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Merin Towards Jerusalem May2022
Merin Towards Jerusalem May2022
c 2021 Gili Merin
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TOWARDS
JERUSALEM: THE
ARCHITECTURE OF
PILGRIMAGE
City/Architecture PhD by Design Program
Architectural Association School of Architecture
Director of Studies: Dr. Pier Vittorio Aureli | Supervisor: Dr. Maria Shéhérazade Giudici
THE INVENTION OF
Director of Studies: Dr. Pier Vittorio Aureli
Supervisor: Dr. Maria Shéhérazade Giudici C H APT ER O NE
Candidate: Gili Merin
.....
THE ROTUNDA 31
THE CONCEPT OF ANALOGY AND THE RISE OF
URBAN PILGRIMAGE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE
STATION TO STATION
C H APT ER T H REE
51
THEATRICALITY AND DISCIPLINE OF THE VIA
CRUCIS IN THE SACRED MOUNTAIN OF VARALLO
THE INNOCENTS
C H APT ER F O U R
ABROAD 75
VALORISING MONUMENTS,
COMMODIFING PILGRIMAGE
THE STATIONS OF
C H APT ER F I V E
BIBLIOGRAPHY 147
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been possible without the continuous and uncondi-
tional support and care of my supervisors, Pier Vittorio Aureli and Maria Shéhérazade
Giudici. I would like to thank my peers, Brendon Carlin and Enrica Manneli, for their
companionship and constant feedback regarding my work, and to the talented Michal
Sahar and Tamar Shafrir whose careful edits and design gave form to this final work.
To Daniel Tchetchik and Andrew Meredith for their contribution of photographic tools
and knowledge and to Beatriz Flora from the AA library who laboured to get a hold of
every book I needed for this research. To my fellow-pilgrim,Diana Ibáñez López, who
had joined me (both physically and virtually) on many of these journeys, and was a
constant source of new sites, books, and ideas. Finally, I would like to acknowledge Zvi
Efrat, whose consistent mentorship had shaped my ideas and practice.
INTRODUCTION— 05
INTRODUCTION
1
Introduction in
Pilgrimage in Graeco-
Roman & Early Christian
Suspended between heaven and earth, Jerusalem Antiquity: Seeing the a rather loose definition: pilgrimage is “a journey
Gods, eds. Jan Elsner and
is not just a site—but an orientation. Occupying a Ian Rutherford (Oxford: to a place of particular interest or significance,”
Oxford University Press,
place in the geographic subconscious of Western 2005), 2
while another source claims, with somewhat
culture, its name is evoked in poetry and dedica- 2 more precision, that “pilgrimage implies a jour-
Coleman, Simon:
tions of cities, its soil covers the floors of chapels, “Do You Believe ney by a devotee in pursuance of a primarily religious
in Pilgrimage:
rocks collected from its ground are used as foun- Communitas,
objective.”4 Anthropologist Matthew Dillon sug-
dation stones for towns, and relics of those who Contestation gests that the pilgrim’s goal is not to visit a place
and Beyond” in
lived and died there are enshrined in the world’s Anthropological Theory of interest nor to satisfy a religious objective; rather,
(2002), 362
most visited sites. Despite this undeniable influ- what is at stake in pilgrimage is the very first
3
ence, this thesis strays away from such symbolic From the introduction act of detachment, of “paying a visit to a sacred
to the edited volume
toponymy or literal displacement of fragments, Contesting the Sacred: site outside the boundaries of one’s own physical
The Anthropology of
and opts instead to focus on the spatial transla- Christian Pilgrimage
environment.”5 Indeed, as in any ritual, a crucial
tion of Jerusalem in order to appropriate its sanc- (1991). Eade, John, aspect of the pilgrim’s journey is the disturbance
and Sallnow, Michael
tity. It considers issues of ritual, representation, J. (eds.), Contesting the caused to daily life: a break from ties of kinship
Sacred: The Anthropology
topography, and memory in order to explore how of Christian Pilgrimage
and domestic labour.6 By disengaging from these
the idea of Jerusalem has articulated the human (Eigene: Wipf & Stock, structures (and replacing one ritual for another),
1991),2-4
relationship with the sacred. Specifically, it focus- the pilgrim enters a state of anti-structure, becom-
4
Arafat, K. W.,
es on a particular praxis that has mobilised the Pausanias’ Greece:
ing a subject driven by a crystallised sense of
aura of the Holy City for millennia—pilgrimage. Ancient Artists purpose, intention, and orientation. This places
and Roman Rulers
Studying this phenomenon reveals that, despite (Cambridge: Cambridge the pilgrim as a stranger in his or her travels, true
University Press, 1996),
its temporal character, pilgrimage is a powerful 10 (my italics)
to the etymological origin of pilgrimage from the
vector that often destabilizes the civic, economic, 5 Latin peregrinus, or foreigner.
Dillon, Matthew,
and political conditions of the places that cross its Pilgrim and Pilgrimage During this phase—defined by Victor and
in Ancient Greece,
path. This means that while pilgrims move with a (New York and Oxford:
Edith Turner as liminal7—the pilgrim devel-
clear sense of religious orientation, their mental- Routledge, 1997), xviii ops a heightened mode of perception, as he or
(my italics)
ity is often hijacked by institutions of power that she becomes susceptible to new concepts and
6
Turner, Victor and
wish to exploit their subjectivity for their own Turner, Edith L.B.,
becomes accutely aware of the sensory details of
gain. The manipulation of spiritual will into spa- Image and Pilgrimage their surroundings. Due to this receptive inten-
in Christian Culture
tial form results in the production of structures, (New York: Columbia sity during the pilgrim’s liminal stage, the thesis
University Press,1978),
landscapes, and representations that I refer to as 13
places particular emphasis on the travelogues writ-
the Architecture of Pilgrimage. 7 ten by pilgrims on their journeys. A neologism
Victor and Edith
Before exploring the themes and case studies Turner define this of travel and monologue, a travelogue is a form
anti-structure condition
of this thesis, it is important to state the obvious: as Communitas: “a
of writing that is between a survey and a diary;
pilgrimage did not begin in Jerusalem; it is a phe- relational quality of full it implies being physcially on the journey while
unmediated communica-
nomenon that maintains continuity from antiq- tion, even communion, also claiming a particular agency of personal
between definite and
uity until today.1 Anthropologist Simon Coleman determine identities,
interpretation and representation. This travel-
argues that any attempt to define pilgrimage is which arise sponta- ogue is written within a particular timeframe
neously in all kinds of
futile, as the conditions that influence its char- groups, situations, and in a pilgrim’s life, what Turner defines as being
circumstances [...] the
acter—namely systems of movement and modes distinction between
out of time— beyond or outside the time which
of spirituality—are perpetually in a state of flux.2 structure and commu- measures secular process and routine.”8 In From
nitas is not the same as
As such, pilgrimage spans fields of scholarship in that between secular and Ritual to Theatre (1982), Turner cites Arnold van
sacred, communitas is
which the discussion is often not about pilgrim- an essential and generic
Gennep’s Rites of Passage (1908) in defining the
age but rather about the lens through which it is human bond.” —Turner three phases of separation, transition and incor-
and Turner, Image and
understood: themes such as ritual and faith, sub- Pilgrimage in Christian poration. At the initial stage of separation, the
Culture, 250
jectivity and identity, historical geography and pilgrim is detached from daily life while entering
8
archaeology, and, in this thesis, the architecture Turner, Victor, From into “a new state or condition.”9 In the next stage,
Ritual to Theatre: The
and lanscape.3 Amongst the various attempts by Human Seriousness of the transition, the pilgrim enters an ambiguous
Play (New York: PAJ
theorists to define pilgrimage, there are several Publications, 1982), 24
stage of liminal nature where new social rules
similarities and contradictions that are relevant 9 and rituals can be assumed. It is during this
Ibid
for this discussion. The Oxford Dictionary provides phase, I argue, that pilgrims document their
INTRODUCTION— 07
10 16
Ibid Petsalis-Diomidis,
Alexia, “The Body in
journeys, and it is therefore that these narratives 11
Penglase, C., Greek pilgrimage—which is the focus of this thesis—is Christian pilgrimage is not dissimilar from Space: Visual Dynamics provides the opportunity to examine how the
Myths and Mesopotamia: in Graeco-Roman
transcend mere representation: they encapsulate Parallels and influence
understood as travelling to the places mentioned the Jewish and Islamic traditions in its ritual- Healing Pilgrimage,” in
mentality of individual travellers shaped the
the liminality of the traveller who moves through in the Homeric Hymns in a religious text.14 This category includes the istic components. However, in stark difference, Pilgrimage in Graeco- architecture of the city as their own subjective
and Hesiod (London, Roman & Early Christian
time and space as an inherent foreigner. 1994). In Elsner and three Abrahamic ‘religions of the book:’ Judaism, Christian pilgrimage is not mandated by religion: Antiquity: Seeing the reading of a Scriptural topography.
Rutherford, Pilgrimage Gods, eds. Jan Elsner and
Travelogues play an important part in Van in Graeco-Roman & Early
Christianity, and Islam. it is distinctively personal and resolutely volun- Ian Rutherford (Oxford:
The Christian canon (from Greek rule) of bib-
Gennep’s third phase: incorporation. It is then Christian Antiquity, 10 Pilgrimage in Judaism was initiated by tary. Thus, early Christians who embarked on a Oxford University Press, lical scripture is composed of the Old and New
2005), 182-218
that pilgrims return to their “new, relatively sta- 12
Elsner and King Solomon, son of David, upon the erection of Scriptural journey to the land of the Bible were Testaments.17 Read in private contemplation and
17
Rutherford, Pilgrimage The Old Testament,
ble, well-defined position in total society.”10 albeit in Graeco-Roman & Early
his Temple in 957 BC. This ritual included three not forced to by theological law; they did not also known as the Hebrew
in public sermons, scripture is a religious text
with the authority of their journey, which have Christian Antiquity, 10 annual visits to Jerusalem, each marking both follow flocks of devotees on well-trodden paths, Bible, includes thir- that is interpreted allegorically through rituals,
ty-nine books that were
been documented in the travelouge which con- 13
Ibid, 12-28 a historical event of the Jewish faith and a new and they certainly were not rewarded by a clerical written by several au- deeds, and moral behaviour. Beyond this exegetic
thors over the centuries
tributes to their elevated status. Written during 14
Elsner and
agricultural season. Celebrations took place in institution. Their gain was personal, moral, and of the first millennium
practice, the Bible is also read literally as the
a particular time (or “out of time,” as Turner Rutherford, Pilgrimage and around Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah, spiritual; it fed a religious curiosity, elevated their BC. Pentateuch, the first origin story of the its people; the narrative-led
in Graeco-Roman & Early of the three sections,
called it) in a pilgrim’s journey, these travelogues Christian Antiquity, 28 which was constructed as a sequence of vestibules piety, and perhaps increased their devotional tells the origin stories of books such as Pentateuch, Prophets, and the
the world, humankind,
are highly subjective in nature, often including 15
Bright, John, A History
and chambers that created a processional hierar- authority. In that sense, Christian pilgrims pres- Exodus, and God’s
four Gospels construct a pool of events, people,
the projection of imaginary views over an actual of Israel, (London: chy of profane and sacred enclosures. Due to its ent a particular subjectivity whose agency lies in Covenant (including the and places that form the collective memories of the
Westminster John Knox Ten Commandments) to
terrain. These descriptions are not only of cities Press, 2000), 217-219 double role as the royal chapel for the Davidian its motivational currency. Indeed, anthropologist the Israelites: a monothe- religion. The term collective memory was coined
istic tribe worshipping an
and monuments, but also of natural landscapes, dynasty and as a global shrine for the entire Alan Morinis argues that pilgrimage is not about invisible and all-powerful
by the French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs
urban spaces, and the rituals of those encoun- Israelite nation, it was attended by ordained visiting a place that is venerated by institution- God. The Book of the (1877–1945) in his Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire
Prophets (including
tered within them: in a word, the topography priests (Cohen or Levy) who performed prayers and alised religion, but “a journey undertaken by a Joshua, Judges, Samuel, (1925). According to Halbwachs, collective mem-
Jeremiah, and Kings,
of their journey. This topographic understand- animal sacrifice. These massive gatherings may person in quest of a place or state that he or she amongst others) narrates
ory is a social construct that operates within a
ing of their journey is crucial for the thesis: it is have included symbols and codes that reflected a believes to embody a sacred ideal,” thus placing the history of the cultural framework. Collective memories are
Israelite tribes from their
understood as the spatial envelope of pilgrimage, pagan background, but nonetheless embodied a the emphasis on the pilgrim’s personal decision conquest of the Promised shared by a group of individuals (a family, reli-
Land to their exile in
found in the scale between buildings and places. monotheistic rationale. According to the Hebrew rather than a theological framework. It is for this Babylon, through the or-
gious community, or nation) who perceive their
Travelogues and their topographic reading are Bible, these gatherings were mandatory: “Offer reason that travelogues are crucial; each pilgrim deals of God’s messengers shared past as the basis for their identity in the
on earth as they struggle
thus a key in this thesis and the design project a sacrifice to Me three times each year [...] every does not move as part of a collective celebration to stir society away present. Unlike individual memories, collective
from the blasphemous
because they not only expose the condition of male among you must appear before God the of people of faith, but rather as a single subject worship of deities. The
memories are not experienced by members of the
the pilgrim’s journey and places of worship but Lord.” [Exodus 23:14-17]. A Jewish pilgrim partic- who opts out of their own daily routine in order Old Testament concludes group, but are rather constructed by institutions
with the Book of Writings,
also continually rebuild the history of pilgrim- ipating in these festivals became part of a large to voluntarily enter this liminal stage. Their topo- which includes texts of through a careful process of selection and omis-
poetry and wisdom (most
age through the symbolic possession and literal group of worshippers, acting as a passive partici- graphic reading is thus crucial in light of their of which are attributed
sion of victories, traumas, resistance, and oppres-
appropriation of the land by its traveller. pant in public worship while fulfilling a religious initial expectations and motivations for the jour- to Kings David and sions. Halbwachs thus argues that those in power
Solomon) amongst them
obligation.15 ney. the Books of Proverbs constantly reshape collective memories in order
MEMORY, SCRIPT, Pilgrimage in Islam is similar in that This personal aspect of Christian pilgrim- and Ecclesiastes which
consist of instruction on
to solidify the identity of their subordinates. In
AND PLACE respect. The Hajj (literally, to attend a journey) age can be traced back to polytheistic cultures, life, spirit, and ethics. that sense, the events of the past are neither lost
The New Testament is
The history of pilgrimage is almost as fickle is a mandatory rite that includes a single visit namely to Greek and Egyptian antiquity, where composed of twenty-sev- nor preserved, but recast into a memory that is
en books. Written in the
as the phenomenon itself. Using the criteria that to Mecca by every adult Muslim at least once in healing pilgrimage was common amongst indi- aftermath of Christ’s
“nourished and renewed, fortified and enriched,
pilgrimage includes a journey from one’s own their lifetime. As the birthplace of Muhammad, viduals seeking to improve their physical condi- death in the first century, without losing any of its fidelity as long as the
it was formally canonised
domestic realm into foreign territory, we can Mecca is the house of the Kaaba, the “House of tion. One of the most renowned therapeutic cen- only in the 390s of the society that supports it develops a continuous
common era. It consists
conclude that its earliest possible origins would God”, where a series of rituals (known as umrah) tres was the Asklepion of Pergamon, which was of the four Gospels
existence.”18
coincide with the establishment of sedentary take place, such as circling the shrine seven not a singular structure but a series of shrines, (Matthew, Mark, Luke Writing about Christianity, Halbwachs
and John) that narrate the
locations of human settlement. In Mesopotamia, times, kissing the black stone of the wall of the altars, rooms, and incubation chambers encased life of Jesus of Nazareth argues that the New Testament itself is a compo-
from birth in Bethlehem
a poem tells of the protective god of the city of Ur, Kaaba, running from the steps of al-Sada across within a rectangular peristyle.16 Within this through his life of preach-
sition of collective memories, since “the Gospels
who journeyed 150 miles to visit another god, his the valley to al-Marwah, and performing animal courtyard, pilgrims would perform a healing rit- ing and miracle-working reproduce only a portion of the memories that
in the Galilee to his final
father Enlil.11 Pilgrimage in the first and second sacrifice. Prayer was not initially directed towards ual, moving according to a prescribed routine in crucifixion and resurrec- the disciples must have preserved concerning
tion in Jerusalem. The
millennium BC was often part of festivals that the Kaaba: in 610 AD, the prophet Muhammad order to summon the god and achieve spiritual, Acts of the Apostles form
the life of Jesus and the circumstances of his
included a mass movement of people, such as dictated that the first direction of prayer—the hence physical, renewal. In that sense, Christian a chronological sequel to death.”19 The scriptures—both a religious text
the Gospels by narrating
the New Kingdom’s festival of Osiris in Abydos, Qibla—should be oriented towards Jerusalem; pilgrims join a lineage of travellers who opt out of the activities >>> >>> and a historical narrative—are thus the collec-
of Christ’s disciples, and
or the Hittite celebrations in Anatolia, which only in 624 AD, shortly after his migration from daily life in order to reach a self-determined goal the various Epistles are
tion of memories from which Christians recollect
revolved around the movement of the royal fam- Mecca to Medina (Hijra), did the Qibla’s reference that is not mandated by their religion. letters written by the their shared past. Recollection, another critical
Apostles (mostly Paul) to
ily between sanctuaries.12 point shift to Mecca. Indeed, the Quran does not The evolution from pagan to monotheistic emerging communities of term for Halbwachs, is the ability of each indi-
Christians (such Rome,
Beginning in antiquity, anthropologists specify Mecca itself as a holy place but speaks pilgrimage is significant for this thesis in terms vidual to recall the shared memories of the group
Corinth and Galatia)
divide pilgrimage into typological categories: of an “ancient house” that is the destination of of the change in the type of destination. Pagan preaching the ministry as their own. This recollection can occur through
of Christ and providing
devotional pilgrims, whose goal is to encounter Muslim pilgrims: “Announce to the people the shrines such as Asklepion were contained within solutions for questions institutionalised rituals: the Eucharist, for exam-
regarding the rites and
and honour a divine entity; instrumental pilgrims, pilgrimage. They will come to you on foot and a sacred enclosure, detached from the complex- ple, reminds the faithful of Christ’s Last Supper;
beliefs of the new faith.
who hope to achieve a finite and palpable goal, on every camel, coming from every deep and dis- ity and controversy of urban environments. The New Testament con- Easter Sunday commemorates the resurrection
cludes with the Book of
such as healing; mandatory pilgrims, who observe tant highway that they may witness the benefits Meanwhile, the topography of monotheistic pil- Revelation: an apocalyp- of Jesus.This cyclical recollection unites the group
tic text that prophesies
cyclical patterns of life events; ethnic pilgrims, and recollect the name of God [...] then let them grims is radically different: in Rome, Mecca or the Second Coming of
periodically through repetitive rituals that have
who visit a mother deity; and initiation pilgrims, complete their rituals and perform their vows Jerusalem, scriptural pilgrims are confronted Jesus Christ. grown into the Christian calendar, providing
who undergo a rite of passage in order to return and circumambulate the ancient house” [Quran with territorial conflicts, socio-spatial hierar- 18
Halbwachs, Maurice, a system of recollection of memories that can
On Collective Memory,
to the community as transformed members.13 22:27–30]. Pilgrimage in Islam is thus based on chies, and contradicting histories. Focusing ed. and trans., Lewis
solidify the religion under a shared narrative.
