twelve columns, having between each of the walls a broad space of passage, which contains three altars in three places of the middle wall, that is, on the south, north, and west. This church has eight gates, that is, entrances, through the three walls directly opposite one another, of which four look toward the north-east and four toward the south-east.

In the middle of this is the Lord's tomb, round, hewn out of the rock, whose top a man standing inside can touch with his hand; it has its entrance from the east, to which that great stone was applied, as the marks of the iron tools to the present day show within. For on the outside, up to the very summit of the top, it is all covered with marble; the highest top, indeed, adorned with gold, bears a great golden cross. In the northern part, then, of this tomb, the Lord's sepulchre, hewn in the same rock, seven feet in length, rises three palms' measure higher than the pavement, having its entrance on the southern side, where day and night twelve lamps burn—four within the sepulchre and eight above on the right-hand edge.

The stone which had been placed at the door of the tomb is now split; its smaller part stands nonetheless as a square altar before the door of the same tomb, while the larger part stands forth as another four-cornered altar, beneath linen cloths, in the eastern part of the same church. The colour of this tomb and sepulchre appears to be a mixture of white and red. On the right-hand side this church is joined by the four-cornered church of the blessed Mother of God. In the open square which links the Martyrium and Golgotha is an apse, in which the Lord's chalice, kept in a little casket, is wont to be touched and kissed through an opening in the lid;

this silver chalice, having on either side two little handles, holds the measure of a Gallic sextarius, and in it is also that sponge which served at the Lord's drink. In that place, moreover, where Abraham built an altar to sacrifice his son, there is a wooden table, no small one, on which the alms for the poor are wont to be brought by the people. But each of the things I have mentioned I have also taken care to depict before your eyes, that you might recognize them more clearly. A drawing of the churches. The soldier's lance is kept inserted in a wooden cross in the portico of the Martyrium, whose shaft, cut into two parts, is venerated by the whole city. All these things, indeed, which we have recounted, are seen to be holy places set outside Mount Zion, where the failing swell of the ground extended itself toward the north.

But in the lower part of the city, where the temple, set near the wall on the east, had been joined to the city itself by an intervening bridge with a passable crossing, there now the Saracens, constructing with cheap workmanship a square house with upraised boards and great beams over certain remnants of the ruins, frequent it for prayer, and it is seen to hold three thousand men. A few cisterns are shown there for the use of water. Near the temple appears the pool of Bethesda, distinguished by a twin lake, of which one is for the most part filled by the winter rains, the other is discoloured with red waters.

From that face of Mount Zion which, with its sheer cliff, looks toward the eastern region, within the walls and at the roots of the hill the spring of Siloam bursts forth, which, with an alternating flow of its waters, runs toward the south—that is, not with continuous waters, but at fixed hours and days it bubbles up, and is wont to come through the hollows of the earth and the caverns of the hardest rock with a great noise. On the topmost plain of Mount Zion the frequent cells of monks surround a great church there, founded, as they relate, by the apostles, because there they received the Holy Spirit and there holy Mary departed this life; in which church also is shown the venerable place of the Lord's supper. There stands too a marble column in the middle of the church, to which the Lord, while bound, was scourged.

Of this church, then, such is said to be its plan. A drawing of the church. Here is shown the rock upon which the holy protomartyr Stephen was stoned outside the city. But in the middle of Jerusalem, where, with the Lord's cross placed above him, a dead man came back to life, there stands a lofty column which casts no shadow at the summer solstice. Whence they think that there is the middle of the earth, and that it was said with historical reference: 'But God, our King, before the ages wrought salvation in the midst of the earth.' Led by this opinion, Victorinus, bishop of Poetovio, writing of Golgotha, thus begins: 'There is a place which we believe to be the centre of the whole world; the Jews call it Golgotha by their ancestral name.' III. ON ACELDAMA AND THE PLACE WHERE JUDAS WAS HANGED.

