The Emperor’s New Church on Main Street, Jerusalem

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Longtime BAR readers are familiar with the sixth-century C.E. mosaic map of the Holy Land on the floor of a church in Madaba, Jordan. In the middle of the map lies Jerusalem, the center of the world. In the middle of the city is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—the center of Jerusalem, hence the center of the world.

Running through the middle of Jerusalem is the columned Cardo, the major street of the city, on which the church fronts. The Cardo (actually the western Cardo; the city has two main north-south streets^a) begins at the still-existing Damascus Gate and extends from north to south. The Damascus Gate with its two towers (on the left end of the map) opens onto a plaza 032 with a column in the center. The Cardo branches off from this plaza.

At the far end of the Cardo is another major church, marked, as are all churches on the map, by a red roof. This one, however, is unusual for its size.

It is clear that by the Byzantine period, the time of the Madaba map, the Cardo was there. But what about earlier? It sure does look like a Roman street.

The question is: When and by whom was this magnificent Roman-style thoroughfare running through the city built?

The two main contenders are the emperor Justinian I (who ruled in the Byzantine period, 527–565 C.E.) and the Roman emperor Hadrian (who ruled in the Roman period, 117–138 C.E.). At the end of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 70 C.E., Jerusalem and its Temple were destroyed. A Second Jewish Revolt against Rome was mounted in 132 C.E. By 135 C.E. it, too, was brutally suppressed. This time Jews were banned from the city. Either just before the revolt or just after it, Hadrian established a Roman city on what had formerly been Jerusalem. He called the new city Aelia Capitolina. “Aelia” was one of Hadrian’s names, and “Capitolina” refers to the three Capitoline gods: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. (He also changed the name of the country from Judea to Palestina.)

Did Hadrian build the Cardo in the second century C.E., or was it not built until the Byzantine period, when it was pictured on the Madaba map?

A key player in this drama is the large red-roofed church, mentioned earlier, at the end of the Cardo on the Madaba map. Its full name (translated into English) is the “New Church of the Holy Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary,”¹ or the Nea Church for short. Its gabled red roof is identical to that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, except that the Nea’s is larger. Like the Holy Sepulchre Church, the Nea seems to extend into the Cardo (from the opposite side of the street). Around it are what appear to be auxiliary buildings.

Between 1970 and 1981 the southern part of the Cardo and the Nea were exposed in a major excavation by the distinguished Israeli archaeologist Nahman Avigad of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Avigad died in 1992 without completing his final report. Beginning in 2002, as a young doctoral student, I was given the privilege of writing the final excavation report.² Comprising part of a multi-volume series on Professor Avigad’s excavations in the Old City and containing contributions by numerous other authors, the report was published in January 2012.³

We know a lot about the Nea from early Christian authors, especially Procopius of Caesarea (c. 500–561 C.E.), the court historian of the emperor Justinian. Procopius tells us that “in Jerusalem he [Justinian] dedicated to the Mother of God a shrine with which no other can be compared.”⁴

From Cyril of Scythopolis, the noted chronicler of monasticism in the Judean Desert, we learn that it was Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem from 494 to 516 C.E., who laid the foundations of the Nea. Cyril tells us that Sabas, founder of the Great 033 Laura (Monastery) of Mar Saba in the Judean Desert, requested Justinian’s permission “to build and appoint” the Nea Church; in other words, to enlarge and renovate it.⁵ It thus appears that Elias began construction of the church, but when he was exiled from Jerusalem in 516 C.E. by the emperior Anastasius (491–518 C.E.) for supporting the Chalcedonian Creed, the work ceased. Cyril relates that in 531 C.E., Sabas, then age 93, was sent by Petrus, patriarch of Jerusalem, to meet with Justinian in Constantinople. He presented a number of requests, including the renewal of construction of the Nea and establishment of a hospital there. Sabas’s mission was a success; Justinian acquiesced to all of Sabas’s requests, granting 1,850 gold solidi coins for the maintenance of the hospice and pledging a similar amount, tax-free, in the coming years.