Within this anthropological framework, scriptural the ritualisation of script and place. on scriptural pilgrimage in Christianity thus A. Coser, (Chicago and
London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992), 98
THE INVENTION OF
THE HOLY LAND
PILGRIMAGE AND THE CHRISTIAN
APPROPRIATION OF JERUSALEM century, hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived
in Jerusalem to visit the new altar built upon the
The earliest traces of human settlements in 1
Montefiore, Simon exposed bedrock of Mount Moriah, in the heart of
Sebag, Jerusalem, the
Jerusalem date to 5000 BC. A Canaanite village, Biography (London: Herod’s vast man-made plateau.
perched on the Judean Mountains above the Gi- Weidenfeld & Nicolson, This fortified city, with its monumental
2012).
hon spring, far from any strategic trade-route, temple, was not only the bastion of Jewish tra-
2
According to clay
it was populated mostly by graves.1 By the nine- inscriptions found in dition—it was also the city of Christ. Born in
teenth century BC, Jerusalem was a substantial Egypt—the Amarna Bethlehem, a small village on the outskirts of
Letters—which were
city-state, its name first recorded as “Urusalim”, discovered in the late Jerusalem, and raised in Nazareth, Jesus attended
nineteenth century.
perhaps after Salam or Shalom (“peace” in Arabic the Passover festivities in Jerusalem every year.5
3
or Hebrew).2 Over the next centuries, Jerusalem David extended and After 30 AD, Jesus triumphantly returned to
fortified the existing
experienced recurring attacks from the New Citadel of Zion; its Jerusalem for what were to be his final days; the
remnants are currently
Kingdom of Egypt to the south and Assyria to the unearthed in what is the city’s streets and the Jewish Temple formed the
north, which encouraged Jerusalemites to build world's most excavated backdrop for the Passion—Christ’s trial, crucifix-
archaeological site, the
their city as a citadel of steep fortification, ter- City of David. The exis- ion, entombment, and resurrection—and thus
tence of a Jewish king
raced housing, and intricate tunnels. However, it named David was con- became inseparable from any Christian ritual of
was not until King David captured the stronghold firmed in archeological recollection. This heavenly city of both the Jewish
digs in Tel Dan in 1993,
in 1000 BC that Jerusalem was established as a when an inscription Temple and Christ presented a unity between
from the 9th century BC
capital city. This was also the beginning of the named kings from “the the ideal and the real for close to a century. In
city’s spiritual significance as the centre of the House of David.” 70 AD, after years of siege, the Roman Emperor
Hebrews, a uniquely monotheistic tribe that had 4
“To offer a sacrifice Titus captured the city and destroyed the temple,
to Me three times each
arrived centuries earlier from Mesopotamia.3 year.” (Exodus 23:14–17) demolished houses, and burned most of the city’s
David’s son, King Solomon, built the First 5 trees.6 In that decisive moment, Holy Jerusalem
“Now his parents
(Jewish) Temple on top of Mount Moriah— went to Jerusalem every was dispatched from its earthly corollary, which
year at the feast of the
believed to be the biblical site where the Hebrew passover.” [Luke 2:41]; now lay in ruins and chaos.
patriarch Abraham nearly sacrificed his only “And the Jews’ passover For the next six decades, Jerusalem was
was at hand, and Jesus
son, Isaac—thus commemorating the site as went up to Jerusalem.” reduced to a camp of the tenth Roman Legion
[John 2:13]
one of unconditional devotion. Built over seven (legio X Fretensis), and Jews and Nazarenes (a minor
6
years, the shrine at the centre of Temple Mount In Rome, the victory Palestinian sect that gradually separated from
procession carrying the
housed “The Holy of the Holies”—the wooden Ark of the Covenant was Judaism) were forbidden to live on its site, under
commemorated in the
Ark of the Covenant. According to the Book of Arch of Titus, where it is the penalty of death.7 This urban vacuum gave
Exodus of the Hebrew Bible, pilgrimage to the still visible. rise to paganism. In 135 AD, following the defeat
Temple was mandatory for all Jews three times 7
Duchesne, Histoire of yet another Jewish revolt, Emperor Hadrian
ancienne de l'eglise
a year, corresponding to the agricultural calen- 1:122, in Halbwachs, On changed the city’s name to Aelia Capitolina, after
dar.4 This ritual came to a halt in 587 BC when Collective Memory, 226 his own last name of Aelius and the Roman god
the city was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, King 8
Hunt, E.D, Holy Land Jupiter Capitolinus.8 Hadrian’s city was smaller than
Pilgrimage in the Late
of Babylon, who executed King Zedekiah, burned Roman Empire (Oxford: the one built by the Arab-Jewish King Herod only
down Solomon’s Temple, and exiled the Hebrews. Clarendon Press, 1982): a century earlier, and held little religious or polit-
Introduction
In Babylon, the Israelites formed the Biblical ical significance within the Roman empire.9 As a
9
Hunt, Holy Land
scriptures, solidified the religion, and awaited Pilgrimage, 1 pagan emperor, Hadrian obliterated the remains
their redemptive day of return—and indeed, of monotheism in the city by transforming the
in 516 BC, the Second Temple was inaugurated ruins of the Jewish Temple into the Capitolium
on the ruins of Solomon’s first. This temple, by covering the supposed burial place of Christ.
which was modest in scale and decoration, was While the primary goal of the Jews was to return
entirely remodelled in the first century BC by the and rebuild the physical city below, the nascent
half-Jewish, half-Arab Roman King Herod, who Christian religion ascribed increasing religious
executed a megalomaniacal construction project and symbolic significant to the Jerusalem above
that continues to dominate the topography of the as the city of an idea.
Old City of Jerusalem until today. Over the next
36 Christine Mohrmann,
Atlas of the Early TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER TWO— The Basilica and the Rotunda 37
Christian World (Nelson,
1958)
57 69
Kleinbauer, W. Krautheimer,
Eugene, “The Anastasis Introduction to ‘An
Rotunda and Christian Iconography of Medieval
Before the erection of the rotunda, and according architectural invention”,
presbyters sit in chairs on either side of him, of affectivity and immersion in the memory. The Architecture’, 1
terms, this type of association can be regarded
to the description of the pilgrim from Bordeaux, in The Real and Ideal and all the clergy stand. Then one by one the combination of these two spaces creates a situa- 70
as a superficial similarity, where there is a resem-
Jerusalem in Jewish, Ibid, 4-5
Christ’s tomb aedicule stood in the centre of a Christian and Islamic ones who are seeking baptism are brought up, tion in which the body of the worshippers takes blance between the properties of the source and
71
Art: Studies in Honor Blanchette, I., and
semi-circular porticoed courtyard, open to the of Bezalel Narkiss on
men coming with their fathers and women with part in an orchestrated service that is deployed Dunbar, K. (2000), "How
target.71Structural similarity, however, refers to
sky. This setting is reminiscent of the Christian the Occasion of His their mothers.”64 This description shows how spatially in a choreographed ritual. The novelty analogies are generated: “the resemblance in the underlying systems of rela-
Seventieth Birthday, The roles of struc-
Heroa, erected from as early as the second century ed. Bianca Kühnel the bishop interrogates the candidates who walk found in Jerusalem’s Christian architecture is tural and superficial tions between the elements of the sources and the
(Jerusalem: Hebrew similarity," Memory and
AD to honour sites of martyrdom.59 In the third University, Center for
up and down the central axis in order to assess then not a typology but a relational composition Cognition, 29
elements of the target. Structural similarity exists
century, these open-air precincts were replaced Jewish Art, 1998), 140 their moral compatibility with the Church. The of specific pre-existing types that set the stage for 72
if the relations between the objects in the source
Ibid
by monumental martyria, which accommodated 58
Kleinbauer, The longitudinal basilica allows him to be seated in a textually-bound ritual. are similar to the relations between the objects in
73
Anastasis Rotunda, 141 Ousterhout, Robert,
both the grave of a martyr and space for memo- the center of the church, being surrounded by his It is this composition that forms the ana- Flexible Topography
the target, independently of the similarity between the
59
rial services. In Jerusalem, the Anastasis was Krautheimer, Early seated or standing congregation, as he becomes logical source of other Jerusalems. It could then and Transportable objects themselves.”72 That is, structural similarity
Christian and Byzantine Geography, in The Real
erected as both the grave of the martyr and a place Architecture, 32 the dispenser of divine judgement. This staged be abstracted and implanted within a differ- and Ideal Jerusalem in can be found as the underlying analogy, even if
Jewish, Christian and
to commemorate and recall the greatest martyr- 60
Krautheimer, Richard,
activity surely produces connotative association ent condition as a target. This analysis of ‘other’ Islamic Art; Studies in
a superficial similarity is not readily apparent.
dom of all. “Introduction to ‘An with judiciary basilical halls and with political Jerusalems stems from the seminal essay by Honor of Bezalel Narkiss Considering this interpretation, it can be argued
Iconography of Medieval on the Occasion of His
Spatially, the rotunda could accommodate Architecture’”, Journal power, showcasing how its aisles, columns, and Richard Krautheimer, Introduction to ‘Iconography of Seventieth Birthday that the examples provided by Krautheimer,
of the Courtauld and Ed. by Bianca Kühnel.
a centrally-oriented service around the tomb, Warburg Institutes 5
raised platforms construct a distance that is Medieval Architecture’ (1942), where he argues that (Jerusalem: Hebrew
which all refer to the design and layout of round
while the barrel-vaulted ambulatory provided (1942), 13 instrumentalized in space, separating the bishop in the early Middle Ages churches were invested University, 1998), 394 churches, give only partial attention to the ana-
for circulation. This layout was common in 61
Krautheimer, Early and his clergy from the candidates.65 with meaning by “imitating a highly venerated logical source by focusing on the element that is
Christian and Byzantine
Roman sepulchral architecture of the Third and Architecture, 36 (my
The basilica is also used for preaching and prototype”—the Church of the holy Sepulchr.69 the highlight of the complex. Instead, a spatial
fourth centuries,60 meaning that Christian mar- italics) teaching, during which “the bishop sits and While Krautheimer doesn’t use the word analogy system of relations must be implemented: a basilica
tyria were often indistinguishable from imperial 62
Krautheimer, preaches, [while] the faithful utter exclamations” or the terminology of source and target (he refers and a rotunda.
Introduction to ‘An
mausolea, and thus inspired by the monumental- Iconography,’ 64
which are often loud, creating a clear stage pres- to them as the original and an architectural copy), his In order to explain this particular kind of
ity of pagan temples. This similarity, according 63
ence between the bishop and the audience.66 The analysis is similar to analogical thinking. That analogical thinking, and how it has facilitated the
Egeria, 46.6
to Krautheimer, became acceptable due to the most detailed teachings occur during Lent, when is, he does not wish to discuss a mimetic repre- diffusion of Jerusalem, two case studies will be
64
Egeria, 45.1-6
‘religious neutrality’ of funerary buildings, which the candidates go through a complete Biblical sentation of the Holy Sepulchre elsewhere but an explored below. While essentially different from
65
were generally void of religious overtones due Aureli and Giudici, induction. Here Egeria describes a different spa- inexact reproduction that is based on selective one another, these structures exemplify both
Rituals and Walls, 22
to their nature as private memorials.61 It is pos- tial distribution: replication of symbolic architectural elements. the process of constructing an analogy and the
66
Egeria, 46.4
sible, then, that the centrally-planned Anastasis Some examples include St. Michael at Fulda intelligence of its use. Both of the cases are set in
67
was a mausoleum, a martyrium, and a heroa for Ibid, 46.2 The bishop’s chair is placed in the great church, the (820-822 AD) and the Holy Sepulchre of Cambridge the Twelfth Century, a time when the increased
Christ—a place to commemorate a man, God, and 68
Ibid, 46.4 Martyruyn, and all those to be baptised the men and the (first quarter of the 11th century), where a central- physical connection to the Holy Land was estab-
king.62 women, sit around him in a circle [...] his subject is god’s ly-planned structure with a surrounding vaulted lished by the Crusades and the urbanisation of
The combination of a longitudinal basilica law; during the forty days he goes through the whole ambulatory provided the connotations of the Europe. The ability to import spatial ideas from
and a centrifugal rotunda provided two distinct Bible, beginning with Genesis, and first relating the literal Anastasis Rotunda.70 In this transfer of geomet- Jerusalem—be it the earthly, the heavenly, or a
spaces for public and private modes of worship, meaning of each passage, then interpreting its spiritual rical composition and architectural elements, the blurred representation of the two— played a cru-
and could accommodate a service that was mobile meaning. 67 sanctity of Jerusalem’s holy sites was transported cial role in this process.73
and hierarchical. Egeria, who stayed in Jerusalem into a local vessel of worship, imbuing it with the
from 381 to 384 AD, reveals in her letters the use of This unique circular configuration eliminates the appropriated aura of the Holy Land. In analogical
spaces and sequence during the daily mobile ser- usual hierarchical distribution, and it is then that
vices. She describes a procession that moves from students can, in turn, respond with questions on
a service in the Martyrium Basilica to the com- the scriptures, thus engaging in a dialogue with
munion in the Rotunda, where the Bishop him- the bishop. According to Egeria, these in-depth
self enters the railings of the cave while the faith- teaching sessions occur in the basilica for three
ful walk through the eight doors which are then hours each morning during the seven weeks of
locked shut. At this time the catechumens, which lent, until Easter which takes place on the eighth
have yet to be initiated into the faith, waited in week. It is then that the bishop assumes an ele-
the outdoor atrium, where they could hear the vated position in the basilica, when “[h]is chair is
loud applause coming from within but not see placed at the back of the apse, behind the altar.”68
the mystery of baptism and the climax of the What is clear from these examples is that
service.63 It is therefore clear that the Anastasis within the course of several weeks, each of the
is placed on the highest of spiritual hierarchy of spaces is used to serve a different liturgical func-
spaces within the complex: It is the focal point of tion, the basilica being the most versatile: it is
the composition, standing at the far end from the there that the bishop is moved within the space
entry, at the culmination of a symbolic and literal and in relation to his students: from the middle
passage of rites. to the apse, in front of a lined audience or within
While the basilica is placed below the a circle of listeners, and either leading an longitu-
Rotunda on the sacred scale, it nevertheless dinal precession or orchestrating an axial move-
allows a variety of liturgical activities. During ment of the candidates. While in the Rotunda,
lent, the period before Easter, Egeria writes that the contemplative mysteries are set around the Fig 4: From left: St. Michael’s Church, Fulda (820 AD); Holy Sepulchre, Northampton
“the bishop’s chair is placed in the middle of Tomb of the Lord, and are generally composed (1100 AD); Neuvy-Saint-Sépulchre (1049 AD)Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Cambridge
(1130 AD), Santo Stefano, Bologna (1141 AD), Temple Church, London (1185 AD)
the Great Church, the Martyrium [basilica], the as more exclusive services, with a higher degree All drawings by the author, not to scale.
