Our field trip to Christian sites in the Old City is always my favorite.  Sometimes it is called "The Christian Quarter" field trip because several of the sites are in the section of the city, but one of them St. Mark's, is in the Armenian Quarter, and as the students will see in our Last Week Walk, there are several important churches and Christian sites in the Muslim Quarter as well.  Further, though we did not go to see it today, the remains of the apse great Maria Theotokos Nea church are in the Jewish Quarter, and several important Christian churches still stand, and function, on Mount Zion and of course on the Mount of Olives.

This is because for over three hundred years, in so-called "Byzantine Jerusalem," this was a Christian city and a largely Christian land, a phase of the Holy Land often forgotten because of its long, earlier Israelite and Jewish phases before and its dominant Muslim (and briefly Crusader) periods after. 

Yet while the indigenous Christian portion of the city's population is the smallest and continues to shrink, it continues to evidence considerable vitality, bolstered, of course, by millions of Christian pilgrims and a small but helpful ex patriate community of which I am proud to be a part.

Earlier blog posts of this same or related trips can be found at the following links:

• Christian Jerusalem, Winter 2012,with good diagrams of Holy Sepulchre
• Part-way down More Bruce and Vivienne in Jerusalem for Alexander Nevsky and Holy Sepulchre

We started our half-day's tour by entering through New Gate, the gate on the northwest corner of the Old City.  This entrance provides quick access to Custodia Terrae Sancta, the important Roman Catholic complex in the Christian Quarter.  While the technical ecclesiastical head of the Roman Catholic Church in the Holy Land is the Latin patriarch, who has his own headquarters in the quarter, the Custodia complex is operated by the Franciscan Order, which since 1342 has had a papal mandate to operate and maintain Catholic holy sites in the Land.  Thus what Western Europeans failed to maintain by the sword (sc. the Crusades), they have instead operated through the peaceful Franciscan order, the Custodia Terrae Sanctae or "Custody of the Holy Land."

The main church of the Custodia is St. Savior's, whose tall roof and bell tower are a landmark in the Old City.  It is, by Jerusalem standards, a relatively new church. Built in the Baroque style, it has been renovated a few times in its history.  It serves not only the Franciscan brothers but also the local Arab parish.

After visiting this church and singing "All Creatures of Our God and King," we received a brief tour by Father Molina, who also took us to the tailor shop where habits for the order are made.  This oldest section of the Custody used to be a hostel for Christian pilgrims, and it is believed that LDS pilgrim Orson Hyde stayed here, perhaps carving his name into the wood of a door frame like so many other pilgrims.

In St. Savior's

In the tailor's shop

The so-called "Hyde Door"

Rachel pointing out the possible name "Hyde" (with the "H" having been closed into an "A")

Father Molina showing us an early Custodia key

The small church of St. Mark's is the seat of the Syrian Orthodox archbishop of Jerusalem.  Despite its name, the Syrian Church is not part of the Eastern Orthodox communion.  Rather it is an independent Eastern or "Oriental" church, together with the Copts in Egypt, the Armenians, and other ancient communities that did not accept the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451).  They believe that their church was built on the site of the home of Mary the mother of John Mark (the traditional author of the gospel of Mark).  If they are correct, then this would be site of the Last Supper, though the Byzantines and the Greek Orthodox and Catholics since maintain that this was instead on Mount Zion on the site of the current Cenacle. Many of them still speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and his first disciples.

As on previous occasions, we were hosted by Sister Justina, an Iraqi Christian who left her home and her home and career as a math teacher to come to Jerusalem to serve in what the Syrian Orthodox believe is the first church in Christianity, the place where the Last Supper was held and then where the Holy Spirit descended upon the church at Pentecost.  She told us the history of the church, shared stories of miracles that had occurred there, and sang Psalm 150 in Aramaic.  She invited me to take single picture of the altar, something that is usually not permitted, and then let us go "to the church down," the basement room that contains the remnants of what the Syrians believe was Mary' house.  There we read from Mark 14 and Acts 2 and sang.

My only pictures of the altar of St. Mark's

Group pic in "the house down"

A copy of the church's most sacred icon, traditionally held to have been painted by St. Luke