Justinian also dispatched an architect named Theodorus to supervise the actual construction of the church.

Renewed construction began in 532 C.E., at the earliest, and continued for 12 years, according to Cyril. The consecration of the church, with Cyril present, took place on November 20, 543. Cyril extolled the size and splendor of the church, noting that it “surpasses all the ancient sites and accounts that men marvel at and the Greeks have recorded in their history.”

An examination of the structural details of the Nea described by these ancient authors can be postponed until after we look at Avigad’s excavation of the Cardo.

Before his excavation, the accepted theory among both pioneering and modern scholars of Jerusalem archaeology—an imposing list that includes Joseph Germer-Durand, Charles W. Wilson, Louis-Hugues 034 Vincent, F.M. Abel, Michael Avi-Yonah and my own teacher Yoram Tsafrir—was that the entire length of the Cardo, from the Damascus Gate in the north to the area of Mt. Zion in the south, was built as a homogeneous structure as part of Hadrian’s Aelia Capitolina (in the Late Roman period), an argument based on the depiction of Jerusalem in the Madaba map.

When he began his excavation, Avigad, too, accepted this theory. As he wrote in Discovering Jerusalem:

When we began to excavate the avenue we had little doubt of its date: we all “knew” that, if there was indeed a cardo here, it would be the main north-south axis of the Roman city, designed as part and parcel of Colonia Aelia Capitolina, though it would have continued in use in Byzantine times as well (as is shown by the Madaba map). This “general knowledge” was an unchallenged axiom.⁶

At a depth of more than 8 feet, just where it seemed to be located on the Madaba map, Avigad uncovered the Cardo for a distance of almost 600 feet.

Just as portrayed on the Madaba map, colonnades flanked both sides of the street. The rows of columns that extended along either side of the street supported a roof structure of wooden beams that covered the sidewalks. Together with their bases and ornately carved capitals, the columns reached a height of 16.5 feet. The width of the Cardo, including the street itself and the sidewalks, or porticoes, was approximately 75 feet. Small shops were located at several spots along both the eastern and western sidewalks, hewn into the rock scarp.

Avigad recovered some 60 Byzantine architectural elements—bases, columns and capitals. A few of the column bases were discovered in situ. Most of the architectural elements, however, were found in secondary use in various later structures situated along the route of the Cardo.

The capitals were all carved in the crude, provincial Corinthian style of the Byzantine period. None was from the Roman period.

Moreover, the southern part of the Cardo was constructed directly on leveled bedrock. Where the bedrock descended sharply northward, the Cardo pavement was laid upon earth fills covering First and Second Temple period fortifications.

In short, it appears that the part of the Cardo that Avigad excavated—the southern part—was not laid until the Byzantine period.

Another note: The column-shaft fragments Avigad found are clearly smaller in diameter than those few original columns still in situ from the northern half of the Cardo.

One final contrast between the northern and southern portions of the Cardo: Some Roman-period fragments have been found in secondary use along the northern part, but none was found along the part that Avigad excavated. If the Byzantine builders had dismantled an earlier Roman Cardo, they would certainly have put these architectural fragments to secondary use.

In short, the Cardo was confined to the northern part in the Roman period. The Aelia Capitolina Cardo did not extend to what had been the southern part of Jerusalem. The Tenth Roman Legion 035 036 was encamped in that area. Therefore there was no need for the Cardo to extend farther south.

Avigad was convinced that the southern part of the Cardo was first constructed in the Byzantine period: “[This] most significant conclusion was based not only on the architectural style, but even more so on Byzantine pottery found beneath the pavement. There was absolutely nothing in our findings to indicate that this was a Byzantine renovation of an earlier Roman street.”⁷

Almost all scholars, including me, agree with him. The sole significant exception is my teacher Yoram Tsafrir. According to Tsafrir, the Roman Cardo was constructed several meters higher than the Byzantine Cardo. He explains the absence of any remains of the Roman Cardo in the south as due to its systematic dismantling by the Byzantine builders, who lowered the street to the level of the entrance of the Nea Church at the southern end of the Cardo.

