Lecture Summaries: 14 December, 2006

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by
Professor Denys Pringle

The completion of the third volume of a corpus of church buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem has involved Denys Pringle in a reassessment of the evidence relating to the building history of the complex of structures enclosing the Tomb of Christ from the 4^th century to the present day. In this lecture, however, he will concentrate on the two major periods of rebuilding that took place in the 11^th and 12^th centuries respectively. The chronicle of the Malkite writer Yahyā ibn Sa‘āīd indicates that the rebuilding of the aedicule, the Anastasis rotunda and the courtyard east of it began within two years of the destruction of the Constantinian buildings by Caliph al-Hākim in 1109, and was complete by the time of the visit by Nāsir-i Khusraw in 1047. The Latin additions of the 12^th century, including the eastern extension comprising a crossing, transepts and choir, with the conventual buildings of the Augustinian canons beyond them, are more difficult to date precisely. It seems likely, however, that the entire complex was planned and laid out, if only provisionally, around 1114, when the canons were regularized. Work on the choir and transepts proceeded slowly, but by the time of the formal consecration of the new high altar by Patriarch Fulcher on 15 July 1149 it would have reached at least as high as the level of the gallery above the chapel of Calvary. It is possible, however, that the high vaulting had not yet been sprung and that the nave and transepts were covered at that time by temporary roofing. These vaults, including the crossing dome, would have been completed in or by the early 1160s, when the new part of the church was finally joined to the old by demolishing the 11^th-century apse of the Anastasis that stood between them.

Last modified 4 December, 2006