Jerusalem: The Biography

* Initially, Constantine identified the Unconquered Sun with the Christian God, placing crosses on some of his coins, the Sun on others, and remaining Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) of the pagan cults. In 321, Constantine declared Sunday – the day of the Sun – as the Christian version of the Sabbath. Mithraism was a Persian mystery religion with a following among Roman troops. As for Manichaeanism, the Parthian prophet Mani preached that existence was a perpetual struggle of light and dark, ultimately judged and enlightened by Jesus Christ. Now only the word survives to describe a world-view that sees life as a tournament between good and evil.

* In killing his son, Constantine joined an unsavoury crewof royal filicides that includes Herod the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Suleiman the Magnificent. Herod, the emperor Claudius and Henry VIII also executed their own wives.

† But she was not the first lady of Constantine’s family to be there. Eutropia, Fausta’s Christian mother, was already in Jerusalem, perhaps to supervise the emperor’s plans, when her daughter was killed. She shared her daughter’s downfall and was almost written out of history.

* We do not knowthe exact sequence of these buildings and discoveries. Eusebius of Caesarea, who provides the contemporary record, mentions only the orders of the emperor and the actions of Bishop Macarius in building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (but nothing about Helena’s role in finding the Cross). Yet he gives her credit for the Ascension Church on the Mount of Olives. The story of Helena and the Cross is told later by Sozomen (also a local Christian). Some of Constantine’s walls can still be seen, within the Russian Alexander Nevsky Church: the stones contain the niches by which Constantine’s architects attached the marble. Constantinian churches were based not on pagan temples but the secular basilica, the audience-halls of emperors. Church rituals and clerical costumes were based on the imperial court to promote for the representatives of the King of Heaven a hierarchy parallel to that of the emperor.

* Up until Nicaea, Easter still fell on Passover, since it was at Passover that Jesus had been crucified. NowConstantine’s hatred of the Jews informed his decision to change this for ever. Constantine decreed that Easter should be fixed on the first full moon Sunday after the vernal equinox. This system remained universal until 1582 when the Eastern and Western calendars diverged.

† Arius was on his way through Constantinople after a meeting with Constantine when he felt a ‘relaxation of the bowels’. Before he could reach a convenience, wrote Socrates Scholasticus, Arius’ bowels burst in the middle of the Forum with his intestines, liver and spleen haemorrhaging out of him, a clear demonstration of the evil of his heresy. Yet Arianism lived on after Constantine’s death, supported by his heir Constantius II until condemned again by Theodosius I, who in 381 decreed that Jesus was equal to the Father in the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and of the same substance.

* Nothing remains of this very short Jewish blossoming, but there may be one small clue. High on the Western Wall, a Hebrewinscription has been discovered reading: ‘And when you see this, your heart will rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like young grass.’ It was too high on the wall for the Second Temple but in this period the ground was much higher. Some scholars believe this expresses the joy of the Jews at Jerusalem’s restoration. More likely, it refers to a tenth-century cemetery: bones were found below this spot.

* Zion was originally the name of the citadel of David’s City, south of the Temple, but became synonymous with the Temple Mount. Now ‘Zion’ became the Christian name for the western hill. In 333, the Bordeaux Pilgrim already called it Zion. In 390, the Bishop of Jerusalem built the magnificent and colossal Zion, Mother of Churches there on the site of the Coenaculum. Jerusalem’s gift for dynamic reinvention and cultural theft is endless – but it does make names very confusing. Take this example: Hadrian’s Neapolis Gate with the huge column standing before it nowbecame St Stephen’s Gate for some centuries before the Arabs called it the Gate of the Column, and later the Nablus Gate (Neapolis being today’s Nablus); the Jews called it the Shechem Gate; the Ottomans called it today’s name, Damascus Gate. (Today’s St Stephen’s Gate is on the eastern side of the city.)