CHAPTER I.

EARLY PILGRIMAGE TO PALESTINE.

Very soon after Hiuen-Tsiang set forth on his arduous enterprise, Jerusalem witnessed a remarkable scene (A.D. 629). Heraclius, Emperor of New Rome, had overthrown the hosts of Chosroes II, the Persian, and now he marched on foot through streets which that monarch had so lately ravaged and shorn of half their population. A spirit of devout and humble thankfulness possessed Heraclius and his chastened people. The imperial feet were naked; the imperial shoulders bore the weight of that True Cross which the aged Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, had so significantly discovered, and which Chosroes had carried away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Long before the True Cross was miraculously found, pious Christians were wont to visit the sacred scenes of their Faith; but, after that event, Pilgrimage became fashionable. Not the devout only thronged to the Holy Land, and crowded all its many sanctified spots. The inhabitants of Palestine were not slow to provide for the satisfaction of the pilgrim; whether he were of the eager faithful, burning to behold the burial places of Patriarchs and the very spot associated with some scene of the Gospels; or were one moved by a love of novelty and excitement. Tradition was revived, or legend invented; a vast number of sacred relics was hit upon and produced; hostelries became scenes of piety, and, alas! often of dissipation.

Many, if not most, of the travellers were undoubtedly impelled by a genuine spirit of reverence; but pilgrimages have always been popular because, under the sanction of Religion, they afforded the excitement of mild adventure and the physical and mental exhilaration which accompanies change of scene. As is always the case when men gather together from many lands and find themselves released from the restraints of home and the specified conventions of country, many were pliant to the allurements of pleasure. Indeed, Jerusalem was soon turned into a theatre of the passions, a centre of wild dissipation, and even of serious crime. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine, set themselves against the fashionable craze, and told would-be pilgrims that they might do far better by remaining at home and praising God in whatsoever station he had assigned to them.

When Jerusalem fell to the onrush of the Arabs (A.D. 637), the Moslem conquerors regarded it as a sacred city; for they believed Mohammed to have been transported thence to visit Paradise. Christian subjects and Christian pilgrims added to Mohammedan wealth; and they were allowed, under restrictions, to dwell in or to visit the Holy Land. Haroun-Al-Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad, and Charlemagne, Emperor of the West, were drawn together by the political antagonism of Constantinople alike to the Saracen and to an upstart Empire. They exchanged gifts; and the traveller may still see some of those sent by Haroun-Al-Raschid, as well as much else that is curious or beautiful, in the Treasury of the great Church which Charlemagne built at Aix-la-Chapelle. Bernard, one of three Benedictine monks who visited the Holy Land A.D. 870, says that Christians there enjoyed such security that if, by some accident, a traveller should lose a beast of burden on the road, he might leave his belongings where they lay, proceed to the nearest city for assistance, and find them untouched on his return.

When the great Empire of the Abassides crumbled and fell, the Fatimite Caliphs of Cairo were usually tolerant of infidels, who increased their wealth and power. Commercial relations with the Christian West continued; and pilgrims flocked to the Holy Land. In the tenth century, that darkest of the Dark Ages, John of Parma visited Palestine no fewer than seven times; and even far-off Iceland sent its pilgrims.

But in the eleventh century (A.D. 1074) the Seljuk Turk swept down from the Oxus, and, aided by Emirs in revolt, took Jerusalem. The main body of the Turkish army retained the barbarous habits of a nomadic people; they lusted for battle; they were drunk with blood. Palestine became the scene of exaction, of debauchery, and of every kind of licence and excess. Churches were ransacked for spoil; the rich pilgrim was subject to threat and compelled to disgorge much of his wealth before he was allowed to see Jerusalem; the poor pilgrim, already worn down by privation and suffering in some diminutive crazy craft, met, on landing, with insult and outrage. Neither Mohammedan Cairo nor Christian Constantinople were strong enough to deal with the Turk: he exhibited Moslem fanaticism at its worst. The Scimitar had indeed displaced the Cross.