313
Sepulchre’, an irregular-octagonal structure from Jerusalem. The number of supports around
Fig 5: Plan of Santo Stefano
that is covered by a dome. It is dominated by a the tomb, for example, corresponds both to the Drawing by the author, after Robert Ousterhout
large tomb in its center (though on a slight off- number of the columns in Jerusalem and to the
82
set) that is encircled by a ring of twelve supports number of the apostles, being both a literal and stone tomb in the centre of the octagon was the Ibid, 318 distributed to the participants who then followed
and an ambulatory that is surmounted by a gal- symbolic choice. The octagon, which was inter- focal point of the service: on Good Friday, a replica 83
Ibid a public procession to Santo Stefano.86
lery. While the proportions between the size of changeable in the Medieval mind with a circle, of the Cross was enclosed within the tomb, and 84
Ibid, 316
And yet there is a seminal difference
the tomb and the structure itself are different, evokes the figure of eight—hence of resurrection over the next three days men and women (on 85
between Bologna and Jerusalem which highlights
Thurston, Herbert,
the structure replicates several architectural and salvation—while alluding to the form of the alternating days) were allowed to enter the tomb The Stations of the the way the aura of the latter was appropriated. In
Cross: an account
elements that were clearly borrowed from the Anastasis Rotunda.81 and visit the Cross.82 On Easter Morning, the of their History and
Bologna, the stational services can be dated to the
Anastasis Rotunda in Jerusalem. The octagonal But Santo Stefano is not just an amalgama- tomb was ceremonially opened following a pro- Devotional Purpose Ninth Century, meaning that, according to his-
(London, 1914), 9
structure is accessed from a porticoed courtyard tion of mnemonic referents: it also creates a struc- cession of monks carrying candles and signing torian Colin Morris, the mobile form of devotion
86
Ousterhout, The
that is referred to as Cortile di Pilato: a water basin in tural analogy in its compositional logic. As such, Aurora Lucis rutilat.83 The Jerusalem service of the Church of Santo
predated the sites, and it is the liturgical needs for
the centre is venerated as the one used by Pilatus the relationship between the courtyard and the Adoratio Crucis had its parallel place in Bologna, Stefano, 316 physical stations that initiated their localisation
to wash his hands before Christ’s trial [Matthew octagonal structure replicates the one between this time in the series of Chapels at the east 87
Morris, Bringing the in the city.87 In other words, it was the demand
Holy Sepulchre to the
27:24]. On the Eastern edge of the atrium, across the atrium and the Anastasis in Jerusalem; it end of the complex. Much like in Jerusalem, the West, 54
for topographical recollection of scriptural events
from the ‘Holy Sepulchre,’ is a shallow structure even follows the slight offset of the tomb in Bolognese Calvary was where worshippers could 88
that structured the analogy: a visit to the tomb on
Vita Sancti Petronii,
that terminated in three chapels. Two of the Jerusalem, which allows a gathering of crowd by kiss the presented Cross on the Thursday of Holy quoted inMorris, Easter Morning required a Sepulchre, and a pub-
Bringing the Holy
chapels take the form of a semicircular apse, the entrance of the centrifugal structure. The rep- Week, in a small chapel that was adjacent to the Sepulchre to the West,
lic procession demanded stations. The chronolog-
while the central one is cruciform in plan and is lication of an architectural logic that considers a open-air courtyard.84 36 ical discrepancy between the stations and their
dedicated to Santa Croce. In the Twelfth Century, round structure’s interior and exterior spaces, a The services in Bologna’s analogous Jerusa- ritualisation in the urban realm can be explained
the chapels were referred to as Calvary, where an central object of veneration, and an ambulatory lem, much like the source, extended beyond the as part of an elaborate invention of an urban tra-
artificial mound was completed with a cross to for circulation, set the space for a liturgical prac- confines of a single complex and well into the dition that occured in twelfth century Bologna. A
create a local Hill of Golgotha.77 Together, these tice that originated in Jerusalem. This means that urban domain. A monastery built on a nearby hill manuscript from 1180 that chronicles the life of
three features —the octagon surrounding a tomb, the analogical structures allows a pilgrim to enact was called St. Giovanni in Monte Oliveti, and the val- St. Petronius, Bishop of Bologna between 432 and
an open-aired courtyard with a symbolic monu- in Bologna the ritual he or she would perform in ley separating these two churches was described 450 AD, traces the origin of Santo Stefano:
ment, and the series of reliquary chapels—begin Jerusalem; the abstraction of a spatial logic and as Josaphat, following the topographical drop
to draw an analogical relationship with the orig- its implementation with local materials (such between the Old City and the Mountain of Olives “With much labour [he] symbolically created a work,
inal Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. as brick masonry and evangelical iconography) in Jerusalem. An unknown pond supposedly marvellously constructed, like the Sepulchre of the Lord in
In the following years, Santo Stefano enabled Jerusalem worship without the streneus represented the natatoria Siloe (the Siloam Pool), the form which he had seen, and carefully measured with
extended its possibilities of worship as its ini- and morally-risking journey. Furthermore, The and the Church of St. Tecla (which no longer a rod, when he was at Jerusalem.”88
tial Twelfth Century composition proliferated addition of sacred sites within the church itself exists) bears references to the Field of Hakelda-
into additional structures: the aisled Church set the stage for a peripatetic worship that is at ma.85 These elaborate markers are significant as This document remains the only source on the
of St. Giovanni Battista, located south of the once mobile and yet bound by speech. they set the stage for a theatrical Easter celebra- establishment of Santo Stefano as a surrogate
Octagon; the Crypt, which has a central nave and Like the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Santo tion, similar to the one described by Egeria: On Jerusalem. Scholars such as Krautheimer, Morris,
double aisles, where the relics of the Saints are Stefano played a role in both the local cult and as Palm Sunday, following the service conducted and Ousterhout render the manuscript’s claim
housed; a Benedictine Cloister; and an additional a centre for pilgrimage. During Easter Week, the on St. Giovanni in Monte, palm branches were for a Fifth-century structure unreliable, and sug-
the Bars, Westminster Templars’ new site was an enclaved precinct that generous in all its spacing, but disciplined and London: The New Temple tial, compositional, or analogical relationship to
and Southwark (pub- in the Middle Ages, 3
lished London: Victoria
was protected from the city by walls and gates,140 very sharply put together.”145 It was a modest Jerusalem. When Jansen writes that “[any] dis-
152
County History, 1909) where they built gardens, courtyards and lodg- structure, with an overall lack of decoration that Ibid, 4 tant allusions to typologies in Jerusalem can be
136
Ibid ing for three groups: The fully-professed knights, resonated with the order’s (initial) monastic 153
Ibid, 5 surmised” and that “the hall-church choir bears
137
Nicholson, At the
the non-professed armourers (who were their character.146 154
Williamson, Bruce
no readily comprehensible relationship to struc-
Heart of Medieval domestic servants) and the ordained priests, who The mnemonic association between the J., The History of the tures in Jerusalem,”150 she ignores the function of
London: The New Temple
in the Middle Ages, 1 were appointed by the knights.141 At the center of Round and the Anastasis Rotunda was clear. the two structures and the dynamic relationship
0 50 100m
Fig 10: Precinct of the New Temple, London, ca. 1250 138
Quash, Ben,
the precinct was the Temple Church: the order’s As argued by Krautheimer, the construction between them. In fact, the ritualisation of these
Drawing by the author, after Helen J. Nicholson and Rosen, Aaron, focal point, it was a place for the celebration of of a round church could easily be accepted in two spaces by the Templars, priests, and pilgrims
Visualising a Sacred City:
London, Art and Religion mass, the conducting of business, the royal trea- Medieval times as a referent to Jerusalem, and are analogical to the ones practiced in Jerusalem.
(London: I.B.Tauris,
stone quarry was renamed the Stable of Solomon, 2016)
sury, and a source of revenue from pilgrims. Eugene Viollet le Duc had specifically identified This analogy may not be a visual one (a “superfi-
where thousands of horses and camels were kept; 139
Following the idea of analogy, I argue that this type of churches with the Templars: “one cial” analogy), but its compositional similarities
Wilson, Christopher,
and cisterns, cloisters, workshops, and gardens “Gothic Architecture the Temple Church became a target of a source that gave the name of Temples, during the Middle (a “structural” analogy) nevertheless bear a strik-
Transplanted: the Nave
were erected upon the plateau.130 Although they of the Temple Church in
had now changed: it did not only refer structur- Ages, to chapel of the commanderies of the ing resemblance to the structures in Jerusalem.
were based on the Temple Mount, they neverthe- London” in The Temple ally to the relationship between the basilica and Templars; these chapels were habitually built Much like the Holy Sepulchre complex in
Church in London:
less maintained a close connection to the Holy History, Architecture, rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but on a circular plan, as a reminder [souvenir] of the Jerusalem and Santo Stefano in Bologna, the
Art eds.Robin Griffiths-
Sepulchre by safeguarding the keys to the trea- Jones and David Park
also to the composition of the two shrines on Holy Sepulchre.”147 What then of the choir — the Temple Church in London served the liturgical
sure where the Holy Cross was kept.131 (Woodbridge: The Temple Mount, the former mosque-cum-basilica longitudinal building attached to the central- needs of both its local population and of visit-
Boydell Press, 2010), 23
Back in the West, the Templars played a and the domed-octagon. The ritualisation of these ly-planned church, a counter horizontal move- ing pilgrims. As an institutionalised order, the
140
Wharton, Selling
major role in Crusading efforts by providing Jerusalem, 79
spaces will be explored below as a new analogous ment to the clearly-vertical Round? According to Templars spent their time away from prayers not
two valuable resources: wealth and manpow- 141
Jerusalem came to rise in London, appropriating historian Virginia Jansen, as much as the Round only by collecting alms and rent, but also by par-
Honeybourne, B.,
er.132 Notoriously wealthy,133 the Order acted as “The Templar Precinct in not only Jerusalem’s spiritual aura, but also its is an obvious typological import from Jerusalem, ticipating in Chapter meetings.151 These official
the Days of the Knights”
a depository of royal treasures or moneylenders, in Ancient Monument
economic power and political charisma.
collecting alms in gold, jewellery, and land.134 Society Vol. 16 (1968- Like in Jerusalem, the Temple Church
1969), 34
Essentially, the Templars were powerful bankers: is composed of two distinct components: A
142
Billings, Robert
for example, they loaned money to King Baldwin W., Architectural
rotunda, also called the “Round”, and a recten-
in order to secure a relic of the True Cross, and in Illustrations and Account gular choir. In the Round, an inner ring of six
of the Temple Church,.
1215 they loaned King John 1,100 marks to obtain (London, 1838), 9 marble piers, each consisting of a cluster of four
troops.135 By mobilising funds and goods from 143
Jansen, Virginia,
columns, is encircled by a lower vaulted ambu-
the West to the East, their rise to power coincided "Light and Pure: The latory. Above the central space, eight arched
Templars' New Choir,"
with the monetisation of Europe in the twelfth The Temple Church in windows punctured the thick mass of the drum,
London: History, Art and
and thirteenth centuries, and were contem- Architecture, eds. David
which is supported by exterior buttresses.142 The
porary to the development of the urban realm. Park and Robin Griffith- Round was consecrated in 1185, and only half a
Jones, London: Boydell
Indeed, the Templars recognised the economic Press, 2010, 45 century later, with the presence of King Henry III
advantage of the city and treated it as a source 144
Wilson, Gothic
in 1240, a rectangular choir was added to its east.143
of income by receiving land from the Church and Architecture Replacing a former aisless chancel, it was a Hall-
Transplanted, 25
renting it to the elite. Between the immunity Church type, containing a central nave and two
145
Pevsner, Nikolaus,
obtained from the Pope and the exemption from aisles that terminate in a raised altar on the flat
taxation awarded by the Monarchy, the Templars wall of the east edge, the opposite side of the
had accumulated a vast amount of revenue; this Round. The nave and aisles are topped by ribbed
had to be stored with an adequately monumen- pointed arches that rise to an equal height; this
tal structure that would serve a visual reminder means that, unlike a basilica, there are no clere-
not only of their wealth, but also of the symbolic story windows above the nave, and light instead
and literal possession of their origin and custody: is diffused equally in the interior by triple-lancet
Fig 11: Floor plan of the Temple Church, London.
Jerusalem. windows. Uniformity can also be identified in Drawing by the author
Fig 16: Temple Church of the Knights Templars (1185 AD) Inss of Court, City of
London. Photo by the author, 2019
STATION TO STATION
THEATRICALITY AND DISCIPLINE
OF THE VIA CRUCIS IN THE SACRED around the employment and restriction of theat-
ricality, this chapter will study one of the most
MOUNTAIN OF VARALLO radical renditions of the Stations of the Cross—
the Sacri Monti (sacred mountains), erected as
1
The Stations of the Cross, also called the Via Crucis (1) Jesus is condemned strongholds of Catholic piety in the Italian Alps
to death, (2) he is made
(Way of the Cross), is one of the most common to bear his cross, (3) he during the crucial decades of Protestant reform.
falls the first time, (4)
rituals in the Catholic church. It consists of a se- he meets his mother,
Specifically, it will explore the inception, destruc-
quence of numbered stations that commemorate (5) Simon of Cyrene is tion, and reconstruction of the first example
made to bear the cross,
Christ’s Passion, encompassing the sentencing, (6) Veronica wipes of such religious complexes: the Sacro Monte
Jesus’ face, (7) he falls
crucifixion, and entombment of Jesus. Today, the the second time, (8) the
di Varallo (1491), which became a laboratory of
Stations of the Cross have been standardised and women of Jerusalem artistic experimentation aimed at disciplining
weep over Jesus, (9)
conceptualised both in their appearance and in he falls the third time, religious representations and taming excessive
(10) he is stripped of
their ritual protocol. Typically, there are fourteen his garments, (11) he is
affectivity. Indeed, by the end of the turbulent
stations:1 each one is numbered, marked with nailed to the cross, (12) sixteenth century, Varallo had undergone a
he dies on the cross, (13)
a wooden cross, and arranged along a circuit at he is taken down from radical disciplinary process: its artistic program
the cross, and (14) he is
intervals of a distance relative to the scale of the placed in the sepulchre.
was recreated under a new visual regime that
site.2 Usually located along the aisles of Catholic 2
encapsulated the moral and theological reform of
Thurston, Herbert, The
churches, in monastic cloisters, or across an Stations of the Cross: an the Catholic church. Devout, decent, and direct,
account of their history
urban quarter, the stations must be followed as and devotional purpose
Varallo’s art modelled an abundance of restraint
a single devotional sequence.3 The movement (London: Burns and not only in the use of images, but also in its tol-
Oates, 1914), 175
between stations is a crucial element in the rit- erance for imagination, physical movement, and
3
The Catholic
ualised re-enactment of the Passion: it heightens Encyclopaedia. Vol.
Christian behaviour. Varallo thus became a blue-
the recollection of events that occurred in the 10. New York: Robert print for stational devotion: the critical purge
Appleton Company, 1911
Holy Land by embodying their spatial dispersion of theatricality brought to prominence a count-
4
McNamer, Sarah,
across a broad sacred topography. Affective Meditation
er-belief in legibility, which ultimately shaped
The underlying mechanism of the Via Crucis and the Invention of the coherent Catholic ritual we know today.
Medieval Compassion
derives from the paradoxic nature of the station (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press,
as a sign that marks a stop in order to perpet- 2009), 11
uate movement. These periodic stoppages are 5
Peters, F. E., “The
instrumental in unravelling the Christological Procession That Never ORIGIN OF THE STATIONS
narrative and dividing it into fragments that are Was: The Painful Way
in Jerusalem” in The
OF THE CROSS
easier to grasp as episodes. The re-enactment of Drama Review Vol. 29, While the stations embody collective memories
No. 3, Processional
the Passion, a violent event full of tragedy and Performance anchored in Jerusalem’s sacred topography, they
(Cambridge: The MIT
drama, maintains a degree of control by choreo- Press, 1985), 40
belong to a ritual of recollection infused with a
graphing the narrative as a serial progression of medieval sense of piety rooted in monastic or-
emotions, formulating a mode of spirituality that ders and processional liturgies in the West.5 In
is inherently theatrical. Theatrical, indeed, as
each station must be staged, like a scene, through
time, space, and text; theatrical, as the compo-
sitional relationship on the plane of interaction
(the frame of a picture, the boundaries of a stage,
the edge of a bas-relief or the viewing hole of a
tableau) is directed towards a captive audience, and
it harbours emotional excess that is known from
theater.4
This theological strategy was mobilised by
the Franciscan Order in the late Middle Ages,
but by the sixteenth century its legitimacy was
being undermined by figures of the Reformation,
who saw its embedded theatricality as a risk. This
gave rise to a debate around the use of images in
Fig 1: Easter Friday procession in the Sacro Monte di Varallo.
