3. History. — Of the condition of Nazareth during the earlier centuries of the Christian a?ra next to nothing is known. Eusebius, in his Onomasticon, alludes to it as a village near Mount Tabor. Epiphanius sjjcaks of it as formerly a town, but in his day only a village. He- lena, the mother of Coiistantine, is related to have built the first cluirch of the Aiuiunciation here. In the time of the Crusaders, the episcopal see of I?etlisean was transferred there. The birthplace of Christianity was lost to the Christians by their defeat at Hattin in 1183, and was laid utterly in ruins by sultan IJibars in 12C3. Ages passed away before it rose again from this prostra- tion. In 1G20 the Franciscans rebuilt the church of the Annunciation, and connected a cloister with it. In 1799 the Turks assaulted the French general J unot at Naza- reth ; and shortly after 2100 French, under Kleber and Napoleon, defeated a Turkish army of 25,000 at the foot of ivlount Tabor. Napoleon himself, after that battle, spent a few hours at Nazareth, and reached there the
Map of the Valley of Nazareth (by Dr. J. S. Jewell).
uuth : 6. Artificial care
NAZARETH
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NAZARETH
northern limit of his Eastern expedition. The earth- quake which destroj'ed Safed in 1837, injured also Naz- areth. No Jews reside there at present, which may be ascribed perhaps as much to the hostility of the Chris- tian sects as to their own hatred of the prophet who was sent " to redeem Israel."
4. Traditionai-y Localities. — Epiphanius, in his book against heresies, written in the latter half of the 4th century, states that, from times prior to those of Jose- phus, onward to the reign of the elder Constantine, none but Jews were allowed to live in it. Being himself a native of Judjea, and born, as is believed, of Jewish par- ents, his information on such points as these is not like- ly to have been incorrect. If so, it effectually overturns all confidence in those many monkish traditions of which the modern Nazareth is full. If several cen- turies elapsed before Christians resorted to it, or dwelt in it at all, it must needs have been utterly impossible to identif}', as those traditions pretend to do, the precise locality of any one of the memorable incidents from which it derives its undying fame.
In the 6th century, although, so far as appears, no trace had been found of either the house of Joseph and ]Mar\' or of the scene of the annunciation, those who trade in discoveries of that kind were then already at work. Antoninus Martyr, who in the course of that century went from Tyre to visit Nazareth, found there a synagogue, in which, as he was told, " had stood the very bench on which, along with the children of the place, Jesus in his childhood had sat; but which, to keep it out of the hands of the Christians, the Jews had carried off" (Z'e urhibus et vicis Palastince). In the immediately succeeding century, however, almost every- thing of which tradition boasts at the present day in Nazareth had become an accepted and firmly-established belief of that superstitious age. Writing of the holy places in the 7th century, Adamnanus expressly men- tions one great church as having been built over the site of the house in which our Lord was brought up; and another on tha spot where the angel Gabriel ap- peared to the Virgin, to announce to her that divine mystery which has made her blessed among women. Phocas, a writer of the Tith century, alludes to the same traditions, as still studiously cherished; and specially notices the fountain, in a small cave beneath a splendid church, as that at which Mary was wont to drink, and where the angel appeared to her ; and also to the house of Joseph as having been changed into a most beautiful place of Christian worship. Tradition, however, is not always sufficiently careful of its own consistency. For it would have us to believe that this house of Joseph, which in the 12th century had been so transmuted, was, in its original form of Joseph's dwelling, carried away bodily from Nazareth by the hands of angels, and set down on the hill above Fiume, at the head of the Adriatic Gulf; and that from thence, after a short stay in the plain below, it was conveyed across the sea to the eastern slope of the Apennines, where, as the santa casa, within the magnificent church of our Lady of Loretto, it stands to this day, and continues to be the most fre- quented and honored of all the holy places in the world ! Those who are able to get over all the other difficulties connected with this marvellous story, will not be much embarrassed by the fact that, while the actual house of Joseph, wherever it stood, was no doubt built of the grayish-white limestone of which the whole country around Nazareth is formed, the santa casa at Loretto is built of a dark-red stone, to which there is nothing like in all the land of Judrea. Although the miraculous transportation of the holy house took place, according to the tradition regarding it, about the close of the 13th centurj-, there is no trace of the existence of the tradi- tion itself till near the end of the 15th century. That this monstrous fable should have been formally recited and canonized in a bull of the lettered and luxurious sceptic, pope Leo X, serves only to show that there is no delusion too gross for the Papal Church to practice