Cenacle

The Cenacle (from the Latin cenaculum, "dining room"), also known as the Upper Room (from the Koine Greek anagaion and hyperōion, both meaning "upper room"), is a room in Mount Zion in Jerusalem, just outside the Old City walls, traditionally held to be the site of the Last Supper, the final meal that, in the Gospel accounts, Jesus held with the apostles.

According to the Christian Bible, the Cenacle was a place in which the apostles continued to gather after the Last Supper, and it was also the site where the Holy Spirit alighted upon the twelve apostles on Pentecost, Matthias having been "numbered with the eleven apostles" to replace Judas in Acts 1:25.^[1]

The site is administered by the Israeli authorities, and is part of a building holding what is known as "David's Tomb" on its ground floor.

"Cenacle" is a derivative of the Latin word ceno, which means "I dine". Jerome used the Latin coenaculum for both Greek words in his Latin Vulgate translation.

"Upper room" is derived from the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke, which both employ the Koine Greek: anagaion (ἀνάγαιον, Mark 14:15^[2] and Luke 22:12),^[3] whereas the Acts of the Apostles uses the Koine Greek hyperōion (ὑπερῷον, Acts 1:13),^[4] both with the meaning "upper room".

A 1472 map of Jerusalem notes the place of the pentecost, "Ubi apostoli acceperunt spiritum sanctum", at the location of the cenacle (top left).

The building has experienced numerous cycles of destruction and reconstruction, culminating in the Gothic structure which stands today.

The Cenacle is considered the site where many major events described in the New Testament took place,^[5][6] such as:

• preparation for the celebration of Jesus's final Passover meal^[7]
• the washing of his disciples' feet^[8]
• the Last Supper
• certain resurrection appearances of Jesus (Mark 16:14, Luke 24:33, John 20:19)
• the gathering of the disciples after the Ascension of Jesus (Acts 1:13)
• the election of Saint Matthias as apostle (Acts 1:15)
• the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). As a result, Peter and the other apostles went out, converted to their faith and baptised 3,000 people in one day (Acts 2:5–41).

In Christian tradition, the room was not only the site of the Last Supper, i.e., the Cenacle, but the room in which the Holy Spirit alighted upon the twelve apostles and other believers gathered and praying together on Pentecost. Acts 1-2 tell us that Judas had been replaced by Matthias, and 120 followers of Jesus gathered in this room after His ascension.

It is sometimes thought to be the place where the apostles stayed in Jerusalem. The language in Acts of the Apostles suggests that the apostles used the room as a temporary residence (Koine Greek: οὗ ἦσαν καταμένοντες, hou ēsan katamenontes),^[1] although the Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary disagrees, preferring to see the room as a place where they were "not lodged, but had for their meeting place".^[9][10]

The general location of the Cenacle is also associated with that of the house where the Virgin Mary lived among the apostles until her death or dormition, an event celebrated in the nearby Church of the Dormition.

Pilgrims to Jerusalem report visiting a structure on Mount Zion commemorating the Last Supper since the 4th century AD. Some scholars would have it that this was the Cenacle, in fact a synagogue from an earlier time. The anonymous pilgrim from Bordeaux, France reported seeing such a synagogue in 333.^[11] A Christian synagogue is mentioned in the apocryphal 4th-century Anaphora Pilati ("Report of Pilate"); although the depiction is fantastic and of questionable reliability (the report claims that all of the other synagogues were destroyed by divine wrath immediately after Jesus's death), a Jewish origin for the building has come under serious question.

While the term Cenacle refers only to the Upper Room, a niche located on the lower level of the same building is associated by tradition with the burial site of King David, marked by a large cenotaph-sarcophagus that dates to the 12th-century,^[12] but earlier mentioned in the 10th-century Vita Constantini.^{[13][clarification needed]} Most accept the notice in 1 Kings 2:10 that says that David was buried "in the City of David", identified as the Eastern hill of ancient Jerusalem, as opposed to what is today called Mount Sion, the Western hill of the ancient city.

The early history of the Cenacle site is uncertain; scholars have attempted to establish a chronology based on archaeological, artistic and historical sources.^[14]

Based on the survey conducted by Jacob Pinkerfeld in 1948,^[15] Pixner believes that the original building was a synagogue later probably used by Jewish Christians. However, no architectural features associated with early synagogues such as columns, benches, or other accoutrements are present in the lower Tomb chamber.^[16] According to Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis writing towards the end of the 4th century, the building and its environs were spared during the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus (AD 70).^[17] Pixner suggests that the Mount Zion site was destroyed and rebuilt in the later first century.^[18] The lowest courses of ashlars (building stones) along the north, east and south walls are attributed by Pinkerfeld to the late Roman period (135-325).^[19] Pixner believes that they are Herodian-period ashlars, dating the construction of the building to an earlier period.^[20]

Many scholars, however, date the walls' earliest construction to the Byzantine period and identify the Cenacle as the remains of a no-longer-extant Hagia Sion ("Holy Zion") basilica.^[21] Emperor Theodosius I constructed the five-aisled Hagia Sion basilica, likely between 379 and 381.^[22]

6th-century artistic representations, such as the mosaics found in Madaba, Jordan (the "Madaba Map") and at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depict a smaller structure to the south of the basilica. Some have identified this smaller structure as the Cenacle, thus demonstrating its independence from, and possible prior existence to, the basilica.^[23] The basilica (and possibly the Cenacle) was later damaged by Persian invaders in 614 but restored by the patriarch Modestus.

In 965 the church was burned down after a Muslim mob killed patriarch John VII and then again in 1009 when Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim ordered the destruction of all Christian churches in Jerusalem, an event lamented by Arab Christian poet Sulayman al-Ghazzi.^[24][25]

Capital decorated with pelicans, a symbol of Jesus in Christian iconography

After the First Crusade, the leader of the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, re-founded the church as a Latin abbey and in the twelfth century the basilica was rebuilt.^[26] The Cenacle was either repaired or enclosed by the Crusader church, occupying a portion of two aisles on the right (southern) side of the altar. The Crusader cathedral was destroyed soon afterward, in the late 12th or early 13th century, but the Cenacle remained. (Today, part of the site upon which the Byzantine and Crusader churches stood is believed to be occupied by the smaller Church of the Dormition and its abbey.)^{[citation needed]}

Syrian Christians maintained the Cenacle until 1337 when it passed into the custody of the Franciscan Order of Friars who managed the structure for almost two centuries.^[27][28]

In 1524, during Suleiman the Magnificent's rule, Ottoman authorities took possession of the Cenacle, converting it into a mosque: the Masjid an-Nabī (al-Nabī) Dāwūd (مسجد النبي داوود lit. 'Mosque of the Prophet David').^[27][29] By 1551 the Franciscans had been fully evicted from their surrounding buildings. Non-Muslims were banned from entering though it was possible by bribing the custodians of the Dajani family.^[28]

Only in 1831 were Christians again allowed to celebrate mass in the cenacle though visits, such as that of Melchior de Vogüé, were dependant on the goodwill of the guardian.^[28]