religious representation. To explore this dispute Photo by the author, 2019
44
Moronoe, Gerolamo terra-cotta figures, perspectival illusionism, nat-
Fig 7: Sacro Monte di Varallo, ca. 1500 (secretary to the Duke
Drawing by the author afterGaleazzo Alessi I never saw anything more pious or devout; I have never of Milan) Lettere ed ora- ural light, and the site’s topographic conditions,
seen anything that could pierce the heart more, which ziono Latine, September Ferrari created mini-theatres that made Christ’s
29, 1507, 148-49, in
looming at the end of the fifteenth century was 38
Wittkower, Rudolf, and Bethlehem, commemorating in Varallo only could compel one to neglect everything else and follow Gill, Galeazzo Alessi Passion an immediate reality. By 1514, close to
“‘Sacri Monti’ in the and the redevelopment
the growing power of Eastern Orthodox Christi- Italian Alps” in Idea and
the sites under the Order’s custody in Jerusalem. Christ alone. [...] Let cease henceforth those so-called of the Sacro Monte di thirty chapels were built in this manner, trans-
anity—fostered by the fall of Constantinople to Image: Studies in the Accordingly, movement was directed between Roman stations; let end even the Jerusalem pilgrimage [....] Varallo, 100; a similar forming the religious complex from a toponymic
Italian Renaissance” translation can be read
the Ottoman Turks in 1453—that was increasing- (London: Thames and the locations by the site’s analogous geography the ingenious site surpasses all antiquity.44 in Wharton, Selling constellation of markers to an elaborate facsimile
Hudson, 1978), 175 Jerusalem, 98
ly pushing the Franciscans out of their shrines rather than scriptural chronology, causing a con- of the life of Christ.49
39 45
and putting into question their papally-awarded Peri, Oded, fusion amongst pilgrims who were accustomed Indeed, Caimi’s isolated complex was relieved Nova, Alessandro In order to address the site’s audience,
Christianity under “‘Popular’ art in
Costodia Terra Sanctae.39 Islam in Jerusalem: The to encounter such episodes in a linear fashion.42 from the dangers posed by a politically and Renaissance Italy: Ferrari’s polychrome figures were dressed in
Question of the Holy Sites early response to the
When Caimi returned to Italy, he embarked in Early Ottoman Times
In an attempt to resolve this spatial complexity economically charged urban entity. As a local Je- Holy Mountain at clothes made from real fabric, their heads covered
on a project to provide a local alternative to (Leiden, 2001); Frazee, and perhaps to bring the site even closer to the rusalem, it could be both Herodian (i.e. first cen- Varallo” in Reframing with wigs, beards made from horsehair, and their
Charles A., Catholics the Renaissance: Visual
Jerusalem pilgrimage. Obtaining financial aid and Sultans: The Church Custodia Terra Sanctae, Franciscan guides were tury AD) and Mamluk, yet typologically entirely culture in Europe and eyes made of glass pebbles. Other artefacts and
and the Ottoman Empire, Latin America 1450-1650
and papal permission, Caimi began the construc- 1453-1923 (Cambridge,
made available to lead visitors between the cha- vernacular. It fulfilled Caimi’s desire to create a ( New Haven und London: accessories, such as chairs, ropes, buckets, and
tion of a spiritual complex atop an uninhabited 2006), 62-4, 145 pels.43 Unlike Jerusalem’s hurried tours, in Varallo local stage for devotion in a place that was at once Yale University Press, beds, were incorporated with the painted and
1995), 116
hillside by the Sesia river, whose topography 40
Wittkower, Rudolf, the guides allowed and even encouraged contem- remote and accessible. sculpted.50 Finally, sand, soil, and earth covered
46
“‘Sacri Monti’ in the Wittkower, “‘Sacri
resembled that of Jerusalem—at least in his eyes.40 Italian Alps” in Idea and
plation of each event of the Passion in its corre- However, the site relied on the capability of Monti’ in the Italian the chapel’s floor, merging the site’s landscape
Within this imaginary landscape, he erected Image: Studies in the sponding location, resulting in a combination of the devout to generate a mental image; in that Alps” in Idea and Image: with scenic murals, and the Holy Land with
Italian Renaissance” Studies in the Italian
three chapels and renamed some elements of the (London: Thames and physical and mental imagination that was never sense, it was not much different from Jerusalem Renaissance” (London: Varallo. The use of vernacular imagery—regional
Hudson, 1978), 176 Thames and Hudson,
terrain: the Holy Sepulchre on the hill of “Mount possible through meditation guidebooks, and itself, requiring much imaginative labour from 1978), 179 clothes, landscapes, and even facial features—
41
Calvary,” Nazareth by “Mount Tabor,” and Hood, William, “The certainly not in Jerusalem itself. the believer. Considering the site’s audience—the 47 mediated the distant and foreign through the
Sacro Monte of Varallo: Ibid
Bethlehem below “Mount Zion.” Caimi declared Renaissance Art and In 1507, the ambassador to the king of semi-literate lay people and the untutored clergy familiar and homely.51 The use of utilitarian
48
Popular Religion” in Ibid
that the spatial configuration of the chapels, the Monasticism and the Arts
France, Gerolamo Morone, visited the Sacro of vernacular origins—Caimi’s analogical Holy objects in religious art merged the sacred with
49
distance between them, and their relation to eds. Timothy Verdon and Monte at Varallo. He recorded his moving visit in Land was not enough. Hence, to reach a popular Hood, The Sacro the everyday, giving a realist form to the unseen,
John Dally (Syracuse: Monte of Varallo:
Varallo’s topographical features to be identical to Syracuse University an emotional letter to his friend, the poet Lancino audience, the order’s verbal sermons had to be Renaissance Art and thus aligning Varallo with the Franciscan mission
Press, 1984), 301 Popular Religion, 291
Jerusalem, creating an analogical equivalent to Curzio: “Because of the difficulties and dangers translated into tangible representations using of giving Christ’s humanity a palpable immedia-
42 50
Jerusalem by replicating its physical conditions Gill, Rebecca, endured by the pilgrims who visit Mount Calvary hyper-realist art.45 This resulted in a project that Leatherbarrow, David, cy.52 Rooted in medieval drama, yet enhanced by
“Galeazzo Alessi and the “The Image and Its
and bringing the pilgrim experience closer to redevelopment of the in Jerusalem, the Franciscans have built in Varallo would become what Rudolf Wittkower called Setting: A Study of the Renaissance techniques, these illusionary details
Sacro Monte di Varallo Sacro Monte at Varallo”
home. in Tridentine Italy,” in
a copy… The events of the Gospels are represented “one of the most extraordinary enterprises in the in Anthropology and transformed each chapel into a comprehensible
The first chapel was completed in 1491. Architectural History, in many chapels into which I was introduced by history of Catholic devotion and religious art.”46 Aesthetics, (Chicago: The episode from the life of Christ, to be read as a
Vol. 59 (2016), 100 University of Chicago
Dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre, it was built as a pious friar who has seen the place where the real The site’s artistic program owes its form to Press, 1987). scene in the drama of Calvary, enacted as a station
43
Ibid
a series of chambers through which the pilgrims body of Christ is buried.” Morone emphasised the Valsesian artist Gaudenzio Ferrari. Born in 51
Nova, “Popular” art in in the theatrical ritual.
passed, configuring their bodies by kneeling, the leadership of a local friar in Varallo, who had 1475, he arrived in Varallo in 1513 as an accom- Renaissance Italy, 116 Over the next three decades, the site grew
bending, and crawling in response to the shifting seen the real sites and could confirm that the “dis- plished artisan, a painter, philosopher and math- 52
Dolev, Nevet, The exponentially, both in scale and detail, into what
Observant Believer as
architectural proportions of space.41 Described tances between these chapels and the structures ematician.47 Ferrari’s project in Varallo sought to Participant Observer, 176 Witkower described as “an enterprise rarely
as a replica of the church in Jerusalem, it was in which the events are reproduced correspond expand Caimi’s miniature Holy Land into a stag- 53 matched in its successful appeal to popular imagi-
Wittkower, ‘Sacri
designed as a vessel for physical imitation, thus exactly to the originals.” Precision and specificity ing of Christ’s life and death by transforming each Monti’ in the Italian nation.”53 It was popular, for its intention was to
Alps, 175
generating an affective and intimate relationship were thus crucial to the erection of what he called of the existing chapels (plus some twenty more) deliver a clear, intense, and emotional message;
between the Jerusalem pilgrim and Christ. Caimi’s a copy that was not only identical, but possibly into a biblical tableau vivant using architecture, popular for its childlike simplicity and immedi-
Jerusalem Chapel was joined by those of Nazareth even superior to the real one. He concludes: sculpture, relief, and paintings.48 With life-size acy; popular for staging spirituality with extreme
devised for both image-makers and the clergy. rate program to adjust, restrain, and discipline its ter the mysteries, namely in a manner that would 98
Stoichita, Victor,
Visionary Experience in
Indeed, artists were to illustrate the merits of theatricality by reinstating theological precision. be legible, affective, and penitential. the Golden Age of Spanish
Christian dogma in a manner that would prevent When Alessi studied the existing chapels in Art (London: Reaktion
Books Ltd., 1995), 26
the possibility of confusion and distraction. This the Sacro Monte of Varallo, he generally approved
99
Göttler, The
set of guidelines was legislated in the Council of of the content of Ferrari’s tableaux. Of the depic- Temptation of the
the Catholic Church in Trent between 1545 and REFORMING VARALLO: tion of the suffering Christ, he wrote: “Here one Senses, 434
1563, held in response to the Protestant Reform. SHIELDS AND FIXED ITINERARIES sees [Christ] on the cross between two thieves,
Alongside the clarification of the role of the Vulnerable to a Protestant invasion from the and it seems to me that the sculpture and painter
church’s liturgy, the celebration of mass, and its north and largely affiliated with Catholic Mi- have very well explained this mystery, as is evi-
attitudes towards sin, justification, and salvation, lan, Varallo stood at the frontier of the Count- dent in the figure of our Saviour covered with
Fig 12: Sacro Monte di Varallo
the Council also issued a decree about the use er-Reformation. It attracted the attention of a wounds and bleeding profusely.”93 Indeed, over
Photo by the author, 2018
of images. Considering the uncontrolled expan- pivotal figure in the Counter-Reformation, the the next centuries, the artworks in Varallo’s cha-
sion of representational themes and subjects, former cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, Carlo pels would be carried out in the manner dictated The design of the Vetriate had several layers of
the decree sought to discipline the multiplicity Borromeo. Borromeo was immensely popular by Ferrari, despite shifting artistic tendencies in interlocking affectivity. First was the physical
of meaning created by those images. In other and hugely influential in the proceedings of the the Italian and Christian world. Works were exe- separation from the life-like tableaux, responding
words, the Council sought to order not only how Council of Trent and the implementation of the cuted by different teams in various stages of the to the widespread angst around idolatry.96 The
themes were to be represented, but also what was new reforms. A passionate believer in the power site’s development: the painter Domenico Alfano screen prevented touch and thus disciplined the
to be included in religious art. The decree asked of pilgrimage, Borromeo was said by his biogra- with sculpture Giovanni Tabachetti, the designer pilgrim’s literal engagement with the sacred
“all bishops, and others who sustain the office pher to have viewed the phenomenon of spiritual Giovanni d’Enrico, and by the 1640s, the painters scene, limiting the sensory experience to the
and charge of teaching” to instruct on the use of travel as “a valuable element in the grand design Morazzone and Antonio d’Enrico. These artists visual realm.97 The screen could also be seen as a
images, now limited to the representation of of Counter-Reform.”85 However, he strongly op- maintained the use of everyday objects, poly- frame; often ornate with decorative motifs, the
Christian archetypes—Christ, the Virgin Mother, posed any form of theatricality in the believer’s chrome figures, and perspectival frescoes within Vetriate demarcated the tableaux as a venerated
and the Saints—while anything else was consid- life, and therefore sought to discipline any rituals each new chapel. relic, casting an aura of sanctity over the un-
ered “false doctrine” and banned as a “dangerous with a substantial potential for error, confusion, The project departed from Ferrari, however, touchable terra-cotta figures within.98 According
error to the uneducated.” This cautious attitude and temptation.86 Speaking in 1576 at the Provin- in its various compositions that now depended to Christine Göttler, this disciplinary separation
towards images—their careful placement, correct cial Council on Religious Pilgrimage, he stressed on the pilgrim’s mode of engagement. Indeed, can increase the affective power of an image, as
content, and spatial configuration—reveals the the importance of restricting pilgrim itineraries while Alessi confirms the affective legibility of it becomes both visible and obscured.99 It creates
Catholic adaptation of the Protestant critique; if and restraining their use of images, in order to the chapels (“in truth, no believer could look on a safe distance, eliminating the risk of idolatrous
used improperly, images could cause chaos and control body and mind.87 Borromeo would go on with a dry eye”), he was not content with the behaviour and moral corruption, preventing a col-
disorderly behaviour; if used correctly, however, to implement these ideas in Varallo: from his first possibility to engage directly with the sacred lapse into uncontrollable performative violence.
Fig 14: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross, Giovanni d’Enrico (1599) Fig 15: Drawing of the Chapel of the Temptation of Christ,
looking through the Vitriate. Photo by the author, 2018 Galeazzo Alessi, Libro Dei Misteri (1565-1569)
followed physically, the route to personal salva- The second major revision proposed by Alessi was
Fig 13: The clear separation between the space of the pilgrim and that tion was contingent on an interior journey. After to give a sense of order to the physical movement
of the figure and the “Vetriate” through which viewing takes place. Chapel of the Original
Sin, Galeazzo Alessi, Libro Dei Misteri (1565-1569) Trent, remission of sins and justification through of the pilgrim through the site. At a time when the
action was crucial, and Alessi’s Vetriate should be church was trying to impose order and restriction
viewed in the context of this religious climate. on religious spaces by standardising the reception
This ‘veiling’ of the tableaux could heighten The Transfiguration Chapel is but one example Like prayer itself, the confession of sin was spa- of images and their behavioural consequences,
the symbolic power of what was partially hid- of Alessi’s revision of the site’s legibility. With tially ordered in Milan in the 1560s through the Varallo could not afford a lack of clarity.106 While
den, directing the pilgrim’s attention to the the grille partitions, Alessi created a design to church confessional, a device with two separate each chapel represented a scriptural episode and
unseen and ungraspable. In the Chapel of the discipline the gaze in the site’s older and future compartments for the kneeling confessor and the an affective response, it was essentially a singu-
Transfiguration of Christ, for example, the climax chapels, presenting each tableau as a represen- seated Father. Between them, a small window lar station that was part of a larger constellation
of the mystery is deliberately shielded from view. tation—not an embodiment—of the divine. To was fitted with a perforated metal grille, enabling in the devotional process. This process, given the
Built on top of a natural hill in Varallo, this cir- assure complete clarity, Alessi inserted a device the exchange of words but not glances, prevent- site’s topographical conditions, had to be staged
cular chapel replaced the Caimi-era Chapel of the within a device, a viewing aperture in the Vetriate. ing seduction by eliminating visual and physical as a clear roadmap to salvation.
Ascension, which made the natural hill analogi- Its particular width and placement created a contact.103 Not dissimilar from Alessi’s Vetriate, When Alessi arrived at Varallo, the neglected
cal for the Mount of Olives. Alessi’s design, begin- condition for solitary devotion, withdrawing the the confessional was widely introduced in order Franciscan complex was in disorder, suspended
ning in 1572 and completed only in 1665, included pilgrim from risky engagement with a group of to regulate sensorial interactions; it fixed a spatial between its own geography and Jerusalem’s
the addition of a stucco Mount “Tabor,” thus emotional fellow-travellers. Isolation, after Trent, composition as a precondition for pious activity. sacred topography; its spiritual narrative was
expanding the geographical and scriptural scope was crucial; pilgrimage was to return to its ere- An examination of a detail from Alessi’s only legible with the help of a local guide who
of the site’s initial commemoration beyond the mitic origins, distanced from society in self-im- Libro shows a pilgrim kneeling before a tableau, was familiar with both Varallo’s mysteries and
events of the Passion and Jerusalem alone. Inside, posed exile, undertaking spiritual exercises in grasping his hands, lifting his gaze, and pray- its prototype in the Holy Land.107 But Varallo
a turbulent supernatural sky surrounds a group private through meditation and contemplation.101 ing in stillness. According to scholars, it is not was not Jerusalem, nor an urban entity at all: it
of sculpted apostles, who look up towards Christ’s The pilgrim would also be protected from what by chance that Alessi chose to demonstrate this was an isolated religious complex unaffected by
figure, placed high above the reach of the pil- Trent referred to as confusing theological mes- device in the Chapel of the Temptation of Christ, the political, social, and economic constraints of
grim’s gaze. Like the painted pilgrims in Ferrari’s sages, preventing “dangerous errors to the uned- alluding to the curiosities posed by images.104 a real city. Alessi, who was employed by the fab-
Calvary, the flesh-and-blood visitor to Varallo ucated” by directing the gaze precisely to particular Thus, Alessi’s penitential viewing device not only bricieri rather than the Franciscan Order, could
joins the represented figures by looking up to the elements of the elaborate scene. Through careful tamed but also channelled the viewer’s devotion. alter the site’s original layout in accordance with
miracle.100 Shielded by the Vetriate, the pilgrim is placement, the viewing holes literally framed hand By likening the still tableau to a flesh-and-blood Trinidad concerns. Like the Vetriate, this new
forced to look up above the mountain, beyond the gestures, extreme facial expressions, and personal bishop, Alessi bestowed the terra-cotta figures system had a twofold reasoning: to prescribe a
apostles, in order to witness the sacred drama, encounters that were familiar to the viewer from with the authority of remission. This was not far fixed itinerary for the body (hence, of the mind),
creating a vertical axis of both real and mental sermons. This not only made the lesson entirely from the truth: in 1587, Pope Sixtus V declared the and to stage sufficient clarity to enable a solitary,
space, fostering a corporeal memory and staging legible to the viewer, but it portrayed nothing Sacro Monte of Varallo a “religious [monument] unguided ritual.
the penitential labour of the body and mind. In more nor less than the ‘prototypes’ prescribed in of extraordinary antiquity” (religiosa antiquitatis As described earlier in this chapter, Caimi’s
this way, the screen directed worship away from Trent.102 monumenta insignis), and promised that a visit to Varallo was constructed as a series of detached
the materiality and towards the immateriality of It is important to remember that while each chapel within this complex would award chapels, whose location supposedly corresponded
what was represented. Varallo’s stational ritual was constructed as a the pilgrim with an indulgence of 100 days, an to a hallowed site in the Holy Land. Visitors to
sequence of lessons and Christian rites to be amount matched only by Jerusalem itself.105 Varallo who had never visited Jerusalem, and had
Fig 1: Homes of the British Embassy (left) and the American Consulate (right)
Jerusalem, ca. 1900.
11
would be used by both physical and virtual pil- Fields, Gary, powers to advance not only political agendas, but
Enclosure: Palestinian
grims for centuries to come.8 What made them Landscapes in a also economic aspirations.
