The Jerusalem Report
March 21, 2005
WHEN THE VAULTS OF THE ARMENIANS OPEN
by J.L. Barnett
In the summer of 1989, while walking with a heavy backpack through
the Old City, I met a man named Alfonso, who offered me help with my
bag, which was stuffed with old rugs and silks and fine burnished
copperware that I had bought in Damascus. Alfonso was a Franciscan
monk from Rome who had recently arrived in Jerusalem, at the end of a
five-year pilgrimage by foot from India. A man of short stature but
incredibly powerful build, Alfonso was the extrovert’s extrovert.
Over the strongest of Turkish coffees, Alfonso told me how he had
left his native Roman Church, less over doctrinal issues than social
and ethical considerations, and how in the end he had elected to
convert to Armenian Orthodoxy. He said he had felt at home in
Armenia, where he had lived for many months before coming to the Holy
Land. His quick mastery of the Armenians’ script and spoken language
was impressive, his knowledge of their history encyclopedic.
In the fifth and sixth centuries, rivalries between the Eastern and
Western churches, based in Constantinople and Rome respectively, led
to a dramatic and clear schism between the two. The Eastern churches
(Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian and Malabar Jacobite and Armenian)
developed a monophysite view of Jesus – the belief that he was of one
composite form, both human and divine simultaneously, in much the
same way that body and soul are combined in man. This was formally
and eternally denounced as a heresy at the Council of Chalcedon, in
451, causing a fracture between the two Orthodoxies that exists to
this day.
The final break between the Eastern and Western churches came during
the Crusader period: In 1204, the marauding knights from the West
looted, sacked and destroyed Christian Constantinople, the center of
the Eastern faiths, an event that left a still-gaping wound in the
Christian world.
The Armenian Quarter is like a miniature fortress. It is surrounded
by a thousand-year-old wall that itself encases buildings that are
more like buttressed castles than residences, churches, convents,
libraries, shops and schools. Its architectural and spiritual focal
point is the Cathedral of St. James, a building of veritable
treasures and secrets. Named after two saints of the same name, both
said to have been martyred and buried on this site, it is the second
holiest site in the Armenian world, after the city of Etchmiadzin, in
Armenia itself. The latter is the place where Jesus was revealed to
Saint Gregory, the force behind making Armenia the first Christian
country, at the turn of the 4th century CE. Gregory became the first
spiritual leader of the church, the catholicos, and today, the city
continues to be his official seat.
James, the brother of Jesus (who has been much in the news in the
past two years, after discovery of an ossuary that was said to have
been inscribed with his name, and which was subsequently declared to
be a fake), is said to be buried under the high altar of St. James’s
Cathedral, and James the Apostle, brother of John the Evangelist, was
beheaded on this spot on the orders of Herod Agrippa in 44 CE. In a
glorious side chapel, covered from floor to ceiling with mother of
pearl, fayence, lapis lazuli and precious gemstones, his embalmed
head lies in a silken gold-thread sack, directly below an intricately
crafted silver grill.
Over the years, I have been taken through no fewer than 22 discreetly
hidden doors, which lead to rooms of all sizes, fanning out in every
direction from the central area of the cathedral. In this labyrinth
of side chapels, services take place at seemingly random times,
following a wonderfully varied musical tradition that includes
Eucharists, dirge-like incantations and joyful praise.
One recent evening, I received a phone call advising me to come
immediately to the church, a medieval structure built upon extensive
Georgian church remains that were in turn built upon Byzantine
remains. It was the Feast Day of Saint Macarius, one of the 10 early
Christians beheaded in Alexandria during the 3rd-century persecution
of Roman emperor Decius, and the patriarch, as he does sometimes, had
called for a full ceremonial procession.
The church’s main room, its floor covered with hundreds of
magnificent oriental rugs, was packed. Its beautiful blue wall tiles
glittered under the flicker of a myriad of candles, which hung from
enormous lanterns suspended from chains that disappeared into a
darkened domed ceiling.
Exactly 100 bearded, black-robed and hooded monks were lined up, in
dignified silence, acting as solemn sentinels for the forthcoming
procession, which commenced with three thunderous bangs on the stone
floor.
As the procession began – led by 24 monks in glittering cloaks, each
one carrying jewels worthy of a monarch – I understood that my
evening caller had done me a fine favor. The Glorious Treasury of
Saint Menas, one of the most valuable and jealously guarded in all of
Christendom, had been opened, its contents handed out for use in the
service.
Armenia was the first nation-state to convert to Christianity, in
301. Even before the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, Armenians
were making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. They became adept at never
taking clear sides with the various factions and faiths of the city.
Early Armenian patriarchs even journeyed to Mecca to ensure that
their rights in Jerusalem were protected by their Muslim overlords.
Thus, over the centuries, they have become the ultimate Jerusalem
survivors.
Never being in conflict meant that this community became a magnet for
enormous wealth from the large and cultured Armenian diaspora.
Additionally, tens of thousands of gifts have been bestowed upon the
Armenian Patriarchate by monarchs and military leaders, sheikhs and
caliphs, patriarchs and czars, aristocrats and pilgrims. Hence, the
illuminated manuscripts of the library-church of St. Theodorus
constitute one of the most important ancient Christian libraries in
the world; the treasury is the envy of the Vatican; the reliquary is
a virtual directory of the early saints; and perhaps most impressive
of all, there’s a sense of pride and majesty that make the Armenians
the princes among the seven principal patriarchates of Jerusalem.
