on human credulity and superstition. There can be little doubt that Nazareth itself had nothing whatever to do with the originating of a story which tended so directly to injure its own renown by robbing it of one of its most precious treasures. The theorj^ of its inven- tion suggested by Stanley is in all probability the true one. "Nazareth was taken by sultan Khalil in 1291, when he stormed the last refuge of the Crusaders in the neighboring city of Acre. From that time not Nazareth onh', but the whole of Palestine was closed to the de- votions of Europe. The Crusaders were expelled from Asia, and in Europe the spirit of the crusades was ex- tinct. But the natural longing to see the scenes of the events of the sacred history — the superstitious craving to win, for prayer, the favor of consecrated places — did not expire with the crusades. Can we wonder that, under such circumstances, there should have arisen the feeling, the desire, the belief that if Mohammed would not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mo- hammed? The house of Loretto is the petrifaction, so to speak, of the last sigh of the crusades !" (^Sinai and Palestine, p. 448, 449). The existence of this purely European tradition has proved a source of considerable perplexity to the Franciscan monks of Nazareth ; for while the pope's bull and the infallibility of their Church compel them to receive it, they find it somewhat puz- zling to harmonize it with w^hat they have to show, and to contend for, within the walls of their own convent. To illustrate this awkward conflict of incompatible claims, Stanley exhibits, at the head of his chapter on the subject, diagrams of the ground -plan of the holy house at Loretto and of the site of the same pretended house at Nazareth — plans which by no possibilitj' can be made to agree.
The extensive edifice which now occupies the place of the church built on the same spot by the Crusaders was begim in the early part of the 17th century, that of the Crusaders having lain in ruins for more than 300 years. The modern structure has been gradually en- larged, and now constitutes, with its numerous convent- ual buildings, by much the most imposing object that meets the traveller's eye as he comes in sight of Naza- reth. It is the Latin convent, and includes within its high-walled enclosure the church already spoken of, the Church of the Annunciation. The church itself is nearly a square of seventj' feet, divided, by four massive piers which support the vaulted roof, into nave, choir, and aisles. The piers and walls are covered with can- vas hangings, painted, in imitation of tapestry, with Scripture scenes. The sacred grotto, the true holy place, is beneath the floor of the church, and is entered by a broad flight of fifteen steps which lead down into it. Here there is first a vestibule of twenty-five feet by ten, from which a low-arched opening admits the visitor into an inner chamber of the same size — the ver- itable scene, according to the tradition of the Latin Church, of the ever-memorable Annunciation. Within this sanctum, and directly opposite the entrance into it, is a marble altar; and beneath it on the floor a marble slab, with a cross in the centre, professedly marking the place where the Virgin stood when she received the message from on high. On the marble pavement of the grotto is this inscription : Hie Verbum cava factum est. Yxom the roof of this grotto the fragment of a granite column hangs, and beneath it the lower part of what the monks allege to be the same column re- mains inserted in the floor; the middle part of the col- umn, they say, having been broken in pieces by the Saracen infidels in order to bring down tlie roof. Un- fortunately the two parts of the column are of different kinds of stone— the one being of gray granite, the other of Cipolino marble, betraying the clumsiness with which the contrivance has been executed. In another cham- ber, above and behind the altar, there is an apocryphal picture which claims to represent the " vera imago Sal- vatoris nostri, Domini Jem Christi, ad Regefin Ahgarum
NAZARETH
878
NAZARETH
I. New quarters of the Latin Convent School ; 6. Protestant Missionary's House; 7. Con Governor; 11. Mosque; 12. Mission Hospital.
Plan of Nazareth.
Church of the Annunciation; 3. Protestant Church; 4. Protestant Parsonaee ; 5. Protestant Mission
, of French Nuns ; 8. The " Mensa Cbristi ;" 9. House of the Mufti ; 10. House of the Turkish
At some distance from the Latin convent is a modern church, also belonging to the Latins, within which is shown a jiiecc of an old wall — part, as their tradition would have it believed, of Joseph's workshop. In an- other chapel is the mensa Christi, a large table-shaped fragment of solid rock, rising about tliree feet above the floor, on which, it is told, our Lord ate with Ids dis- ( iples both before and after his resurrection. Finally there is the synagogue from which Jesus was dragged by the multitude to the brow of the hill on which the city stood, with the design of casting him down.