To those going out by the gate of David, a bridge meets them, directed southward through the valley, at whose middle, on the west, Judas is said to have hanged himself. For there too stands a great and very ancient fig-tree, concerning which Juvencus says: 'The fig-tree snatched away from on high his shapeless death.' Furthermore, at Aceldama, on the southern region of Mount Zion, to this very day the earth covers some of the pilgrim and lowly dead, while others lie rotting unburied. IV. ON THE NAPKIN OF THE LORD'S HEAD AND ON ANOTHER LARGER CLOTH MADE BY HOLY MARY. The napkin of the Lord's head, soon after His resurrection, a certain most Christian Jew stole and kept until his death, with riches flowing to him. When about to die, he asks his sons:

which of them would receive the Lord's napkin, which the rest of his father's riches. The elder chose the treasure of goods, the younger chose the napkin; and soon the former dwindle away to poverty, while for the brother, together with faith, both wealth and substance increase. So down to the fifth generation the faithful held it. Thence, coming to impious men, it increased their riches so greatly—and this for a long time—until at last, after long lawsuits in which the Christians affirmed themselves heirs of Christ, but the unbelievers heirs of their own fathers, Mavias, king of the Saracens, who lived in our own age, is asked to be judge. He, having kindled a great pyre, beseeches Christ the judge, who for the salvation of His own would deign to hold this above the flame.

So, cast into the fire, the napkin, escaping with a swift rush, flies up and, fluttering for a very long time as though in play in the highest air, at last, while all on both sides looked on, gently settled itself into the bosom of one of the Christians. This in the morning the whole people soon greeted and kissed with the highest veneration: it had a length of eight feet. Another cloth too, somewhat larger, is venerated in the church, which is said to have been woven by holy Mary, containing the images of the twelve apostles and of the Lord Himself, red on one side and green on the other. V. ON THE PLACES AROUND JERUSALEM AND THE CHURCH IN THE VALLEY OF JEHOSHAPHAT. Around Jerusalem rough and mountainous places are seen.

Hence too, toward the north as far as Arimathaea, stony and rough ground is shown at intervals, and thorny valleys also extending as far as the region of Thamnica. Toward Caesarea of Palestine, however, from Aelia, although some narrow and short rough places are found, yet chiefly there are level plains of fields with olive-groves set between. They are seventy-five miles apart. The length of the land of promise extends from Dan to Beersheba over a space of a hundred and sixty-five miles, from Joppa to Bethlehem forty-six miles. Beside the wall of the temple, or of Jerusalem, on the east, Gehennon meets one, which is the valley of Jehoshaphat, stretching from the northern region toward the south, through which the torrent Kidron runs down, whenever it receives the water of the rains.

This valley and a small level plain of the field, well-watered and wooded and full of delights, once had within it a place sacred to Baalim. In it is the tower of King Jehoshaphat, containing his sepulchre, to whose right, hewn and separated from the rock of the Mount of Olives, a house has two hollowed-out sepulchres, that is, of the aged Simeon and of Joseph, the spouse of holy Mary. In the same valley there is the round church of holy Mary, divided by a stone floor, of which in the upper parts are four altars, in the lower one altar on the eastern side, and to its right an empty tomb, in which holy Mary is said to have rested for some time, but by whom or when she was taken away is not known.

Those entering this church see, set into the wall on the right, the rock on which the Lord prayed on the night when He was betrayed, with the impressions of His knees as though in soft wax. VI. ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES AND THE HOLY PLACES UPON IT. The Mount of Olives, a thousand paces distant from Jerusalem, is equal in height to Mount Zion, but surpasses it in breadth and length; except for vines and olives it is barely productive of trees, yet fruitful of wheat too and barley; for the quality of its soil is not brushwood-bearing, but grassy and flowering. On its highest summit, where the Lord ascended to the heavens, a great round church has, around its circuit, three vaulted porticoes roofed over above; for the inner house could not be vaulted and roofed over, on account of the passage of the Lord's body;

having an altar to the east, protected by a narrow roof, in the middle of which the last footprints of the Lord, with the sky open above, where He ascended, are seen. Though these are daily taken away by believers as earth, they nonetheless remain, and to this day preserve that same appearance of themselves, as though marked by impressed footprints. Around these lies a bronze wheel, high as far as one's neck, having its entrance from the west, with a great lamp hanging above on pulleys and shining the whole day and night. In the western part of the same church, eight windows and as many lamps directly opposite, hanging on cords, shine through the glass as far as Jerusalem, whose light is said to strike the hearts of beholders with fear, together with a certain eagerness and compunction.