That night, I was given a rare glimpse of some of the treasures being
used. (The only time they are regularly brought out of the locked
cellars beneath the cathedral where they are normally stored, is
during Holy Week.)
An exquisite cloak 12 feet long was worn by one church official, its
train held by six choir boys from Armenia – an 1804 gift from
Napoleon Bonaparte to the patriarch during his Middle East campaign.
It glinted with the famed Napoleonic honey bee symbols, made up of
diamonds and emeralds stitched on to each corner.
Next came 17 monks, each carrying a red velvet cushion upon which sat
a crown, tiara or diadem, and then dozens of other officials carrying
golden chalices, old silken fabrics, bishop’s miters from the august
heads of previous clerics, swords, shields and a whole panoply of
saints’ remains – a hair from the beard of Vincent, the patron saint
of vineyards; a toe bone of Crispin, guardian of shoemakers; the
mummified tongue of Ursula of Antioch, a saint invoked for those who
pray for a good death; the cranium of Dympra of Byzantium, patron
saint of the insane; the staff of Menos from Benevento, whose virtues
were praised by St. Gregory the Great; and finally, a tiny golden
vase said to contain milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary herself.
It was an awesome scene: the singing, the heavy smell of frankincense
being cast around the church by incense lanterns made of metalwork so
intricate it looked like lace; the costumes, the solemnity of the
procession, the dull thud of the wood and iron banging from outside.
(Bell-ringing is not practiced at St. James, in remembrance of the
Muslim ban on bells within Jerusalem until 1840. The ban followed the
enforced demolition of the Holy Sepulcher belfry in the 14th century,
meant to make the church lower than the nearby mosque’s minaret. A
bell-less belfry led to use in their place of wooden planks to summon
the Christian faithful to prayer, a custom the Armenians continue to
this day.)
But church services and mysterious ceremonies are not all there is to
the Armenian Quarter and its community. I see many likenesses between
the Jews and the Armenians. The latter are an old people, numbering
about 3 million worldwide, with their own language and culture, and
they too are masters of survival as a minority within an often
hostile host society. They are refined, cultured, sophisticated,
materially successful and always, wherever they are, with their
hearts stubbornly yearning for their ancient land.
As with the Jews, too, the suffering of the Armenians has been great.
April 24 is the Day of Remembrance for the Armenian Holocaust of
1915-1918, when millions were either massacred or forced into exile
by the Turks.
Those massacres brought the largest wave of Armenians to Jerusalem
since their original arrival in the 4th century. In the 1920s they
enjoyed a tremendous revival under British Mandate rule, when they
applied their famed skills in ceramic tile and pottery work to
decorating churches, synagogues and mosques alike. To this day,
Armenian pottery is one of the city’s most recognizable crafts.
Again like the Jews, this people treasures one thing above all else –
scholarship. The Armenian Quarter is home to many seminaries,
convents and monasteries, and there is constant traffic between
Jerusalem and the various Armenian communities throughout the world.
Most of the quarter’s 500 residents (along with Jerusalem’s 2,500
other Armenians) lead quiet practical lives in regular trades and
professions. All over Israel, the Armenian Church has real estate
holdings – they are reputed to be the third-largest landholder in
Jerusalem, after the Israeli government and the Greek church.
Within the Holy Sepulcher, in the Christian Quarter, the Armenians
are key power brokers, controlling chapels, objects and the vast
floor spaces between columns 8 and 11 and 15 and 18, out of a total
of 20 columns and pillars that support the great Crusader rotunda of
the church. This might seem trifling, but in the wider world of
Orthodox Christendom, these are crucial symbols of worldly power in a
church where every square foot is contested.
Some days ago I was back in the Armenian cathedral, having just
attended a service in another hidden corner of the quarter – the
Church of the House of Annas. Outside the house is a place of deep
significance for Armenians, for there grows an olive tree that they
believe is descended from the one Jesus was tied to when he was
scourged prior to the Passion.
As I stared at this ancient tree, Bishop Gulbenkian, one of the
quarter’s 12 bishops, came over. We talked of that summer 15 years
ago when Alfonso and I had wandered into the compound, and got to
know many of its residents so well. His Grace Gulbenkian informed me,
with some sadness, that Alfonso had returned the following year to
the fold of his mother church in Rome, after only a short dalliance
with Armenian Orthodoxy.
I left the compound through the Door of Kerikor, installed in 1646
and named for the patriarch of the day. As I left through the dark,
brooding, vaulted porch of the door, gates were banged and bolted
behind me as the quarter nestled down for the night.
Unlike the Old City’s other three quarters, the Armenian Quarter
jealously guards its privacy by remaining closed to visitors most of
the time. It does, however, open the doors of its cathedral at 3 p.m.
every day, when visitors can enter the compound for the magic and
drama of the afternoon Eucharist service. These few minutes in the
Cathedral of St. James will imbue all who see it with a sense of the
nobility of Jerusalem’s Armenians – a tolerant and refined people
with vast temporal and spiritual wealth, a tremendous sense of
history, wielding legendary power, but doing so with the greatest of
style and discretion. The Armenians are perhaps the embodiment of
what a venerable Jerusalem community should be.