Greek Orthodox and
Latin Patriarchs of Jerusalem

The 4th century historian of the Church, Eusebius, gives a list of bishops of Jerusalem down to Hermo. There is no way of knowing what evidence, traditions, or documents this may have been based on. There is certainly no independent evidence for it, but no lack of skepticism now about the historicity or possibility of such a thing. Apostolic succession and a lineage of transmission were, again, later conceptions and aspirations. Fictitious lines of transmission are not unknown even in Buddhism.

As the Church achieved toleration and then privileged status in the Roman Empire, the sytem of recognized Patriarchates developed. Jerusalem was certain to come in for special attention. The Emperor Constantine initiated the identification of the sites of the Crucification and burial of Jesus, and the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (dedicated 335) over them. Constantine's mother, the eighty-year-old St. Helena, is supposed to have been involved in identifying the sites, on a pilgrimage in 325 or 326, and was also believed to have discovered the actual Cross of the Crucifixion. She was said to have returned to Italy with various relics, including the Titulus Crucis, the plaque nailed to the Cross that identified Jesus as the "King of the Jews." This still exists where Helena reportedly deposited it, in the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme. Argument continues about its antiquity.

One of the most important inhabitants of Jerusalem, or actually of the nearby Bethlehem, in the following period was St. Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus), who had been secretary to the Pope, St. Damasus, who charged him to make a Latin translation of the Bible. After Damasus' death in 384, Jerome retired to Palestine to do this. It is hard to tell how much of the Vulgate is Jerome's original translation and how much he worked over from previous ones, but he completed the job. For the Old Testament, having learned Hebrew, Jerome could do his work from the original text, not just relying on the Greek translation, the Septuagint. Jerome is still regarded as one of the Doctors (i.e. Teachers) of the Catholic Church.

The first great event in the Mediaeval troubles of Jerusalem was the taking of the city by the Sassanid Persians in 614. The True Cross was removed from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by Shah Khusro II. When the Emperor Heraclius defeated the Persians and Khusro was assassinated in 628, the Cross was returned. After a display in Constantinople, it was restored to Jerusalem in 629. The story is that Heraclius wanted to carry the Cross himself, but found it too heavy. The Patriarch of Jerusalem, Zacharias, suggested that the Emperor lay aside his Imperial Crown and robes. When he did so, the Cross became light enough to carry.

This moment of triumph was doomed to be brief. In 636 a new and unexpected, almost unbelievable enemy appeared, the Arab army of Islam. Heraclius was defeated at the Battle of the Yarmuk and Jerusalem was occupied by the Caliph Omar. The consequences of this event echo down to the present day in undiminished force. Omar himself, however, was kind and magnanimus. When the Call to Prayer came as he was actually being shown the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Patriarch invited him to pray in the Church. Omar declined, saying that if he prayed there, "The Believers would come," and take over the Church as a site hallowed by the Caliph. So Omar went across the street to pray, where, predictably, the Mosque of Omar was subsequently built. Today other Islamic monuments, like the al-Aqsa Mosque, are sometimes confused with the Mosque of Omar. The most conspicuous Islamic structure is still the Dome of the Rock, on the center of the Temple Mount, which was built by the Omayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik (685-705). This was built over a rock from which, in a dream, the Prophet Muh.ammad is supposed to have ascended to heaven. This makes Jerusalem the third holiest city of Islam, after Mecca and Medina.

It would be many years before Christian forces would return to Jerusalem. The Macedonian Emperors, after retaking Antioch (969), entered Palestine and came close, but were not able to secure anything permanent or assault the city. It remained just out of reach.