On the day of the Lord's ascension, every single year, when the Mass has been performed, a storm of mighty blast is wont to come from above and to prostrate to the ground all who are present in the church. So many lamps burn there on that night that not only the mountain and the places lying beneath are seen to be lit up, but even to burn. And of this basilica too it has pleased me to depict the figure before the eyes. A drawing of the basilica. The tomb of Lazarus a church built on that spot displays, and a great monastery in a certain field of Bethany surrounded by a great wood of olives. Now Bethany is fifteen stadia from Jerusalem. A third church too of the same mountain, toward the southern part of Bethany, is the place where the Lord, before His passion, speaks to His disciples about the day of judgment. VII.

ON THE SITE OF BETHLEHEM AND THE HOLY PLACES THEREIN. Bethlehem, set apart six miles to the south from Jerusalem, is situated on a narrow ridge, surrounded on every side by valleys, a thousand paces long from west to east, fenced along the edges of its flat summit by a low wall without towers; in its eastern corner is, as it were, a certain natural half-cave, whose outer part is said to have been the place of the Lord's nativity, while the inner is called the Lord's manger. This whole cave, lined within with precious marble, bears above the very place where the Lord is reported more particularly to have been born, a great church of holy Mary. A rock hollowed out near the wall, receiving the first washing of the Lord's body let down from the wall, preserves it to this day:

And if by some chance or by labor it should ever be drained dry, this same water nonetheless immediately, even while you watch, wells up full again as it had been before. To the north of Bethlehem, in a neighboring valley, the tomb of David is covered in the middle of a church by a low stone with a lamp set above it; and to the south, in an adjoining valley, in a church, stands the tomb of Saint Jerome. Furthermore, to the east, at what was then Ader, that is, 'of the flock,' set apart a thousand paces from the city, there is a church containing the monuments of the three shepherds who witnessed the Lord's nativity. These things I have related following the account of Arculf, bishop of Gaul; but Ezra plainly writes that David was buried in Jerusalem.

The royal road which leads from Aelia to Hebron has Bethlehem to its east, and to its west the tomb of Rachel, marked to this very day with an inscription bearing her name. VIII. ON THE SITE OF HEBRON AND THE MONUMENTS OF THE PATRIARCHS. Hebron, situated in the breadth of a plain and separated from Aelia (that is, Jerusalem) by twenty-two miles, has, one stadium to the east, a double cave in a valley, where the tombs of the patriarchs are surrounded by a square wall, their heads turned to the north; and each of these is covered by individual stones hewn in the likeness of a basilica—those of the three patriarchs of white stone, but Adam's of darker and humbler workmanship, who rests not far from them, toward the northern and outermost part of that wall. The memorials of the three women are also seen, of humbler and smaller make.

The hill of Mamre is a thousand paces north of these monuments, very grassy and flowering, having on its summit a level plain, in whose northern part stands the oak of Abraham, a trunk the height of two men, surrounded by a church. To those going out from Hebron toward the north, on the left side of the road, there meets a small pine-covered mountain, three miles from Hebron, whence pinewood is carried to Jerusalem on camels; for in all Judea wagons or carts are rarely made. VIIII. ON JERICHO AND ITS PLACES. Jericho lies eighteen miles eastward from Aelia; there, of the city thrice razed to the ground, only the house of Rahab remains, as a sign of her faith; for its walls still endure without a roof;

The site of the city now bears grainfields and vineyards. Between it and the Jordan, separated from it by five or six miles, lie great palm-groves with little fields interspersed, inhabited by Canaanites. The twelve stones which Joshua had ordered to be taken from the Jordan lie on either side beside the walls in a church built at Gilgal, each now scarcely liftable by two men; one of them, by I know not what mishap, was broken, but has been rejoined by the remedy of iron. Near Jericho is a spring abundant for drinking and rich for irrigation, which once was barren for producing and scarcely wholesome for drinking, but was healed through the prophet Elisha, when he cast a vessel of salt into it.