A portion of the southern Cardo that Avigad excavated has been restored. Visitors can walk along the original level of the Byzantine Cardo, reconstructed with new paving stones. Nine columns of this Cardo were completely restored. This was no mean task. Dozens of architectural fragments, including 16 bases, 9 capitals and some 35 parts of column shafts were included in the restoration. In addition, six original bases were restored. One complete and five broken shafts were arranged in descending order on the bases.

The impetus for the construction of the southern part of the Cardo in the Byzantine period was almost surely Justinian’s decision to construct the Nea Church. In the Byzantine period the city expanded southward, and Justinian wanted to build a magnificent church to balance the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The southern part of the Cardo provided a paved processional way from the Nea to the Holy Sepulchre. The procession would begin at a church honoring the Virgin and the Lord’s birth and lead to the site of Jesus’ burial.

While the Nea Church is clearly identifiable on the Madaba map at the southern end of the Cardo, its actual location on the ground remained 037 unknown for centuries. Scholars proposed various sites, from Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount to Mt. Zion.

Actually, a portion of the church wall was excavated during construction in the mid-19th century, but it was not recognized for what it was. In June 1970, Avigad excavated a portion of this same wall, which turned out to be the eastern wall of the church.

In 1975, in a separate project, archaeologist Meir Ben-Dov was excavating outside the Old City wall (from the Turkish Ottoman period) west of Dung Gate. He was preparing the site for the establishment of a park when he came upon the corner of a building constructed of huge ashlars sticking out of the Old City wall. The corner itself had been incorporated by the Ottoman builders into their city wall. It can still be seen today. It is still impressive. It is a corner of the Nea Church.⁸

In the summer of 1976, Avigad was excavating inside this same area of the Old City when he came upon six impressively high stone vaults that once supported a massive structure on top. Almost 1,500 years earlier, Procopius had described such vaults as belonging to a structure of the Nea. Procopius described Jerusalem as “set upon hills. However these hills have no soil upon them, but stand with rough and very steep sides, causing the streets to run straight up and down like ladders.” Then he goes on to state that the hill upon which the Nea Church was to be built was, in fact, unsuitable and not large enough for the architectural demands of the emperor. A quarter of the church, that which would face southeast and in which the priests would carry out their rites, would thus be left without constructional support.⁹ This was the solution of Justinian’s architects:

They threw the foundations out as far as the limit of the even ground and then erected 038 a structure which rose as high as the rock. And when they had raised this up level with the rock, they set vaults upon the supporting walls and joined this substructure to the other foundation of the church. Thus the church is partly based upon living rock and partly carried in the air by a great extension artificially added to the hill by the Emperor’s power.¹⁰

These were the vaults that Avigad had found.

Interestingly enough, this vaulted chamber had been entered by others in the 19th century but had not been recognized as belonging to the Nea Church.

The arches that separated the six vaults and bore the ceiling rested upon massive, square piers. The vaults rose nearly 31 feet from the floor.

Entrance to the vaulted structure was via a vault in its northeastern corner, preserved intact, which led to a staircase that descended to the bottom of the structure. This vault, incorporated into the eastern wall of the structure, was built of alternating courses of hewn fieldstones and red bricks. Though common throughout Byzantium, the use of bricks was almost unknown in the Land of Israel during the Byzantine period. We are thus presented with a rare but remarkably well preserved example of Justinianic architecture in the Holy Land. Apparently after a number of years, when the attached monastery and hospice became active, the church authorities decided to convert this vaulted area into a cistern, a valuable addition to the complex.