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The numbers on the map of Jerusalem refer to the "Stations of the Cross," the route that Jesus took from his condemnation to the Crucifixion and burial. These are (1) the place of his condemnation by Pilate, (2) where he receives the Cross, (3) where he fell the first time, (4) where he met his mother, (5) where Simon of Cyrene took the Cross, (6) where Veronica wiped his face, (7) where he fell the second time, (8) where he met the women of Jerusalem, and (9) where he fell the third time. The 7th Station is actually the first one in the Christian rather than the Moselm Quarter of the City. The Stations after the 9th are all within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. (10) Where Jesus was stripped of his clothes, (11) where he was nailed to the Cross, (12) where he died on the Cross, (13) where he was taken down, and (14) where he was laid in the tomb. Where the condemnation is thought to have taken place may well be in error, and many of the events along the way are not in the Gospels but a matter of local tradition. We see them all played out in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

The list at left is from a combination of various sources on the internet and Eusebius' The History of the Church [Penguin, 1965]. Websites identity this lineage as the "Greek Orthodox" Patriarchs of Jerusalem. This is a little confusing, since today the "Greek Orthodox" Church may simply mean the national Church of Greece. But this national Church has only existed since Greek independence. Before then "Greek Orthodox" can only mean the Christian Church whose primary liturgical language was Greek, and for the entire Middle Ages that meant the Church of the Patriarch of Constantinople -- now commonly called the "Ecumenical" Patriarchate to distinguish him from the Greek national Church. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem, however, was never any kind of subsidiary of the Patriarch of Constantinople. What did happen, however, was the Schism of the Latin and the Greek Church with those of Syria and Egypt over the Fourth Ecumenical Council, which declared the Monophysite doctrine, that Jesus had one nature, heretical. This divided the Patriarchates of Antioch and Alexandria into Monophysite ("Jacobite" and Coptic, respectively) and Imperial lines. The Imperial Church might be call the "Catholic" Church, as it was at the time, but this would now be confusing, since it has come to simply mean the Papal Latin Church of Rome -- after the Schism with the Greek Church in 1054. The term used for the Middle Eastern Imperial Churches has been "Melkite," i.e. "Royal" (Hebrew melekh and Arabic malik, "king," the related Aramaic or Syriac term would have been the more immediate source). My understanding, therefore, is that the "Greek Orthodox" Patriarchs of Jerusalem are actually the Melkite Patriarchs. I may be confused about this, but full accounts of the situation are rare. There is, as it happens, an independent Monophysite Church represented in Jerusalem, and that is the line of Armenian Patriarchs, beginning with Abraham (638-669). It may be revealing that this starts right after the Islamic Conquest, when Imperial authorities could no longer object. The Armenian Patriarch presided over an actual Armenian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem, thus distinguished from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Quarters.
 

With the foundation of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, we get a new Patriarchate at Jerusalem. The Greek/Melkite Patriarch was regarded as a Schismatic by the Franks, and we get a new Latin/Catholic Patriarch in communion with Rome. Although the Latin Patriarch retreated with the declining fortunes of the Crusaders, to Acre and then Cyprus, and finally all the way to Rome after 1374, the idea was maintained, and a Latin Patriarch returned to Jerusalem in 1847.

After the Ayyubids, Mamluks, and Ottomans ruled Palestine and Jerusalem, the city's sleep of ages ended in 1918. General Allenby arrived with the British Army, driving the Turks before him. A Christian power now secured the city for the first time since 1244. The British, however, although with a phlegmatic kind of pious interest in the city, were no Crusaders. Far from securing the Holy Places for Christendom, the British arrived burdened with promises to allow the creation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. Conflicting promises and reassurances to the Arabs prepared the ground for one of the most bitter, durable, and dangerous conflicts of the 20th, and now the 21st, century. When Palestine was partitioned in 1948, the city of Jerusalem ended up itself divided, with the Old City annexed to Jordan, and most of the New City made the capital of an independent Israel. The city was reunited in 1967 and all of it annexed to Israel. This action has not been accepted by Palestinians, the United Nations, or even the United States -- which never recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in the first place, since the UN partition plan made it some kind of international city. Israeli governments, on the other hand, have vowed never to divide the city again. There is still little hope of a compromise or peaceful solution to all this, though it is obvious that at least some of the city should be part of a dual sovereignty condominium. Such things have been done, though mainly between friendly powers.