Finally a plain lies all around it, extending seventy stadia in length and twenty in breadth, in which there is a marvelous abundance of gardens, various kinds of palms, and the most excellent broods of bees. There the balsam-tree grows, which we name with this qualification because the farmers cut its little branches, only as deep as the bark, with sharp stones—the branches in which the balsams are produced—so that through those openings the moisture, dripping little by little, collects in beautifully glistening drops; for the opening is called 'ope' by its Greek name. There too they say the cypress and the myrobalanus grow. The water, like that of other springs, is here yet more excellent: cold in summer, warm in winter; the air is milder, so that even in the depth of winter they wear linen garments.

The city itself was founded on a plain, over which towers a mountain rather broad and bare of growth; for its soil is sickly and barren, and therefore deserted by inhabitants. From here, from the land of the city of Scythopolis as far as the region of Sodom and the bounds of the Asphalt Sea, this place is reckoned widespread. Opposite this is a mountain extending above the Jordan from the city of Julias as far as Zoara, bordering on Arabia Petraea, where there is also a mountain called Iron. Between these two mountains lies a plain which the ancients in Latin called 'Magnum' (the Great), but in Hebrew 'Aulon,' whose length is one thousand two hundred and thirty stadia, its breadth one hundred and twenty, beginning at the village of Gennabaris and ending at the Asphalt Lake.

The Jordan cuts through its middle with banks made green by the river's overflow, since indeed above its banks the fruit of the trees is more abundant, but elsewhere far more meager; for all things are arid except the river's edges. X. ON THE JORDAN AND THE SEA OF GALILEE. The source of the Jordan itself is commonly thought to be in the province of Phoenicia, at the foot of Mount Lebanon, where Panium—that is, Caesarea Philippi—is situated; whence we are told that this same Panium, that is, the cavern through which the Jordan rises, was built and adorned with admirable beauty by King Agrippa.

There is in the land of Trachonitis a spring exhibiting the shape of a wheel, whence it received the name Phiala (the Bowl), set apart fifteen miles from Caesarea, so continually full of an abundance of waters that they neither overflow nor are ever diminished. Into this Philip the tetrarch of that region cast chaff, which welled up again in the Panium stream. Hence it is clear that the source of the Jordan is in the Phiala, but that after subterranean passages it began its flow at Panium, which, soon entering a lake, cuts through its marshes. Thence too directing its course, it advances fifteen miles without any intermingling as far as the city named Julias.

Afterward it crosses Lake Gennesaret through the middle of its current; whence, having wandered far around, upon entering the Asphalt Sea—that is, the Dead Sea—it loses its praiseworthy waters; for the Dead Sea is of a whitish color like milk, and on this account the Jordan is distinguished within it by a long track. Now Gennesaret, that is, the Sea of Galilee, is surrounded by great forests, having one hundred and forty stadia in length and forty in breadth. Its water is sweet and fit for drinking, since indeed it admits nothing thick or turbid of marshy slime, because it is surrounded on every side by a sandy shore; and it is encompassed by pleasant towns: to the east by Julias and Hippos, to the west by Tiberias, healthful with its warm waters; the kinds of fish too are more excellent in taste and appearance than in any other lake. XI.

ON THE NATURE OF THE DEAD SEA. The Dead Sea extends in length five hundred and eighty stadia as far as Zoara of Arabia, and in breadth one hundred and fifty as far as the neighborhood of Sodom; for it is most certain that it once overflowed from wells of salt after the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities. It appears moreover, to those gazing from afar from the watchtower of the Mount of Olives, that, when stirred by the clashing of the waves, it casts up most briny salt, and this, dried by the sun, is gathered, surely to be of profit to many nations. In another way, however, salt is said to be made on a certain Sicilian mountain, where stones torn up from the earth yield a true, most briny salt, very fit for all uses, which is called the salt of the earth.

It is called the Dead Sea because it receives no kinds of living things—neither fish nor birds accustomed to the waters—while bulls and camels float upon it. Indeed, if the Jordan, swollen by rains, sweeps fish flowing into it, they immediately die and float upon the dense waters. They report that a lighted lamp floats upon it without any turning, but sinks when its light is put out; and that anything submerged by whatever art, if it is alive, can scarcely cling in the depths, and that all living things submerged, even though violently dashed in, immediately spring back up. Indeed, they say that Vespasian ordered men ignorant of swimming, with their hands bound, to be cast into the deep, and that they all instantly floated up. The water itself is barren and bitter, darker than other waters, and bearing as it were the likeness of something scorched.