In May 1977, while removing debris and earth fills that had accumulated inside this vaulted structure, Avigad discovered a monumental Greek inscription on its southern wall. Framed by a tabula ansata, it commemorated construction works under the patronage of the emperor Justinian, supervised by the hegumen Constantine. This Constantine is known to us from the works of the monk John Moschos, writing in the second half of the sixth century, as one of the abbots of the Nea Church monastery.¹¹

Set into the wall more than 25 feet above the floor, the inscription frame is more than 5 feet wide and 2.2 feet high. At the end is a small cross, with a larger cross 2 feet high beneath it. Both the crosses and the inscription were molded of gray plaster in high relief. The inscription comprises five lines preserved almost in their entirety, with the letters painted in red.¹² It reads:

This work too was donated by our most pious Emperor Flavius Justinian, through the 039 provision and care of Constantine, most saintly priest and abbot, in the 13th indiction.

ΚΤΟΥΤΟΤΟΕΡΓΟΝΕΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΗ

CΑΤΟΟΕΥCΕΒ·ΗΜΩΝΒΑCΙ

ΛΕΥCΦΛ·ΙΟCΤΙΝΙΑΝΟCΠΡΟΝΟΙ

ΑΚCΠΟΥΔΙΚΩΝCΤΑΝΤΙΝΟΥ

Α Ε

ΟCΙΩΤΠΡΕCΒ·ΚΗΓΟΜΙΝΔ·ΙΓ+

According to Israeli epigraphist Leah di Segni, who is responsible for the publication of the 040 041 inscription, it does not commemorate the actual construction of the vaulted structure but rather its transformation into a water reservoir, as evidenced by the fact that the script was molded into the hydraulic plaster that covered the walls. This view is supported by the fact that Procopius makes no mention of the structure’s function as a reservoir.

The church itself was 480 feet long and 190 feet wide. (The famed Hagia Sophia, which Justinian built in Constantinople [modern Istanbul], measures 253 by 233 feet.) The basic layout was a basilica divided into a long, narrow nave (170 feet long and 34 feet wide) paved with marble slabs and two side aisles. At the end of the nave was a central apse, flanked by two smaller apses. Remains of the two side apses can be seen in situ by visiting tourists. The central apse is more than 30 feet wide and 24 feet deep. A marble chancel screen separated the nave from the apse. Behind the chancel screen, steps lead from the nave level up to the bema (raised platform) of the apse. In the center of the bema was the altar.

Two huge columns supported the vault or hemispherical dome that rested on the apse. Three high windows allowed light to enter the apse.

From the archaeological evidence, we do not know whether the church featured an ambo (an elevated pulpit) in the apse. It is very likely it did, however, since Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, delivered a sermon in the Nea in 634.

A chamber attached to the church, preserved almost in its entirety, may have served as the prothesis of the church, where the bread and wine were prepared for the Eucharist.

Outside the church was an atrium consisting of a peristyle courtyard paved with red limestone and marble slabs, surrounded by four porticoes covered with sloping tiled roofs, all of which were partially exposed in the excavation.

According to Procopius, two huge columns “stand before the door of the church [and are] exceptionally large and probably second to no column in the whole world.” This description immediately brings to mind the two pillars, named Jachin and Boaz, that stood before Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 7:21). Hagi Amitzur of Haifa University and Shaanan College has suggested that the Nea Church may have been constructed as a symbolic response to Solomon’s Temple.¹³ Indeed, it is not hard to discern the similarities between Procopius’s description of the Nea Church and Biblical descriptions of Solomon’s Temple. And why did Procopius call it the “New” church? Could it be that Solomon’s Temple was the old structure and the Church of Mary Mother of God was the new one?

At the consecration of Hagia Sophia, Justinian’s other huge church, the emperor is said to have exclaimed “O, Solomon, I have vanquished you!” Could he have been referring not only to the Hagia but also to the Nea?