Historical Mirror
unique within the sphere of pilgrim diaries is (Oakland: University of
In pre-reform Palestine, agriculture
that they downplayed the subjective element of California Press, 2017), engaged both urban dwellers and village farmers
177
their journey in favour of what can anachronisti- in the production and exchange of grain, fruit,
12 Fig 2: Land parcellation and ownership in Hadera, by Max Shapiro (1895)
Fields, Enclosure, 181
cally be described as a scientific observation of the and oil. Land was divided into numerous catego-
13
sites, including measurements, sketches, detailed Ibid, 178–179 ries whose intricacy is beyond the scope of this all production was taxed by collectors (who were 14
Redistribution of process, it abolished existing notions of collectiv-
land was dictated based
plans, and comparative observations.9 paper; however, it is crucial to understand that themselves pressured by the Empire), this system on the capacity of each
ity in favour of speculative investment targeted
Not until the nineteenth century would this before the 1858 Land Code, the concept of private meant that the risks posed by the uncertainty of hamula (an extended at increasing the value of soil. This commodifi-
family that provided
sense of curiosity and desire to locate the “truth” property was unknown in Palestine: the majority agricultural life would be pooled, thus prevent- economic and social sup- cation of land into an immovable asset was the
port to its members) to
about Christ’s land be met with such favourable of the population (about 80%) inhabited and cul- ing the impoverishment of individual farmers. cultivate their share of
manifestation of the state’s attempt to spatialise
geopolitical conditions. The 1839 Ottoman Tanzimat tivated land that was owned by the Empire (Miri) However, in terms of surplus, it also meant that their land, based on the its power under the Tanzimat reforms by ordering,
number of male labour-
(literally ‘reorganisation’) was an Empire-wide to whom they would pay tax (in kind or cash) there was little incentive for individual farmers ers and animal-drawn regulating, and classifying economic and social
ploughs
reform echoing the seismic shifts that took place through intermediary collectors, often the local to improve the land by fertilising the soil or plant- activities.15
15
in Europe in the nineteenth century. It included elites.11 Miri land accounted for about 90% of agri- ing trees. Islamoglu, Huri, Though it was not successful on all fronts,
“Property as a Contested
the introduction of basic civil liberties like free- cultural land in the Empire, giving cultivators a Since the Land Code sought to dramati- Domain: A Reevaluation the reform effectively liberalised the land mar-
of the Ottoman Land
dom and security, a reform of the banking system, durable right of use yet no possession over the land cally improve the Empire’s revenue, the reform Code of 1858”, in New
ket in Palestine.16 The abstraction of territory
the replacement of religious with secular law, the itself. In other words, a tree planted was owned targeted two factors: the amount of land that Perspectives on Property through mapping and registration reshaped the
and Land in the Middle
institutionalisation of labour through guilds, and by the cultivator, but the land itself belonged to was being cultivated and the incentive of each East ed. Roger Owen land according to a regime of enclosure and exclu-
(Cambridge: Harvard
a new Ottoman flag and anthem. Most impor- the Sultan. Furthermore, the customary right to cultivator to increase production. The former University Center for
sion. Under the new legal conditions, land could
tantly for Palestine, the Tanzimat introduced a cultivate Miri land was contingent on continuous was increased by awarding land-by-subscription Middle Eastern Studies, be freely alienated and sold without discrimina-
2001), 12
new land code that was designed to centralise production: if left unattended for three years, the to those cultivating ‘dead’ land; the latter was tion—even to foreigners.17 Though the Christian
16
The musha tenure
power and increase the Empire’s tax revenue by land would revert back to the state.12 bolstered by allowing tenured farmers on Miri remained until the twen-
Church had held ecclesial properties in Palestine
improving agricultural production. Essentially, Other types of land that are relevant for land to assume private ownership (giving the tieth century, and the since Byzantine times, only after the reform was
Ottomans did not have a
it was an attempt to perpetuate certain tradi- this discussion include the freehold Mulk, which cultivator a full right of possession and heritable proper cadastral survey, it allowed to expand, develop, and enclose its
thus unable to connect
tions of Islamic law tenure while introducing a often consisted of urban plots for dwelling, and rights), in contrast to the collective Musha system. individuals to plots of
own missionary institutions, educational facil-
fundamental trope of Western modernisation: Waqf, or Islamic trust, which was untaxable land Peasant ownership of land through title deeds land for registration. — ities, hospices and hospitals. These included the
Fields, Enclosure, 194
private property. The possibility to own land in dedicated to services for the Muslim community had two benefits for the empire: it forced culti- German deaconess Hospital, the Anglican hospi-
17
Fields, Enclosure, 195
the Holy Land made possible what was described (such as mosques, education, roads, and resting vators to register their land and thus to subject tal, the Notre dame Hospice and the Italian hos-
18
as the ‘peaceful Crusade’, a gradual movement in places for travellers).13 In many villages, the dis- it to regular taxation, and it allowed individual Kark and Oren- pital, as well as St Joseph nursing school.18 On a
Nordheim, Jerusalem
survey, archaeology and settlement of Europeans tribution of productive land was based on Musha accumulation by encouraging improvement of and Its Environs, 79 larger scale, the monumental Russian compound
and Americans to Palestine.10 Indeed, what tenure, where cultivators shared collective rights a territory that was no longer shared. This shift was built on a hill across from the Old City under
enabled this symbolic and literal ownership of over land. In this self-governing model, parcels from use-rights to private ownership re-ordered the name “Nova Yerusalima”, with an invest-
the land was the abstraction of land through a of land were redistributed amongst the village the land by employing the rhetoric of prog- ment of about 250,000 pounds sterling from the
new property regime, which allowed Western Hamulas (extended families) every five years.14 As ress, improvement, and modernisation; in the Russian government.19 These ventures were to
28
Ibid
The enclosed perimeter of the “Russian
Compound”. The parcellation of land is 29
Thomson, William and dysentery were to be solved by a donation
clearly visible both within and outside the walls
(1860s). Source: Michael Maslan/Getty Images
McClure, The Land and from an English noblewoman who was eager to
the Book: Or Biblical
Illustrations Drawn from rebuild the city’s water system.31 In 1864, she pro-
the Manners and Customs,
the Scenes and Scenery of vided £500 to the Royal Engineers to conduct an
of Biblical Geography”. The certainty introduced the Holy Land (London: T. accurate study of the city. Led by Captain Charles
Nelson and Sons, 1854),
by his scientific (and pseudo-scientific) method- introduction William Wilson, this was the first Western mis-
Fig 3: The enclosed perimeter of the “Russian Compound”
the parcellation of land is clearly visible both within and outside the walls (1860s) ology inspired generations of religious-oriented 30
Bliss, Lectures on the sion to be sent by a government body rather
explorers to seek the paradoxical ‘religious truth’ development of Palestine than merely inspired by personal curiosity and
Exploration, 207
provide pilgrims with a home in the holy city, 19
Cohen-Hattab, Kobi tions of natural elements, as well as an atlas of that could be differentiated from what Robinson interests.32 This time, skilled surveyors utilised
31
and Shoval, Noam, Lady Angela Burdett-
as well as subsidies in the form of food, lodging Tourism, Religion and
fauna, flora, and climate.23 However, unlike his referred to as legendary traditions.28 His noble in- Couts, in Galor, Finding modern equipment to map the city at 1:2,500
and medical aid, while allowing foreign powers Pilgrimage in Jerusalem predecessors, who followed well-trodden paths, tentions notwithstanding, his statements were Jerusalem, 30 scale, including the city walls and gates, layout of
(Oxford and New York:
to expand their control on the ground.20 Beyond Routledge, 2015), 8 recapitulated previously-written accounts, and nonetheless revealing of the paternalistic ap- 32
Moscrop, John James, streets, and locations of important buildings and
Measuring Jerusalem:
the accommodation of pilgrims, the mechanisms 20
Ibid, 30
relied on information provided by local monastic proach to the territory and the ease with which The Palestine Exploration public facilities.33 The resulting “Ordnance Survey
by which land was privatised, alienated and sold 21
institutions, Robinson decided to question the he discarded centuries of histories, a sentiment Fund and British of Jerusalem” was the first accurate map of the
Galor, Katharina, Interests in the Holy Land
led to its radical transformation in the decades Finding Jerusalem: ecclesiastical traditions of nineteenth-century of Western superiority that would be repeated by (Leicester: Leicester city, and proved invaluable to the Empire in its
Archaeology between University Press, 2000),
to come by allowing Western exploration on the Science and Ideology
Palestine by using his own methods: a measuring future travellers-cum-colonisers. 73 eventual expansion to Palestine.
surface of the land—and into its depths. (Oakland: University of tape, minute observations, and a detailed system While Robinson expanded the field of vision 33 While the improvement plan for Jerusalem’s
California Press, 2017), Galor, Finding
29 of orthography.24 by questioning existing traditions, he was still Jerusalem, 30 water supply was never realised, Wilson’s survey
22
Robinson, Edward,
Thanks to his rigour, Robinson discovered confined to the idiom of land-and-book research, 34
Lipman, V. D., “The precipitated the foundation of the largest enter-
Biblical Researches hundreds of previously unknown or unrecognised where one was to be read in light of the other.29 Origins of the Palestine prise of Western biblical inquiry, the Palestine
in Palestine and the Exploration Fund”,
ACT I: Adjacent Regions sites, amongst them the remains of an arch that led That is to say, his mission was to identify and Palestine Exploration Exploration Fund.34 The PEF was launched in 1865
THE EXPLORER-SURVEYOR (London: John Murray,
1856), vol. 1, vii, in
to the Temple Mount (known today as “Robinson’s authenticate sites mentioned in the Scripture, not
Quarterly 120, no. 1
(1988): 45–54 before a group of clergymen, scientists and public
The quintessential pilgrim-explorer of Biblical Bliss, Lectures on the Arch”) and the Siloam tunnel that runs beneath to conduct a general topographic or archaeologi- 35 officials.35 The Archbishop of York introduced the
development of Palestine The meeting took place
Palestine was Edward Robinson. Born in 1794 in Exploration, 203 the city into the Shiloach fountain, Jerusalem’s cal study of a given area. When encountering an in Willis’s Rooms in St Fund:
James Street on June
Connecticut, Robinson studied law, mathematics, 23
Bliss, Lectures on the
first water source.25 Robinson’s three-volume ancient Greek inscription along one of his routes, 22, 1865. It was chaired
and Greek, spending his early career translating development of Palestine publication, Biblical Researches in Palestine (1841), for example, he did not bother to interpret the by William Thomson, Our object is strictly an inductive inquiry. We are not to
Exploration, 9–11, 146 Archbishop of York, and
the New Testament into English and publishing was widely accepted in the West; it won him a text as the site was not on his biblical checklist; attended by twenty-five be a religious society; we are not about to launch into any
24 men including clergy-
Ibid, 211
Hebrew-English lexicons of the Old Testament. gold medal from the Royal Geographical society when he passed by what would later be recognised men, scientists, and controversy; we are about to apply the rules of science,
25
In 1838, a year after being appointed as the first Ibid, 164, in London in 1842.26 In the preface to the first vol- as the remains of the ancient walls of Jericho, other public officials which are so well understood by us in other branches, to
such as bankers and
professor of biblical literature in the Theological 26
Galor, Finding ume, Robinson explained his intentions: Robinson dismissed the site as a mount of “rub- members of parliament. an investigation into the facts concerning the Holy Land.36
Jerusalem, 29 — Lipman, The Origins of
Seminary in New York, Robinson travelled to bish” due to its distance from known sites.30 This the Palestine Exploration
27
what was then Muhammad-Ali-occupied Pales- Robinson, Biblical We wish it to be regarded merely as a beginning, a first mode of specific inquiry changed in the 1860s Fund, 49 Faced with controversies amongst Christian de-
Researches, xi
tine.21 Thanks to the easing of travel restrictions, attempt to lay open the treasures of Biblical Geography when European powers began to send a different 36
William Thomson, nominations (notably between Anglo-Catholics
Archbishop of York, in
his profound knowledge of the Scriptures, and and History still remaining in the Holy Land; treasures kind of explorer—not the learned scholars of the his opening speech to and Evangelicals), the Fund was able to unite
his interpreter Eli Smith, Robinson could see which have lain for ages unexplored, and had become so Bible, but surveying military men. In that sense, the PEF. — PEF, Report of men in and outside the Church by hailing the
Proceedings (1865), 3 —
what he described as ‘the promised land’ unfold covered with the dust and rubbish of many centuries [...] it is perhaps unsurprising that the first survey Lipman, The Origins of Bible not only as a religious guide but as a his-
the Palestine Exploration
before his eyes.22 Similar to those before him, he May He, who has thus far sustained me, make it useful for was framed not by religious intentions but by a Fund, 4 torical document whose merit was yet to be fully
saw the Scriptures as a guidebook of topographic the elucidation of His truth!27 prototypical colonial motivation: improvement. understood. They claimed that the Holy Land
details, names of towns and villages, and loca- Indeed, Robinson came to be known as the “father Jerusalem’s recurring breakouts of cholera was “crying out for accurate investigation”37 and
pilgrims accepted the uncertainty of the site, in be the true and entire
monument of Christ, or
the nineteenth century this ambiguity was no whether a part of it be
there, or whether none
longer tolerable.64 The first volume of the PEF’s of it be there, matters
Recovery of Jerusalem (1871) read: “There are differ- very little with one way
or the other, because the
ences of opinions […] whether the present church main fact connected with
the place abides true …
of the Holy Sepulchre does or does not cover the where there is a monu-
true Sepulchre of our Saviour; if not, whether ment erected to Christ,
and where the Sacrament
the true site can yet be recovered.”65 Likewise, of his body has been of-
ten celebrated.” Quoted
Fig 12: Excavations on Ophel, showing rock-hewn steps (left) and Lieutenant Claude Reignier Conder of the Royal in Bliss, Lectures on the
foundations of a tower in Siloam (right), ca. 1900
Engineers writes in 1878 that “the study of the development of Palestine
exploration, 29
rock [the existing Calvary] drives us irresistibly to
>>> and Palestine (New 65
Palestine Exploration
the Old City, “the Jerusalem of Christ will soon York: American Tract
followed by Christ […] The sister who accompanied me the conclusions given above, and thus forbids us Fund, Vol. I; “The
be reconstituted”,58 showcasing the belief that Society 1878), 234–235, in these vaults, throwing over the age-old walls the light to accept the traditional site of the Sepulchre as Recovery of Jerusalem: A
partially quoted in Narrative of Exploration
all Western scholars had to do was find the ‘Bible Kattaya, “Writing the of her lantern, has succeeded in imparting to me for the genuine.”66 The dispute surrounding the existing and Discovery in the City Fig 15: Easter morning at the Garden Tomb (1939)
‘Real Jerusalem’”, 20 and the Holy Land by
under the cobblestones’ of modern Jerusalem. moment her own ardent convictions. I, too, in the presence site raised questions that were far beyond histor- Wilson; Warren; Walter
58
In other words, it is there that memory can be Loti, Pierre, Jérusalem of these debris, am much moved as she herself.61 ical curiosity, and resulted in the invention of an Morrison; Ordnance its location on a site that had been speculatively
(Paris: Calmann-Lévy, Survey of the Peninsula
literally excavated and brought into the surface 1895), trans. W. P. Baines alternative holy site: the Garden Tomb. of Sinai: Made with identified as the Tomb of Christ due to a supposed
(Philadelphia: D. McKay, the Sanction of the
where it will be readily available for recollection. 1916), 111
Recollection thus occurs based on affectivity; The British Major-General Charles Gordon arrived Right Honourable Sir
connection between the name of the place and
One of the recovered sites was the Sisters of 59 this ancient room gained a mnemonic function in Palestine in 1883. Following a quest to find the John Pakington, Bart., the skull-shaped rock above.69 One of the stron-
Lemire, Jerusalem Secretary of State for
Zion Convent, built on land purchased by Father 1900, 48 thanks to a pseudo-scientific fragment, a local fig- exact location of the Garden of Eden in Seychelles, War by C. W. Wilson; H. gest advocates of this site was Claude Reignier
P. Palmer”, The North
Marie-Alphonse de Ratisbonne in the 1860s. 60
“When Pilate
ure of religious authority, and proximity to other American Review 113, no.