It is certain that lumps of bitumen drift over the waters in a dark liquid, which those approaching in skiffs collect. The bitumen, it is said, clings to itself and can in no way be cut by iron, yielding only to women's menstrual blood or to urine, but it is useful for the caulking of ships or for healing human bodies. The region still preserves the appearance of its punishment; for there grow most beautiful apples, which beget in the onlookers a desire to eat them; but if you pluck them, they crumble and dissolve into ash and raise up smoke, as though they were still burning. Truly, in the days of summer an immoderate vapor seethes throughout the expanses of the plain, whence also, by the gathering fault of excessive dryness and the parched ground, the air, grown more corrupt, brings pitiable sicknesses upon the inhabitants. XII.

ON THE PLACE WHERE THE LORD WAS BAPTIZED. In the place, then, where the Lord was baptized, a wooden cross stands, as high as a man's neck, which is sometimes hidden when the water rises over it. From this place the farther bank, that is, the eastern, lies a sling's throw away, but the nearer bank, on the brow of a little hill, bears a great monastery, famous for the church of blessed John the Baptist; from which they are wont to descend by a bridge supported on arches to that cross and to pray. At the far edge of the river there is a square church set upon four stone arches, roofed above with baked clay, where the Lord's garments are said to have been kept when He was baptized. Men do not enter this church, but the waves are wont to encircle and penetrate it.

From that place, where the Jordan issues from the jaws of the Sea of Galilee, as far as where it enters the Dead Sea, is a journey of eight days. XIII. ON THE LOCUSTS AND THE WILD HONEY AND THE SPRING OF JOHN. It is apparent to this day what the smallest kind of locust was on which John the Baptist fed; these, with little bodies slender and short like a finger of the hand, are easily caught in the grass and, cooked in oil, provide a poor man's meal. In the same desert there are trees having leaves broad and round, of a milky color and a honeyed taste, which by nature are fragile and are rubbed in the hands and eaten. This is said to be the wild honey. In the same place is shown the spring of Saint John the Baptist, with clear water, protected by a stone roof, plastered with lime. XIIII.

ON JACOB'S WELL NEAR SHECHEM. Near the city of Shechem, which is now called Neapolis, there is a fourfold church, that is, made in the shape of a cross, in whose middle is Jacob's well, forty cubits deep, extending from its very side up to the top by some finger-breadths, from which the Lord deigned to ask water of the Samaritan woman. XV. ON TIBERIAS AND CAPERNAUM AND NAZARETH AND THE HOLY PLACES THERE. That place where the Lord blessed the loaves and fishes is on this side of the Sea of Galilee, to the north of the city of Tiberias—a grassy and level field, never since that time plowed, receiving no buildings, but showing only the spring from which they then drank.

Those, then, who go from Aelia to Capernaum have their route through Tiberias, then along the Sea of Galilee and the place of the blessing of the loaves, not far from which is Capernaum, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, which, having no wall, in a narrow site between the mountain and the lake, stretches along the seacoast toward the east in a long line, having the mountain to the north and the lake to the south. Nazareth has no walls, but great buildings and two large churches: one in the middle of the city, founded upon two arches, where once there was the house in which the Lord was nourished as an infant.

This church, supported, as has been said, by two mounds and arches placed between them, has below, between those same mounds, a most clear spring, from which all the citizens draw up water in little vessels by pulleys into the church. But the other church is where there was the house in which the angel came to Mary. XVI. ON MOUNT TABOR. Mount Tabor, in the middle of the plain of Galilee, three miles distant toward the north from the Sea of Chinnereth, is on every side round, very grassy and flowering, of a height of thirty stadia. Its very summit is level and most delightful, spreading out over a space of twenty-three stadia, where a great monastery is surrounded by a great forest as well, having three churches, according to what Peter said:

'Let us make here three tabernacles.' The place is encircled by a wall, bearing great buildings. XVII. ON THE SITE OF DAMASCUS. Damascus, situated on a broad plain, is fortified by a wide circuit of walls and by frequent towers, and four great rivers flow through it. There, while the Christians frequent the church of blessed John the Baptist, the king of the Saracens, with his own people, established and consecrated another. There are very many olive-groves outside the walls all around. From Tabor to Damascus is a journey of seven days. XVIII. ON THE SITE OF ALEXANDRIA AND THE NILE.

