![]() ![]() The huge Crusader church was built without a roof, open to the sky, the better to allow the risen Christ to ascend symbolically in perpetuity.Īfter Saladin defeated the Crusaders in 1187, the basilica was at least partly demolished, with its exterior walls preserved, presumably to function as a fortification. In the 12th century, the Crusaders rebuilt the church on the ruins of the previous one. Inside was a central edicule containing the footprints of Christ, plainly and clearly impressed in the dust, inside a railing.”Īnd we will come to those footprints in a moment. Eight lamps shone brightly at night through windows facing Jerusalem. In 680, the pilgrim Bishop Arculf described what he saw: “A round building open to the sky, with three porticoes entered from the south. That church, like most churches in the Holy Land, was destroyed by the Persians in 614.īy the end of that century it was rebuilt. In her description she mentions a footprint which tradition said was that of Jesus. Initially, the Ascension was commemorated at that place as well.īy the end of the 4th century, the pilgrim Egeria reported participating in a celebration of the Ascension a little further up the mount. That cave was remembered as the place where Jesus taught the disciples the Lord’s Prayer, and it is still venerated as such in the Paternoster monastery complex. Unlike most sacred shrines in the Holy Land, there is more than one credible claimant to the authentic location.īefore Christianity was legalised in 313 AD, Jerusalem’s Christians used a cave near the summit of the Mount of Olives for gatherings and Mass. The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem marks at its foot the place of Jesus’ arrest, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and at the top the point where tradition places the Risen Christ ascending into heaven. (Photos: Günther Simmermacher)Īncient tradition places the spot of Christ’s Ascension in a small mosque in Jerusalem, as Günther Simmermacher writes. The reputed left footprint of Christ imprinted in a rock in the mosque-chapel of the Ascension on Mount of Olives, Jerusalem, seen right. ![]()
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