In 1860 a huge column was discovered several miles from the Nea, in the Russian Compound of Jerusalem, northwest of the Old City. It had been 042 only partly quarried. It was left at the site half-finished because it had cracked, apparently inadvertently. It would no longer have been usable. But it was enormous—nearly 6 feet in diameter and 39 feet long! Tsafrir has suggested that this column was originally intended for the Nea. It may be that it was meant to be one of the two exceptional columns that Procopius said stood before the door of the church.

Procopius also tells us that the Nea was built on “the highest of the hills” of Jerusalem.¹⁴ By emphasizing the construction of the church on the highest hill in the city, was Procopius referring to Justinian’s intent to have it overlook the ruins of the Temple Mount—and thus underscore Christianity’s superiority and victory over Judaism?

Procopius was probably also hinting at the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the End of Days: “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s Temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.”¹⁵ Justinian deliberately did not construct the Nea Church on the Temple Mount, so that its desolate state would be preserved and in this way fulfill Jesus’ prophecy regarding its destruction: “ ‘Do you see all these things?’ he asked. ‘Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down’ ” (Matthew 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 21:6).

The Nea compound included a number of other buildings in addition to the church itself. Several Byzantine writers—Procopius, Cyril of Scythopolis, the monk Antiochus Strategius and others—tell us that the church complex included a monastery, a library, a hospital and a pilgrim hostel. It played a central role in the religious life of what was now a Christian city. The Piacenza Pilgrim, who traveled to the Holy Land in the second half of the sixth century, describes a hospital here with more than 3,000 beds “for the sick.” While this is almost certainly an exaggeration, it nevertheless implies a rather substantial facility.

South of the church, Avigad excavated part of an ashlar-built Byzantine building with a colorful marble opus sectile floor. I identify this floor as a peristyle courtyard that led into the church complex’s library. The small square structure seen north of the Nea Church on the Madaba map, facing the eastern portico of the Cardo, should be identified as this library.

080

One final note: The Nea church may have once held the treasures of the Second Temple.^b When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 C.E., they looted it. Its treasures were displayed to the Roman crowds in a triumphal procession documented on the reliefs of the Arch of Titus. The immense gold seven-branched candelabrum (the menorah) is prominently displayed among the looted items on Titus’s arch. The treasures were initially kept on the Capitoline Hill in Rome until 75 C.E., at which time they were put on display in the emperor Vespasian’s newly completed Temple of Peace (Templum Pacis), built to commemorate the defeat of Judea. In 455 C.E., following the sack of Rome by the Vandal king Genseric, many of the items were plundered and removed to Carthage.¹⁶ In 533, Justinian dispatched an army to conquer the Vandal kingdom in North Africa. The campaign, commanded by Belisarius, was a triumph, and the victorious general celebrated in the hippodrome of Constantinople, where he exhibited his plunder. According to Procopius, this plunder included the treasures of the Temple originally brought to Rome by Titus. Procopius relates that a Jew cautioned one of the emperor’s advisors against bringing these treasures into his royal palace because they were never to be placed in any spot other than that originally decreed by King Solomon. For this reason, the Jew said, the Vandal king Genseric had been able to capture Rome, and “the Romans” (i.e., the Byzantines) had been able to conquer the Vandals. 081 Justinian heeded this warning and ordered the treasures sent to the Christian Trust in Jerusalem. Although Procopius gives no further details as to their exact destination, these treasures may well have been sent to the newly built Nea Church in Jerusalem.¹⁷

Longtime BAR readers are familiar with the sixth-century C.E. mosaic map of the Holy Land on the floor of a church in Madaba, Jordan. In the middle of the map lies Jerusalem, the center of the world. In the middle of the city is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—the center of Jerusalem, hence the center of the world. Running through the middle of Jerusalem is the columned Cardo, the major street of the city, on which the church fronts. The Cardo (actually the western Cardo; the city has two main north-south streetsa) begins at the still-existing Damascus Gate […]