Alexandria, long from west to the rising of the sun, is girdled on the south by the mouths of the Nile, on the north by Lake Mareotis, whose harbor, more difficult than the rest, is, as it were, in the form of a human body: more capacious at the head itself and in its anchorage, but narrower at the jaws, where it receives the passage of the sea and of ships, to which certain aids for breathing are supplied for the harbor. When one has passed the narrows and the mouth of the harbor, then, like the remaining form of the body, the expanse of the sea stretches far and wide.

On the right of this harbor there is a small island, on which is the Pharos, that is, a very great tower, burning at night with the torches of its flames, lest sailors, deceived by the darkness, dash upon the rocks and be unable to grasp the threshold of the entrance—which entrance is itself always restless with the waves clashing from this side and that. But the harbor is always calm, having a breadth of thirty stadia. To those entering the city from the Egyptian side, on the right there meets a church in which the blessed evangelist Mark rests, whose body is buried in the eastern part of that same church before the altar, with a memorial of squared marble set above it.

Around the Nile the Egyptians are wont to make frequent embankments against the inrush of the waters, which, if by chance they are broken through the negligence of the keepers, do not irrigate but overwhelm the lands lying below; and those who dwell in the lowlands of Egypt make houses for themselves above the streams of the waters, placing them upon crosswise beams. XVIIII. ON CONSTANTINOPLE AND THE BASILICA IN IT WHICH CONTAINS THE CROSS OF THE LORD. Constantinople is girdled on every side except the north by the sea, which extends from the Great Sea for sixty miles up to the city wall, and from the city wall up to the mouths of the Danube for forty miles; with the circuit of its walls angular along the line of the sea, it encompasses twelve miles.

Constantine at first arranged to build this city in Cilicia by the sea which divides Asia and Europe; but one night all the iron tools, when men were sent to seek them, were found in the part of Europe where the city itself now stands. For there the will of God was understood that it should be made. In this city there is a basilica of wondrous workmanship, which is called Holy Sophia, of round design, both constructed from the foundations and vaulted, encircled by three walls and supported by great columns, and raised aloft by arches.

Its inner chamber, in its northern part, has a great and very beautiful cabinet, in which a wooden chest, covered also with a wooden lid, contains three particles of the Lord's cross, namely a long beam cut into two parts, and the crossbeam of the same holy cross. These are brought forth for the people to venerate only on three days in the year, that is, on the Lord's Supper (Maundy Thursday), on Good Friday, and on Holy Saturday. On the first of these, that chest is uncovered together with the holy cross and set upon a golden altar two cubits in height and one in breadth. And the emperor, approaching first, then all the orders of the laity in turn, venerate and kiss the holy cross.

On the following day the empress and all the matrons and virgins do the same; on the third day likewise the bishops and all the orders of the clergy do the same; and thus the chest, closed again, is carried back to the aforesaid cabinet. But as long as it remains open upon the altar, a wondrous fragrance fills the whole church. For from the knots of the holy wood a fragrant liquor, like oil, flows forth, of which, if even a small particle should touch one, it heals every sickness. These things concerning the holy places I have set forth as I was able, following the trustworthiness of the histories, and chiefly the dictation of Arculf, bishop of Gaul, which Adamnan, a priest most learned in the Scriptures, describing in a wordy discourse, comprised in three little books.

Indeed, the aforementioned prelate, out of desire for the holy places, leaving his homeland, went to the land of promise; he tarried some months at Jerusalem, and, using as both guide and interpreter a veteran monk named Peter, he surveyed with eager attention all things round about that he had desired. He also traversed Alexandria, Damascus, Constantinople, and Sicily. But when he wished to revisit his homeland, the ship in which he was carried, after many windings, was borne by a contrary wind to our island, that is, of the Britons; and at last he himself, after not a few perils, coming to the aforesaid venerable man Adamnan, by recounting both his journey and the things he had seen, taught him to be the writer of a most beautiful history.

From which work, plucking out certain things and comparing them with the writings of the ancients, we transmit them to you to be read, beseeching you in all things that you take care to temper for yourself the labor of the present age, not by the leisure of wanton torpor, but by the zeal of reading and prayer.