The richly decorated panel was consecrated in the choir of the church in 1149, at the time of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It remained there until a fire in 1808.
How many pilgrims have passed the great slab of stone that lay forgotten by all in a dark corner of the Holy Sepulcher over the past few centuries? The rock, polluted by time and people, didn’t look like much. In Jerusalem, however, at the spiritual heart of the three religions of the book, nothing is ever nothing. During a restoration project by Israeli and Austrian researchers, the bulky and dirty rubble turned out to be the old cladding of the church’s medieval high altar. The crusaders and the Christian kings of Jerusalem once celebrated mass at this table. She had been entrusted to the intimacy of shadow and dust a few years ago.
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The remains found in the depths of the complex built around Calvary date from the 12th century, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He wasn’t always that rough. “It is hardly recognizable today, but originally the slab was encrusted with precious fragments of finely cut marble and glass paste. It shimmered,” ILO archaeologist Amit Re’em told Reuters. The altar’s luster was reminiscent of the Jerusalem found after the First Crusade in 1099. The high altar is later. It would have been for the renovated and remodeled chancel of the Holy Sepulcher, dedicated to Catholic worship in 1149.
The back of the recently discovered fragment of the medieval altar of the Holy Sepulchre. This visible side has been covered in a variety of graffiti since the early 19th century. REUTERS
Italian altar
What happened that this luminous altar, a former vanishing point from the center of the church, withered away in its darkest dungeons? The history. In 1187, some thirty years after the Crusaders’ Holy Sepulcher was dedicated with great pomp, Jerusalem was retaken from the Latins by Saladin’s army. The European kings were unable to recapture the city, except for a brief hiatus of 15 years between 1229 and 1244. The Church of Calvary then returned to Orthodox hands, while the Roman cult furniture remained in place until a fire in 1808. What remains of the shining altar are scrapped and overturned in the compound’s backyards. The table there becomes a mass of stone left to the palimpsest graffiti of idle pilgrims.
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The announcement in April of the rediscovery of the medieval altar of the Holy Sepulcher delighted Archbishop Aristarchus of Constantine, secretary of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, who praised the archaeologists’ work. Above all, it is a fantastic historical testimony of the work of the craftsmen at the time of the Crusaders’ work on the ancient basilica founded at the beginning of the 4th century. Indeed, despite its tired appearance and its incompleteness, this large fragment, 2.5 meters wide, reminds professionals of several 12th- and 13th-century altars and remains still preserved in Rome.
Like the countless objects preserved in Italy, including a large number of mosaics, the ancient forgotten Crusaders’ Altar in Jerusalem mixes a bundle of multicultural influences: a dose of Roman influence and a measure of Byzantine artistry. . Consider the recipe that corresponds to the so-called cosmatic style. The decorative genre was all the rage in southern Europe around the 12th century. It’s been upgraded in Jerusalem with a touch of Islamic aesthetic that calls for Levantine influence. Led by Israeli and Austrian researchers, a study dedicated to examining the altar and its stylistic overlap is due to be published later this year.
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