Conder, who had written an account that dis-
Until excavations under the convent began, the therefore heard these holy sites. Following the monastery’s discovery, 232 (July 1871): 154–173 carded the existing Calvary and assumed this an-
words, he brought Jesus
convent carried no mnemonic function as it out, and sat down on the other holy sites proliferated nearby based on their 66
Conder, Claude cient rock tomb as the true site of Christ’s burial.70
judgment-seat at a place Reignier, Tent Work in
was merely in the vicinity of holy sites, such as called The Pavement, but
perceived authenticity. Soon around Gabbatha Palestine: A Record of
In his Tent Work in Palestine (1878), Conder explains
the ruined section of a Roman arch that came to in Hebrew, Gabbatha.” — were erected the Monastery of the Flagellation, Discovery and Adventure, his findings using a process of identification sim-
John 19:13. vols. 1 and 2 (New York:
be known as the Ecce Homo Arch, where Christ’s where Christ was flogged by the Romans, and D. Appleton, 1878), 371 ilar to that applied to some of the Stations of the
61
Loti, Jérusalem,
trial took place. Determined to find a biblical 89, quoted in Lemire,
the Church of the Condemnation, where Christ 67
Monk, Daniel
Cross: he emphasised its proximity to the place of
trace beneath the convent, the Sisters discovered Jerusalem 1900, 49 picked up his cross. In addition to events related Bertrand, An St Stephen’s Martyrdom and to a Sephardic Jew-
Aesthetic Occupation:
the remains of a Roman room and pieces of an 62
Harris, Pictures of the to Christ and the Via Crucis, other minute details The Immediacy of ish cemetery, as well as its location outside of the
East, 5 (my italics) Architecture and the
ancient pavement, twelve meters below.59 As they from the Scriptures were localised. The patrimo- Palestine Conflict
Old City walls, as written in the New Testament.71
could only dig within the territory owned by the nial inflation included not only religious bodies (Durham: Duke Conder was convinced that the existing Calvary
University Press, 2002),
Convent, the Sisters could not explore where the but also national institutions. As Hanna Harris 18 “lowers the Christian faith in the eyes of the Mos-
path led; however, its orientation in the direc- writes, the English hospital excavated under its 68
There was a belief that
lem” because of its desecrating falsehood.72 After
tion of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (where premises to discover: a pattern on the terrain laying out his detailed observation and investiga-
would suggest the
Calvary was monumentalised) and proximity to shape of a skull. Claude tion into his Calvary, he concludes, “we cannot,
Conder writes: “Others,
the Ecce Homo Arch was sufficient to establish a very ancient and massive prison [...] with several cells including many of the
I would argue, consider these facts to be mere
the site as a node in the route of the Stations of enclosed, and it is thought that very possibly it was in one Fig 13: Map of the area around Skull Hill and the Garden Tomb
early fathers, suppose it coincidence; they are rather strong confirmation
to refer to the shape of
the Cross. Thus was born the new historic mon- of these that the Apostle Peter was imprisoned and from property in the 1880s
the ground—a rounded of the accuracy of the more generally accepted
hill, in form like a skull.”
ument of Gabbatha (Aramaic) or Lithostrōtos which he was so miraculously delivered, as described in — Conder, Tent Work in
views regarding the topography and monuments
(Greek), mentioned in the Gospel of John as the the Acts of the Apostles. [...] even if it be not the actual Gordon visited Jerusalem with the aim of locating Palestine, 372. of ancient Jerusalem.”73
place of Christ’s trial.60 Pierre Loti, who visited the prison, it must be of equal antiquity, and serves to illus- another sign of the divinity in the natural world: 69
“[The] hill is left It took a decade to secure the purchase of the
steeply rounded on its
site and was guided by a nun, writes: trate the Scripture incident most vividly.62 Golgotha, the hill where Christ was Crucified, west, north, and east
site that came to be known as “Gordon’s Calvary.”
also known as the place of the skull, or Calvary.67 sides forming the back Initially bought by a Swiss investor, it was later
and sides of the kranion,
One is able by piecing together theoretically the fragments Harris admits that even if it is not exactly a pris- Gordon traced contour lines onto Jerusalem’s PEF or skull. The skull-like collectively purchased by the Garden Tomb
front, or face, on the
of the Herodian roads and the debris of the ancient on, nor Peter’s cell, she can still understand the Surveys in search of patterns that would suggest south side is formed by
Association, a private organisation composed of
ramparts to discover and follow as far as Calvary the way Scriptures better due to its authentic character. the position of Golgotha,68 only to finally confirm the deep perpendicular noblemen and women who showed an “earnest
cutting and removal
of the ledge. To the
observer, at a distance,
86 TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER FOUR— the eyeless socket of the
skull would be suggested
The Innocents Abroad 87
at once by the yawning
cavern, hewn within
74
Hope, L. and
Hopkins, E., 1894.
from owning the holy places, the leaders of the The Garden Tomb is readily consumable by their target audience:
(Jerusalem) Purchase
Protestant community were compelled to invent Fund, February, GTA
pilgrims. Before describing Jerusalem’s tourism
their own historic monuments in order to assure Archive, in Kark, Ruth project, it is important to consider the interpre-
and Frantzman, Seth. J.,
the group’s faculty of recollection. “The Protestant Garden tation of valorisation not only by Choay (or as she
Tomb in Jerusalem,
This was the height of Jerusalem’s patrimo- Englishwomen, and a
called it in French, mise en valeur) but also by Karl
nial project, designed to attract Western pilgrims Land Transaction in Late Marx (or as he termed in German, Verwertung). In
Ottoman Palestine”,
to the city. The proliferation of historic monu- Palestine Exploration chapter four of Capital, Volume 1, Marx explains
Quarterly (November
ments countered the spiritual drainage emblem- 2010): 206
the difference between the Commodity-Money-
atic of industrial Europe, by providing a place 75
Commodity model (C-M-C)—in which a person
Ibid, 206
of spiritual worship and affective recollection. sells one commodity in order to buy another for
76
Ibid, 210
Thanks to scientific practices, existing elements use—and the Money-Commodity-Money model
77
such as a rock cave or a fragment of an arch could Ibid, 206 (M-C-M)—where a commodity is only bought
turn into proof of one’s own history. However, 78
Kark and Frantzman, to be resold at a higher price. The C-M-C circuit
The Protestant Garden
the scrutiny under which the materiality of the Tomb in Jerusalem, 201
is completed when the sale of one commodity
city was studied and designated also dissolved 79
enables the purchase of another, which is then
The Sultan in a firman
Jerusalem’s protective case of topographical and of May 1853, quoted in consumed. In contrast, M-C-M is an intermina-
Finkelman, Yifat, In
chronological ambiguity, which enabled its rela- Status Quo (Berlin: Hatje
ble process that begins and ends with money: it
tive coexistence, allowed for analogical flexibility, Cantz, 2018), 27 (my concludes a movement “only to begin it again”.
italics)
and defined its shared identity. In that sense, the Marx defines the distinction between the two
80
Cohen-Hattab and
patrimonial project was very much led by political Shoval, Tourism,
modes as “a palpable difference between the cir-
aspirations, tainted by a colonialist hue, and fed Religion and Pilgrimage culation of money as capital, and its circulation
in Jerusalem, 19
by not only nationalist ambitions but greed over as mere money.”82 In M-C-M, when the purchased
81
Choay, The Invention
land and resources. Indeed, this paper has yet to of the Historic
commodity is once again abstracted into money,
discuss explicitly the implications of European Monument, 143 the incremental growth of the original amount
penetration into the Holy Land for the commod- 82
Marx, Karl, Capital: is defined as surplus. This process of expansion
A Critique of Political
ification of pilgrimage and the role of capitalism Economy, Volume I: The
(or enhancement) of value is referred to as valo-
in shaping the architecture of the city, which is at Process of Production of risation. Therefore, to valorise in Marxist terms
Capital, first published
stake in this chapter and will be discussed below. in German (1867) trans. means to increase the surplus-value extracted
Samuel Moore and
Edward Aveling, ed.
from a commodity: valorisation is what converts
Frederick Engels ( Marx/ money into capital.
Engels Internet Archive,
1995, 1999), Chapter 4 In that sense, both Choay’s and Marx’s defi-
ACT III: 83
Cobbing, Felicity,
nitions of valorisation are at play in late nine-
Fig 16: The Garden Tomb in 2020. Photo by the author THE TOURIST “Thomas Cook teenth-century Jerusalem. As explained below,
and the Palestine
The second half of the nineteenth century saw the Exploration Fund”, at the same time that its monuments were
Public Archaeology
total commodification of Jerusalem pilgrimage 11 (November 2012):
adapted to appear increasingly legible and com-
its face, beneath the
desire […] that the garden and its tomb should garden—which became a place for the recollec- into tourism. While this dissertation has sought 179–194 prehensible to visiting tourists, their potential
hill. — ״Howe, Fisher,
be secured from desecration on the one hand or The True Site of Calvary: tion for English and American Protestant com- to problematise spiritual journeys across many for profit was maximised through a system of
And Suggestions Relating
superstition on the other.”74 The Association pur- to the Resurrection (New munities. centuries through the lens of their secular moti- commodified pilgrimage. With fixed itineraries,
York: A.D.F. Randolph,
chased the land and adjoining plots (measuring The invention of the Garden Tomb was as vations—cultural curiosity, political aspirations, a chain of hotels, and well-trained tour guides,
1871)
6,440 sqm) that bordered the property of Muslims 70
strategic as it was spiritual. Unlike other ‘redis- economic gain, and natural sceneries—these ob- the tourist industry was able to capitalise on
Conder, Tent Work
and Greeks and was hidden beneath a Muslim in Palestine, 374–377, covered’ holy sites in Jerusalem, the protestant jectives were never before pursued to such mag- Jerusalem’s symbolic value and valorise each of
cemetery, perched on the so-called “Skull Hill” in Moscrop, Measuring its sites as a productive asset. Practices of recov-
Golgotha not only added an additional site to the nitude. As explained below, pilgrimage—once a
Jerusalem, 168
above.75 Though the land was initially considered 71
pilgrim’s route, but also attempted to discredit solitary experience based on the moral unit of the ery, reconstruction, and restoration, as applied to
The location of the
as Mulk (freehold), in 1905 the association man- wall is one of the biggest another. This was a deliberate decision on the individual—was now organised in large groups, the newly invented sites in the Holy Land, were
misunderstandings
aged to change its designation to Waqf in order to part of the Protestants—who were not recognised sold as a leisure activity, and promoted as an established as fundamental mechanisms achiev-
in regard to Calvary.
prevent it from reverting back to the state when Those who oppose the by the Ottomans as an autonomous confessional attraction—displaying all the characteristics of ing both forms of valorisation. On one hand,
fourth-century Golgotha
its heirless owners would pass away.76 Over the cite the fact that it community, and thus did not share a piece of modern tourism as we know it today.80 Pilgrim- they designate existing artefacts with a form of
should be outside of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre like other
next decades, the Association refrained from age was thus made lucrative by tourist agencies meaning that can be consumed by the religious
the city walls—but they
erecting structures within the grounds, investing refer to the Ottoman denominations.78 In fact, the Status Quo agree- who fused business and missionary ventures, industry; on the other hand, they embody the
Walls which is extended.
instead in a luscious garden around the tomb, The first-century wall ment from 1853 dictated: “The actual status quo administering Jerusalem’s heritage as a resource M-C-M model by investing in an archeological
where Protestants could find secluded space for is indeed closer to the
will be maintained and the Jerusalem shrines, to be enhanced—or valorised—for mass consump- site to legitimise its inclusion in the patrimonial
Temple Mount, and the
contemplation.77 This pious environment was Holy Sepulchre is found whether owned in common or exclusively by the tion. circuit as a historic monument, thereby generat-
outside of it. This was
radically different from the congested and con- proved in 1894 when the Greek, Latin, and Armenian communities, will François Choay argues that valorisation ing surplus value by turning it into a marketable
PEF obtained a firman
tested atmosphere in the Church of the Holy all remain forever in their present state.”79 This (or enhancement) is the key to the heritage enter- tourist attraction. Both forms of valorisation will
from the Turkish govern-
Sepulchre, located just a few hundred meters ment for excavations in meant that nine sites in and around Jerusalem prise. It refers to the increase in value—cultural, be explored in further detail below.
Jerusalem. Bliss was in
to the south inside the Old City walls. Despite charge of digging around and Bethlehem, with their intricate and frag- spiritual, intellectual, and of course, economic— The architect of Jerusalem’s tourism project
the lack of a monument per se, the hewn rock the walls of Jerusalem to
mented sacred spaces, would remain in the cus- which rises with the accessibility and legibility was Thomas Cook. Born in 1808 in Derbyshire,
establish the line of the
of the tomb and its surrounding gardens was historic Third Wall of tody of the Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, of patrimonial constructions, such as historic England, Cook was a Baptist missionary who
Jerusalem prior to 70 AD.
invested with a memorial function; it became Armenians, Syriac Orthodox, Coptic Christians, monuments.81 Valorisation transforms the his- was both a faithful Christian and a business-
72
a historic monument of another typology—the Conder, Tent Work in
and Ethiopians in perpetuity. Forever excluded toric monument into an enhanced product that man.83 Starting from a small endeavour to
Palestine, 371
73
Ibid, 376
88 TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER FOUR— The Innocents Abroad 89
84 90
Kark, Ruth, “From Cohen-Hattab and
Pilgrimage to Budding— Shoval, Tourism,
host Temperance Tours (helping men abstain The Role of Thomas the best time of the year for being in Palestine—the best Religion and Pilgrimage
Cook in the Rediscovery in Jerusalem, 128
from alcohol and nicotine) in 1841, Cook’s office of the Holy Land in the
travelling facilities, the best hotel accommodation—the
91
expanded in 1850 to arrange tours to Paris, Italy, Nineteenth Century”, best guides that can be engaged—the best places of inter- Hunter, Robert F.,
in Travellers in the “The Thomas Cook
and the Alps; in 1851 he escorted 165,000 peo- Levant: Voyagers and est to be visited—the routes to and from England—and Archive for the Study of
Visionaries, eds. Sarah Tourism in North Africa
ple to the Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Searight and Malcolm
the cost of the whole tour for two months.86 and the Middle East”,
Palace, providing transportation and accommo- Wagstaff (London: Review of Middle East
Astene, 2001), 159 Studies 36, no. 2 (Winter
dation. Conducting the tours in person, buying Indeed, Cook’s religious zeal and entrepreneurial 2003): 157–164
85
Cobbing, Thomas
wholesale tickets, and targeting the expanding Cook and the Palestine
spirit introduced modern tourism by marketing 92
Kark, From Pilgrimage
middle class—whose vacations were an integral Exploration Fund, 183 and turning the Holy Land into nothing less than to Budding, 165
sion, the USS steamship Quaker City, Twain arrived 161–162, 165 in particular its state of productivity—or lack industrialised Europe than the city known from
Century English Travel
Narratives”, Jerusalem ACT IV:
in Palestine in 1867 with a group of one hundred 142
Twain writes: “Of thereof. It was described as a “barren desert, [once religious art. As the Irish Minister Josias Leslie Quarterly 19 (Institute
for Palestine Studies,
THE COLONISER
all the lands there are
fifty fellow Americans.141 Twain was so disap- for dismal scenery, I a] well-watered plain [now reduced to] devasta- Porter wrote, “the City of the Great King, the Holy October 2003): 16 Aesthetic, religious, and imperialist claims
pointed by the “hopeless, dreary, heart-broken think Palestine must tion”147, as nothing “but a barren, hard, despon- City of the Crusaders, the picturesque City of the 153
Merrill, Selah, “The merged over Jerusalem in the twentieth century.
be the prince. The hills
Jaffa and Jerusalem
land”142 that he decided to warn future travellers are barren, they are dent wasteland.”148 Herman Melville described it Saracens and Turks, is at the present time almost Railway”, Scribner’s
Leaning on the superiority of Western culture and
dull of color, they are
about the reality of Palestine by writing an entire unpicturesque in shape. as a land “full of old cheese [and] bones of rocks [...] covered and concealed by the tasteless structures Magazine 13, no. 3 value, it was widely expected that whoever inher-
(March 1893): 290
book about his experience: The valleys are unsightly a land of ruins, paralysed and forsaken [...] lying in of modern traders and ambitious foreign devo- ited Jerusalem from the Ottomans “would finally
deserts fringed with a 154
Loti, Jérusalem,
feeble vegetation that dust and ashes”, its many ”hills and valleys, stony, tees.”155 Even Cook’s own offices were disturbing, 10, quoted in Lemire,
put Jerusalem right [and] cleanse the city of the
has an expression about
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be it of being sorrowful and rugged, desolate, neglected, silent, and lifeless, as Hanna Harris wrote: “The balcony in the sketch Jerusalem 1900, 41 (my cultural pollution that has dimmed its spiritual
italics)
otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land? despondent. The Dead succeed one another, as though the anger of God [...] is the American Consulate, and Cook’s Offices brilliance.”163 These aspirations became possible
Sea and the Sea of Galilee 155
Porter, Josias Leslie,
Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to sleep in the midst of a rested on this land, once flowing with milk and are just below; and very strange is it to the visitor Jerusalem, Bethany and
when the British Mandate began its occupation of
vast stretch of hill and
poetry and tradition—it is dream-land.143 plain wherein the eye honey.” To put it more succinctly, it was “a caked, whose mind is full of images of ancient and scrip- Bethlehem (Jerusalem: Palestine I in December 1917, following the inva-
Ariel Publishing House,
rests upon no pleas- depopulated hell”.149 tural association, to have at almost every turn 1886), xxi–xxii, quoted sion of Jerusalem by the British General Edmund
ant tint, no striking
in Polley, “‘Palestine is
In his preface, he suggests that it is with innocent object, no soft picture The general agreement about Palestine’s reminders such as these of modern life.”156 Thus Brought Home to
Allenby and the subsequent withdrawal of the
dreaming in a purple
eyes that travellers must view the land, “instead haze or mottled with the degraded physical condition was gradually trans- It is clear that the Jerusalem of memory did England’”, 289 Ottoman forces.164 This was the first time, since
of the eyes of those who traveled [sic] in those shadows of the clouds. formed as the turn of the twentieth century drew not make itself available to the tourist. Many of 156
Harris, Pictures of the Crusade’s loss of Jerusalem in 1187 AD, that
Every outline is harsh,
the East, 28
countries before him.”144 Surely, Twain’s Innocents every feature is distinct. near. As mass tourism shaped local infrastruc- them had held a mental picture of the place since the city was ruled by a Christian power, and the
It is a hopeless, dreary, 157
Abroad was far from innocent: his gaze was framed heart-broken land.” ture, complaints of “the filthy and uncomfort- early childhood, aligning Palestine with a sense Obenzinger, Hilton, British saw it as their duty to “restore Jerusalem
American Palestine:
within a particular touristic expectation. Twain — Twain, Mark, The able nature of the accommodation, the want of of home.157 The Irish traveller Eliot Warburton Melville, Twain, and and Palestine to their place among the nations.”165
Innocents Abroad or the
the Holy Land Mania.
did not see what was in front of his eyes, but a New Pilgrim’s Progress pure water, the disagreeable smells constantly wrote that while his “first impressions of child- (Princeton: Princeton
The privilege of ‘cleansing’ Jerusalem of its
(original publication,
vision filtered through predetermined memories Harford: American to be encountered” were heard less and less.150 hood are connected with that scenery”, the real- University Press, 1999), accumulated ‘filth’ was awarded to Sir Ronald
42–43
and shared ideologies. This bias notwithstanding, Publishing Company, Unsurprisingly, technological advancement first ity “is unlike anything else on earth—so blank Storrs, the first British governor of Jerusalem.166
1869), 395–396 158
Warburton, The
Twain’s travelogue sold over 67,000 copies in its 143
arrived to the city via the hospitality industry: to the eye, yet so full of meaning to the heart.”158 crescent and the cross,
Storrs was struck by the beauty of the city and its
Twain, The Innocents
first year and became the most widely-read travel Abroad, 395–396 the pilgrim hostel of Notre Dame was the city’s The Swiss theologian Phillip Schaff wrote, “We 279 geography, which he described as “unparalleled
159
144
Ibid, preface. Schaff, Through Bible
Lands, 267
96 145
Davis, John, The TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER FOUR—
160
Prime, Tent Life in
The Innocents Abroad 97
Landscape of Belief:
Encountering the Holy the Holy Land, 50 (my
Land in Nineteenth-
168
After being
appointed the military
governor of Jerusalem,
sion in the Judean Hills prevented by extensive Storrs said: “I possessed
afforestation, and terracing encouraged in order no military competence
whatever, and very little
to improve the land’s fertility, making sure “the administrative experi-
ence, but I did have an
land can be made really productive.”180 The second inside knowledge (with
part of his plan—the project of legibility—was examples positive and
negative) of the pro-
more complicated: it did not have a blueprint, but cessed of Government
and the interactions of
was made up of a variety of plans, projects, and Oriental communities;
legislation drafted over several decades by prom- combines with a deep
enthusiasm for the task,
inent architects and planners. In the context of and a wild exhilaration
at the chance which had
this paper—the discussion on collective memory, been put into my hand.”
legibility of its urban signifiers, and the valorisa- Storrs, The Memoirs of
Sir Ronald Storrs, 300
tion of Jerusalem as a historic monument—I have
169
While over 500
chosen to highlight the plans (both realised and requests were made in
unrealised) that treated Jerusalem as a project of the first two years, very
few were approved.
landscape design. I position this hypothesis within
170
Storrs, The Memoirs
the theoretical framework put forth by Denie of Sir Ronald Storrs, 326
Cosgrove, Gary Fields, and W.J.T. Mitchell who 171
Ashbee, Charles
argue not only that landscape is man-made, but Robert, A Palestine
Notebook, 1918–1923
(Garden City, N.Y:
Doubleday, 1923), 57
Fig 28: The Pro-Jerusalem Society
172
Storrs, The Memoirs
of Sir Ronald Storrs, 327
173
Preface by Ronald Palestine Notebook, Ashbee noted that it is urgent
Storrs in Ashbee, C.
R. (Charles Robert), to plant trees for shade;181 for Storrs, Jerusalem
Jerusalem, 1918–1920,
being the records of the
was “over-churched” by the immense construc-
pro-Jerusalem council tion of religious institutions and shrines; it was
during the period of
the British military the outdoors, rather, that was perceived as more
administration (London:
Murray, 1921), v
authentic, holy, and true to Jerusalem’s past.182 He
Fig 26: Jerusalem from the south (American Colony Photographers, 1898–1907)
174
favoured the Garden of Gethsemane, a plot of land
Pro-Jerusalem
Society, Council, that had been enclosed by the Latin Church in
italics) Jerusalem 1920–1924,
in the world, with an appeal to the imagination Storrs appointed the Arts and Crafts advocate and 4, quoted in Wharton,
the 1870s, believed to be the scriptural site where
161
that not Rome, not even Athens, could rival.”167 Conder, Claude William Morris follower C. R. Ashbee as director. Jerusalem Remade, Christ agonised before his arrest. For Storrs, “of all
Reignier, “Jewish 53–54
His sentiments for the city were not dissimilar Colonies in Palestine”, Like Storrs, Ashbee believed that the urgency of the places hallowed by the Passion of Christ none
175
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Report to the
to those of Palestine’s late-nineteenth-century their mission was a matter of not only archae- Administration from
is more beautiful, few so authentic, as the Garden
Magazine 149, no.
tourists, and he admittedly had little experience 908 (1891), in Polley, ology or preservation but of beauty: “Everything August 1918, in Ashbee, of Gethsemane.”183 Storrs hoped to return the
‘Palestine is Thus A Palestine notebook, 79
for the task at hand.168 One of his first actions as Brought Home to that we associate with our sense of beauty is alike garden to its state during the days of Christ, but
176
England,’ 243 Ashbee, A Palestine
military governor was to put an end to all con- in danger: Landscape, the unities of streets and Notebook, 9
compromised by deciding to appeal to the Pope
162
struction in Jerusalem: within four months of his Warren, Henry sites, the embodied vision of the men that set the 177
against the decision of the Custodia Terra Sancta
White, Sights and “One reads back
appointment, he released a statement announc- Insights; or, Knowledge great whole together [...] all these things have to to Suleiman the (the Franciscan Order’s Custody of the Holy Land)
by Travel (New York: Magnificent, to Saladin,
ing that “No person shall demolish, erect, alter be considered practically.”174 Fig 27: Allenby, Storrs, and Ashbee on Temple Mount
to Al Mamoun, to
to build structures in the garden. He believed, like
Nelson and Phillips,
or repair” any structure within 2,500 metres of 1874), 243, quoted in When Ashbee arrived in Jerusalem, it was Herod, to Nehemia, to many other Protestants who preferred the open
Obenzinger, American Solomon. Each gave
the Damascus Gate of the Old City, without his Palestine, 43 in a desperate state: “It is difficult to imagine a that it is an ideology, a Western construct, and her something, and the Garden Tomb over the congested Holy Sepulchre,
types in her streets are
written permission.169 Cars were to be left out of 163 sharper contrast than between the Jerusalem of that power is structured on imagined relation- wonderful. And what
that open spaces are much more holy, and that
Wharton, Annabel,
Judea, and when asked about the possibility of a “Jerusalem Remade”, man’s imagination […] and the actual Jerusalem ships with the natural world. For clarity, I have will this strong Western while cities have changed, perhaps the moun-
in Modernism and administration mean?
tram to run between Bethlehem and the Mount the Middle East, eds. left us by the Turk.”175 He lamented his responsi- grouped these plans according to three mech- Fusion of races? There tains and valleys have stayed the same—since the
Isenstadt, Sandy is no other logical
of Olives, he wrote that “the first rail section bility in shaping this “city of the mind”,176 evok- anisms of landscape design: the imposition of a way out.”— Ashbee, A
time of not only Christ, but creation itself.
and Rizvi, Kishwar
would be laid over the dead body of the military (Seattle: University ing with despair its great builders of the past, strong sense of the natural, the use of stone as a Palestine Notebook, 9 It is within this spirit that Storrs asked
of Washington Press,
governor.”170 2008), 42 and contemplating his abundance of freedom unifying building material, and the construction 178
Ibid, 19 Patrick Geddes to turn Jerusalem into “the most
As much as Storrs wanted to restore 164 and endless possibilities.177 For him, there was of Jerusalem into a familiar image by removing 179
“The two main things
extensive Sacred Park in the world.”184A Scottish
Wharton, “Jerusalem
Jerusalem to its biblical past, he was advised that Remade,” 41 no logic in the condition in which “the stranger all visual obstructions. It is through the inter- which in Palestine it town-planner and sociologist, Geddes first arrived
ought to be doing and for
“there are many problems in economics, hygiene, 165
Northcliff greet- had become a native, the pilgrim the resident.”178 locking of these three elements that Jerusalem which it will ultimately in Palestine in 1919 following a previous position
ing the governor of be judged: the life and
town planning, social reconstruction, to which But this was indeed the case, and with the Pro- was irreversibly made into a place designed and quality of the peasantry,
with the colonial forces in India. Together with
Jerusalem at a joint
the sermon on the Mount and the teaching of meeting in London of Jerusalem Society, Ashbee intended to do well sustained for the touristic gaze. and the development Ashbee, Geddes’s ‘Jerusalem Park Plan’ (1921) pro-
the overseas Club and of historical and ar-
Jesus give us little clue.”171 He therefore entrusted Patriotic League. From with the city—and prevent others from doing ill. The first element of landscape design was chaeological research.” posed to plant a green belt around the Old City
The Times (London), — Ashbee, A Palestine
the project to an independent committee, The Within this framework, Jerusalem would become a strong sense of the natural. This has a twofold Notebook, 269
walls. This gesture would isolate the Old City from
December 30, 1920,
Pro-Jerusalem Society, composed of the city’s mayor quoted in Wharton, a project of two cities: a new metropolis to be intention: to make Jerusalem closer to its myth- 180
the New, setting it, “so to speak, in the centre of a
Jerusalem Remade, Kendall, Henry,
and the leaders of the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, 41–42 regulated and an ancient city to be made legi- ical image by beautifying it for the Western eye, Jerusalem: The City park, thus recognising the appeal it makes to the
Plan, Preservation and
and Armenian communities.172 This uncommon 166 ble.179 The first part was simple and well-known and to legitimise removal and demolition in the Development during >>>
world—a city of an idea—that needs as such to
Ibid, 42
union of civic and religious concerns was bound 167
to English improvers: hundreds of kilometres or name of parks and open spaces. This is something be protected.”185 The protective layer of the park
Storrs in a speech
together “by their common love for the Holy City”.173 to the overseas Club asphalt roads were to be constructed, soil ero- that both Ashbee and Storrs promoted. In his would not be designed with a special layout of
and Patriotic League
in London, The Times
98 (London), December
20, 1930, quoted in TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER FOUR— The Innocents Abroad 99
Wharton, Jerusalem
Remade, 44
the British Mandate
1918–1948 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery
“ornamental plantation”,186 but would instead Office, 1948), 3 barrels vaulting and pointed arches have preserved
attempt to recover the past: Jewish and ancient 181
Ashbee, A Palestine
through the centuries a hallowed and immemorial tradi-
Greco-Roman rock-tombs would be preserved as Notebook, 21 tion.192
“features” of the park, while the rest would be 182
Storrs, The Memoirs
of Sir Ronald Storrs, 315
discarded in order to return Jerusalem into its Stone was infused with divine qualities and ap-
183
natural, pre-Ottoman state. As Geddes wrote: Ibid, 315 proved as the only acceptable building material;
184
Geddes, Patrick, vaulting, arches, and other Oriental elements
Jerusalem Actual and
It would be an easy matter to remove this earth and Possible, a preliminary
were the preferred design strategies going for-
rubbish further downhill [...] in this way may be laid out report to the chief admin- ward. Storrs forbade the use of stucco, corrugated
istrator of Palestine and
and kept permanently open the early Biblical Jerusalem, of the Military Governor of iron, and wood, “materials [that] were and are
Jerusalem on Town plan-
which the present old city is but a later development.187 ning and Improvements,
inexcusable.”193 While this legislation was in-
file Z4/ 10.202 (1919), tended to project a Western memory of Jerusalem
18–19, Central Zionist
The park plan was an elaboration of the 1918 Archives, Jerusalem. on its landscape, it effectively displaced the city’s
Zoning Scheme by William McLean, which es- 185
Ashbee, Jerusalem
poor, whose tin homes had to be dismantled.194
tablished four zones: the Old City, which should 1918–1920, 12 As Eyal Weizman argues, this ‘petrification’ of
preserve its “Medieval aspect”; the park, which 186
Ibid, 24 the city (which expanded in 1936 to include the
should remain unbuilt; and two additional zones 187 Geddes, Jerusalem
entire municipal area) created an aesthetic that
designated with a specific character and height Actual and Possible, in allowed new neighbourhoods to be immediately
Wharton, Jerusalem
limit, “rendering them in harmony and in scale Remade, 51–52 accepted into Jerusalem’s holy landscape because
with the Old City.”188 Both the zoning and park 188
Kendall, Jerusalem:
their buildings (and later cladding) were made of
plans were intended to appeal not to the city’s The City Plan, 6 stone.195 As an autochthonous material, the stone
residents, those who live and work within the 189
Geddes, Jerusalem would serve future justifications of claims over
Actual and Possible,
complexity of the city itself, but to those seeing 18–19
the city, carrying a symbolic value for not only
it for the first time from afar. With the removal 190
British colonists but also Israel’s master planners
Ashbee, Jerusalem
of industry from its perimeter and the creation 1918–1920, 1 in 1967, who likewise claimed the stone to “stim-
of a green frame around its walls, the image of 191
Preface by Ronald
ulate other sensations embedded in our collective
Jerusalem would be ever-familiar to an arriving Storrs in Ashbee, memory, producing strong associations to the Fig 30: “Jerusalem Park System” by Patrick Geddes and C.R Ashbee (1920)
Jerusalem 1918–1920, v
Westerner. As Geddes himself wrote, “on the eco- ancient holy city of Jerusalem.”196
192
Storrs, The Memoirs
nomic gain to Jerusalem as a pilgrim and touris- of Sir Ronald Storrs, 326
However powerful the stone legislation view onto Jerusalem. This was not undertaken in 194
Before this legisla-
tion, construction in and
tic city by this operation I need not expatiate. It is 193
was, there were still major revisions to the image one plan or legislation, but as a series of surgical outside the old city took
Ibid
obvious that its attraction would be increased.”189 of Jerusalem that had to take place. The third interventions, recreational projects, and sketches place without municipal
administration (the
The design of harmony, as the zoning scheme and final element of the design is thus the con- contained in the personal notebooks of Ashbee city’s engineer was in
charge of approving
dictated, can also be seen as the imposition of an struction of a clear, unobstructed, and familiar and in the 1921 publication by the Pro-Jerusalem heavy construction),
order or, more precisely, a simplification of the urban Society. The latter begins by boasting of “clean- meaning that informal
structures of wood and
fabric. The second design element proposed by the ing the Citadel and clearing out of the city fosse”, corrugated iron could
be built by the city’s
Pro-Jerusalem Society was an attempt to unify which included the removal of “great masses of poor. — Kark and Oren-
the city into an undivided whole, an object that stone debris” and, of course, a mass of Ottoman Nordheim, Jerusalem
and Its Environs, 89
can be perceived (and possessed) as one. The Pro- refugees.197 In their camps, “there was much
195
Weizman, Eyal,
Jerusalem Society regarded “the old city as a unity sickness, the misery and squalor were pitiful, and Hollow Land (London and
in itself, confined within its wall circuit, domi- it took a long time before the relief officers were New York: Verso), 30
nated by its great castle with the five towers, and able to cope with the difficulty.”198 The society 196
Hashimshoni,
Avia, Schweid, Yoseph
intersected with its vaulted streets and arcades found a creative way to deal with both the mate- and Hashimshoni,
[…] it is this compactness or unity, so character- rial and human remains of the war: Zion, Municipality of
Jerusalem, Masterplan
istic of Jerusalem, that the Society itself has set to for the City of Jerusalem,
Fig 31: Ashbee commenting on the unsightly use of materials
and the risk of using anything but stone (1918)
19611 (1972), 8, quoted
preserve.”190 This romantic description couldn’t The Society then worked out a method by which the in Weizman, Hollow
be further from Jerusalem, which was dominated clearing and cleaning should be done by refugee labour, Land, 28
neither by a castle nor by towers, and whose and such of the refugees were able-bodied were utilised in, 197
Ashbee, Jerusalem of parks, gardens, and open spaces of which the
1918–1920, 1
streets contained a wide array of building mate- so to speak, tidying up their own house. Many hundreds of new city will be composed.”200 For this project, the
198
rials, density variations, and domestic typologies. men, women, and children, organised in different working Ibid Society opened disused guardhouses, removed
For this unity to occur, stone was enlisted as the gangs, were thus used.199 199
Ibid several feet of landfill, built steps, installed iron
mediating agent between the image of the city handrails, and removed around thirty ‘encroach-
and its layers of varied construction.191 It was thus The violence embedded in this efficient ‘method’ ments’ that were built by the city’s residents in
decreed that any act of building or rebuilding had could not be overstated. The remainder of the order to demarcate their domestic property.201 The
to be carried out in the local “Jerusalem Stone”. In publications maintain similar notions of clearing Ramparts Walk is a classic example of valorisa-
his memoirs, Storrs explains his decision: and beautifying Jerusalem’s signifiers, of which tion: it enhances the Old City’s appeal by creating
the Citadel was only one. The Ramparts Walk, a quasi-historical attraction that engages with
Jerusalem is literally a City built upon a rock. From that for example, was a fortified walking path on the the materiality of the ancient. While it is based on
rock, cutting soft but drying hard, has for three thousand ancient walls, originally used for security. Under the Ottoman walls, it was hailed by Ashbee as “the
years been quarried the clear white stone, weathering the new plan, it was to become a promenade: “the largest, and perhaps the most perfect, Medieval
Fig 29: A view inside the Old City between 1900–1914;
blue-grey or amber-yellow with Time, whose solid walls, wooden balconies projecting from the stone walls spinal cord on which is to be built the whole series enceinte in existence.”202 Rising above the “wild
not only united the Old City in one perimeter, but 203
From the annotated
notebooks of C.R Ashbee,
allowed for an obstructed, dominating gaze on image no. 8, Archive
the sacred territory that it encloses.204 Centre, King’s College,
Cambridge, England.
Another substantial undertaking was the Courtesy of Nirit Shalev-
Khalifa, Yad Ben Zvi,
‘clearing-up’ of the old city gates. First, the soci- Jerusalem.
ety removed locals (such as a bath contractor or 204
The Ramparts Walks
dung-cake bakers) that appropriated St Stephen’s website in 2021 notes
that “the Ramparts
Gate, repaired the guard-house at Herod’s Gate, Walk is one of the most
and designed a new monumental scheme for rewarding activities in
terms of history, beauty
Damascus Gate.205 Jaffa Gate was to be completely and a greater sense of
the Old City as a whole.”
remodelled: the Ottoman Clock Tower—described
205
by Ashbee as ‘hideous’ and by the Pro-Jerusalem Ashbee, Jerusalem
1918–1920, Being the
Society as ‘unsightly’—was dismantled.206 A large Records of the Pro-
Jerusalem Council, 4
open space replaced the existing make-shift mar-
206
ket stalls, which would be cleared away, along Ibid, 23
Fig 34: Jaffa Gate ca. 1910, with the clocktower visible, as well as other shops, stalls and
carriages bringing pilgrims from the Port of Jaffa
Fig 35: Detail from the notebooks of C.R. Ashbee for the perimiter of the Old City Walls (left)
View from the Rampart Walk in 2020 (right)
THE STATIONS OF
THE CROSS
Palestine, but the one enacted and adapted across 12 contradict, reinforce, subvert, complement, par- modern art market. By using text to construct a 17 offer an alternative to the regime of visual per-
Sekula, Dismantling Smithson, Robert,
the West as an idea and an orientation, using ana- Modernism: Reinventing ticularize, or go beyond the meanings offered by narrative, Sekula resists this valorisation by pro- “The Monuments of ception.
Documentary, 60 Passaic", Artforum,
logical thinking and theatrical staging. Entitled the images themselves.”12 In the context of 1970s posing an “essayistic discursive argumentation, December 1967, 52-57 Meanwhile, in Homes For America (1966), Dan
13
Sekula criticises the
The Stations of the Cross, the project learns from the America, when photography was gaining cur- the idea that the photograph could appear in a 18 Graham used a simple Kodak camera to photo-
fact that photographs Reynolds, Ann, Robert
affective representational techniques explored were becoming artworks rency as an autonomous artistic practice, Sekula kind of ensemble in some way that is something Smithson: Learning from graph tract housing in New Jersey and Levittown
whose value is not only New Jersey and Elsewhere
above by juxtaposing image and text as parallel that of use, but also of worked to reclaim the medium’s utilitarian ori- like a proseor an essay was being played out.”16 (cambridge: MIT Press, as beautiful works of minimalist art, which he
exchange. That is, they 2003)
modes of representation. Rather than using illus- gins and formulate an alternative practice by Through a careful syntax of image and text, affectionately labelled “his [Donald] Judds.”19 First
become not utilitarian
19
trations or images of the Holy Land, like in the carriers of information, rethinking the relationship between image and Aerospace not only raises a constellation of themes Donald Judd was presented as a slideshow, Graham’s photographs
but a commodity that a major Minimalist
canonic Stations of the Cross that have been stud- enters the Modernist art text.13 His first major project, Aerospace Folktales such as domesticity, labour, class, and gender, but artist, known for his were later edited into a magazine article where
market. He attributed modular sculptures of
ied in this dissertations, it is composed of photo- (1973), follows the life of a middle-class family also invokes issues of representation, visual semi- the mass-produced homes were confronted with
this to the lack of text, replicated geometric
graphs of sites both in Jerusalem and outside of it. writing that a photo in Southern California after the father had lost ology, and the role of the artist within society. shapes. In “Homes for their mode of production, juxtaposing cheap-
with a sparse caption America”(1966-7) Dan
Instead of scriptural verses, prayers, instructions, “is a sign, above all, of his job as an aerospace engineer at Lockheed. My Stations of the Cross embraces this critique, and Graham likened the ly-printed colour photographs with developers’
aspiration toward the replicated homes to >>
or descriptions, it includes first-hand experiences Sekula photographs this prototypical family in follows Sekula’s assertion that the photographer offerings of floor plans, house models, finishing
esthetic and market Judd’s work, suggesting
of past pilgrims to Jerusalem. The text does not conditions of modernist and around their Los Angeles apartment as they bears the responsibility to supplement the visual a similarity in the mode colours and furniture arrangements. Using his
painting and sculpture. of production of Judd’s
provide illustrative captions for the photographs In this white void, go about their daily lives: the children read or content with textual context. Minimalist sculptures own photographs alongside readymade texts
meaning is thought to and New Jersey’s
or an explanation of the sights, but the reactions, play, the mother is mostly in the kitchen, and the Other combinations of text and image that from advertising booklets, Graham forms a cri-
emerge entirely from mass-produced housing.
disappointments, meditations, and subjective within the artwork.” father, coping with his new status as an unem- inspired the Stations can be found in the works -"Homes for America: tique of not only the culture of cheaply-built
Indeed, photography’s Early 20th-Century
interpretations of the journey and its topography affinity with modernist ployed white-collar professional, attempts to fix of artists Robert Smithson and Dan Graham. In Possessable House of the cookie-cutter homes, but also the role of photog-
painting reached its Quasi-Discrete Cell of
by pilgrims. By reading these excerpts alongside household appliances while applying for new 1967, Smithson travelled from New York City to raphy in disseminating and naturalisating this
peak in the 1970s, as '66." Arts Magazine 41,
the photographs of Jerusalem’s alternatives, one Lewitz Baltz notes: jobs.14 Initially composed of 142 photographs, text his hometown in New Jersey with a notebook no. 3 (December 1966– domestic typology as an object of popular con-
“While it was extremely January 1967), 22
may consider the tension between the real and difficult to see photo- cards, and a sound installation, Aerospace juxta- and a cheap camera. Travelling on foot, Smithson sumption.20
20
graphs exhibited as art Salvesen, Britt “New
imagined Jerusalem, the sign, signified, and dis- poses signs of everyday domesticity with behind- stops to photograph the entropic landscape of The fascination with the replicated land-
on New York galleries Topographics” in New
location of collective memory. walls in 1967, by 1977 it the-scenes details of his photographic process the Passaic River which he ironically (or per- Topographics (Steidl; scape of suburbia visualised by Graham echoes
was extremely difficult 2009), 22-23
—
not to.” Baltz, Lewis, and anecdotes from the mechanism of family haps poetically) captions as monuments: the pipes that of an artist whose influence on this thesis
21
American Photography in Ed Ruscha, “Pop Art,
life. The novelty of Aerospace is not the subject dumping polluted liquids into the river are enti- cannot be overstated: Ed Ruscha. In 1961, Ruscha
the 1970s: Too Young to and Spectatorship in
THE IMAGE AND THE CAPTION Rock, Too Old to Die, 54 matter per se—similar subjects had been docu- tled the Fountain Monument, and a floating pumping 1960s Los Angeles” in
The Art Bulletin Vol. 92,
published Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, a series of
14
Buchloh, Benjamin mented by Stephen Shore and Robert Adams— derrick is simply Monument with Pontoons.17 When No. 3 (September 2010), photographs depicting every gas station between
H.D., “Allan Sekula, or 231-249
The choice of format for this project is lead rather, Sekula’s is distinguished by his choice Smithson asks if “Passaic has replaced Rome as his Los Angeles home and his parents’ house in
What Is Photography?”in
22
not only with the historic research on virtual Grey Room , Spring not to distance himself from the critique of the the eternal city,” he is questioning not only the Ibid Oklahoma in a deadpan style of detachment.21 It
2014, No. 55, Allan
pilgrim guides, but is set within the theoretical Sekula and the Traffic disintegration of the American dream. In a sur- idea of monuments as sites of collective memory, 23
Ruscha, Ed, Leave follows a serial rather than associative logic, akin
in Photographs (Spring Any Information at
framework proposed by theorist and photog- prise shift from observational to autobiograph- but the very essence of recollection as it could to a topographical study that were discussed in
2014), pp. 116-129 the Signal: Writings,
rapher Allan Sekula. In his polemic response to 15
ical, we discover that the unemployed engineer arise from signs of mundanity.18 This interpreta- Interviews, Bits, Pages the introduction as the leading method of this
Ibid ed. Alexandra Schwartz
the New Topographics exhibition (in particular the is in fact Sekula’s father.15 Sekula thus presents tion is made possible thanks to Smithson’s clever (Cambridge: the MIT dissertation. Ruscha perfected his approach in
16
Tchen, Jack, Press, 2004)
depictions of industrial warehouses by Lewis a practice-based resistance to the modernist use of the caption, a technique not dissimilar his subsequent Every Building on the Sunset Strip
“Interview with Allan
24
Baltz11), Sekula argued that photography cannot Sekula: Los Angeles, autonomy of the image, which viewed documen- from the annotations of the medieval pilgrim Rian, Jeff, Lewis Baltz (1966), Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967),
California, October 26, (Phaidon, 2001)
remain as sparsely-captioned images on the gal- 2002” in International tary photography not as a utilitarian carrier of guides, where text introduces a didactic context and Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass (1968),
25
Labor and Working-Class See Martha Rosler,
lery wall, and that text should be used to “anchor, information, but as a commodity that enters the in order to resist the autonomy of the image and where he documented the vernacular elements
History , Fall, 2004, The Bowery in two
No. 66, (Cambridge: inadequate descriptive
Cambridge University systems, (1974-5); Victor
04 Press, 2004), 165 TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER FIVE— Burgin US77 (1977),
Zoo78 (1978)
The Stations of The Cross 05
Fig 7: Dan Graham, Homes for America (1966-7)
also travel writing, as a genre tainted with cul- 30 the removal of ritualistic interruption will mark
Han, The
tural bias and bound with colonial violence. The Disappearance of Ritual, not the end, but the beginning of an old-new
7-8
Stations does not attempt to demarcate a foreign mode of devotion that is practised with one’s own
31
territory, cast subjective judgment, or ‘write-out’ Maistre, Xavier de, confines. However, as things stand today, this
A journey round my
a disenchanted encounter. room, trans. H.A seems far from possible: the sedentary journeys
(London: Longmans,
One might argue that the possibilities Green, Reader and Dyer, of the Middle Ages were exhausting undertak-
provided by digital platforms make such proj- 1871), 1-3 ings, requiring intense physical, emotional, and
ects redundant. Religious services are available mental labour. The nuns who created life-size
on-demand, virtual experiences dissolve geo- dioramas within their monastic cells performed
graphical boundaries, and the infinite stream of rituals that stabilised their lives in times of
visual content relieves any need for mental imag- uncertainty and confinement. By repeating a set
ination. As such, the labour that was invested of prayers and actions, they could find a fleet-
in such rituals is no longer relevant. Pilgrimage ing detachment from themselves in favour of a
ceases to disrupt one’s daily life: something greater system of order.29
which once signalled a complete break from rou- Today, virtual experiences that offer remote
tine disintegrates from an anti-structure back to travel are mere simulations: they create visual
structure. If Christ is indeed found within one- shortcuts to cathartic endings, which fail to
self, perhaps a retreat from the public realm and move us to the emotional depths once experi-
enced in sedentary pilgrimage. While technology
does offer comfort and security—negating the
disturbance caused by rituals—it nonetheless
erodes whatever is left of our ability to imagine.
As Byung-Chul Han argues in The Disappearance of
Ritual (2009), “perception is never at rest: it has
lost the capacity to linger. The cultural technique
of deep attention emerged precisely out of ritual
and religious practices [...] Every religious prac-
tice is an exercise in attention.”30 When rituals
no longer require investment, distraction takes
command, and they lose their stabilising power.
The Stations propose an exercise of attention, set-
ting off from within one’s room and meandering
between images and text of travellers’ past, and
Fig 9: Walker Evans, Houses, Atlanta, Georgia (1936)
thus constructing a topography that merges
movement, sentiment, and space into a mode of
The men I met coming from Jerusalem reported all sorts of I did not need the numberless jokes about Jerusalem to-day,
contradictory impressions; and yet my own impression contradicted to warn me against expecting this; anyhow I did not expect it, and
them all. Their impressions were doubtless as true as mine; but I certainly I did not find it. But neither did I find what I was much
describe my own because it is true, and because I think it points to more inclined to expect; something at the other extreme. There may
a neglected truth about the real Jerusalem. I need not say I did not be more of this in the place than pleases those who would idealise
expect the real Jerusalem to be the New Jerusalem; a city of charity it. But I fancy there is much less of it than is commonly supposed in
and peace, any more than a city of chrysolite and pearl. the reaction from such an ideal.
I might more reasonably have expected an austere and
ascetic place, oppressed with the weight of its destiny, with no inns
except monasteries, and these sealed with the terrible silence of the
Trappists; an awful city where men speak by signs in the street.
Text: Chesterton, G.K.,The New Jerusalem Text: Chesterton, G.K.,The New Jerusalem
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920) (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920)
—II— —VI—
Left: Church of the Holy Sepulchre Left: Mark of the Via Francigena, St. Bernard’s
(ca. 12th Century), Basilica of Santo Stefano, Pass, Aosta Valley, Italy/Switzerland
Bologna, Italy Right: Station II, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem
Right: Station IV, Sacro Monte di Crea
(1589) Piemonte, Italy _Prime, William Cowper, Tent Life in the Holy
Land (New York: Harper Brothers, 1857).
Text: Duke of Normandy (leader of the First
Crusade) to his soldiers before the final assault
on Jerusalem in 1099.:
—VII—
—III— Left: Station V, Adam Kraft’s Stations of the
Cross (1490) Nuremberg, Germany
Right: Station I, Via Crucis of Tre Cunei,
Left: Station XIV, Sacro Monte di Orta (date unknown) Piemonte, Italy
(1583) Piemonte, Italy
Right: Temple Church of the Knights Templars Text: Chesterton, G.K.,The New Jerusalem
(1185 AD) Inss of Court, City of London, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920)
United Kingdom
Palestine is a striped country; that is the first effect of landscape And all these coloured strata rise so high and roll so far Text: Chesterton, G.K.,The New Jerusalem
on the eye. It runs in great parallel lines wavering into vast hills
and valleys, but preserving the parallel pattern; as if drawn boldly
but accurately with gigantic chalks of green and grey and red and
that they might be skies rather than slopes. It is as if we looked
up at a frozen sunset; or a daybreak fixed forever with its fleeting
bars of cloud. And indeed the fancy is not without a symbolic
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920)
—VIII—
yellow. The natural explanation or (to speak less foolishly) the suggestiveness. This is the land of eternal things; but we tend too Left: Chapel of the Ascension
natural process of this is simple enough. The stripes are the strata of much to forget that recurrent things are eternal things. We tend (390 AD), Jerusalem
the rock, only they are stripped by the great rains, so that everything
has to grow on ledges, repeating yet again that terraced character
to forget that subtle tones and delicate hues, whether in the hills
or the heavens, were to the primitive poets and sages as visible as —IV— Right: Station IX, Sacro Monte di Crea
(1589) Piemonte, Italy
to be seen in the vineyards and the staircase streets of the town. they are to us. The sorrow of all Palestine is that its divisions in
Left: Station II, Sacro Monte di Varallo Text: Storrs, Ronald, Orientations, (London:
And even what rock there is is coloured with a thousand culture, politics and theology are like its divisions in geology. The
(1491) Lombardy, Italy Nicholson and Watson, 1937)
secondary and tertiary tints, as are the walls and streets of the Holy dividing line is horizontal instead of vertical. The frontier does not
Right: Station IV, The sanctuary of Saint
City which is built from the quarries of these hills. For the old stones run between states but between stratified layers. The Jew did not Anthony in Mongardino
of the old Jerusalem are as precious as the precious stones of the appear beside the Canaanite but on top of the Canaanite; the Greek (1730) Asti, Piemonte, Italy
New Jerusalem; and at certain moments of morning or of sunset, not beside the Jew but on top of the Jew; the Moslem not beside
every pebble might be a pearl. the Christian but on top of the Christian. It is not merely a house
divided against itself, but one divided across itself.
Text: Fabri, Felix, The Book of Wanderings of
Brother Felix Fabri, ed. A. Stewart (Palestine
Pilgrims’ Text Society; London 1892)
—IX—
Left: Station III, Adam Kraft’s Stations of the
Cross (1490) Nuremberg, Germany
Right: Station VIII, Via Crucis of Alberto de la
Torre, (erection date unknown) Piemonte, Italy
XIV TOWARDS JERUSALEM CHAPTER ONE— The Invention of the Holy Land
—X—
Left: Church of the Holy Sepulchre
(ca. 12th Century), Basilica of Santo Stefano,
Bologna, Italy
Right: Station IV, Sacro Monte di Crea
(1589) Piemonte, Italy
—XI—
Left: Station XIV, Sacro Monte di Orta
(1583) Piemonte, Italy
Right: Temple Church of the Knights Templars
(1185 AD) Inss of Court, City of London,
United Kingdom
—XII—
Left: Tomb of Abshalom, son of King Solomon
(1st Century AD) Valley of Kidron, Jerusalem
Right: The Holy Sepulchre (Round Church) of
Cambridge (1284) Cambridge, England
—XIII—
Left: Mark of the Via Francigena, St. Bernard’s
Pass, Aosta Valley, Italy/Switzerland
Right: Station II, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem
—XIV—
Left: Station V, Adam Kraft’s Stations of the
Cross (1490) Nuremberg, Germany
Right: Station I, Via Crucis of Tre Cunei,
(date unknown) Piemonte, Italy
154