British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 884

CHAPTER XXII.

specifically accorded to the Christians the right to practise their religion without hindrance or molestation : at the same time, property which had been confiscated from the Church or from individuals was restored. An immediate consequence 'of the delivery of the Church from the long era of oppression and martyrdom which she had suffered, with rare intermissions, from the time of her foundation was the natural desire of Christians to build worthy and permanent Churches : hitherto they had worshipped in humble oratories, or in private houses, or, in times of extreme peril, in catacombs underground. It was no less natural that they should wish, in particular, to build Churches on sites hallowed by the blood of martyrs, or the presence of their relics, or by some great event in the history of the Faith. Constantine himself made generous grants for the construction of great basilicas in Rome, and architecture, sculpture and painting were enlisted from the service of the ancient paganism to the service of the Church. In a few years time stately basilicas were also to arise over the Holy Sites in Palestine through the generosity of Constantine and the piety of his mother St. Helena.

15. For in the year 324 A.D. Constantine, now sole master of the Roman Empire, wrote to Eusebius, Metropolitan of Caerarea, asking him to urge the Christians in Palestine to restore such places of worship as were already in existence and to build new Churches. In the following year St. Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, met Constantine at the Council of Nicaea, and obtained the Emperor's permission to destroy the constructions which Hadrian bad erected over the Sites of Calvary and the Resurrection (see above). On his return from the Council, St. Macarius put the work in hand at once. St. Helena, the Emperor's mother, arrived in Palestine the following year (A.D. 326). The work of demolition was already well advanced, and within a short time the Rock of Calvary and the Empty Tomb were found beneath the debris of the constructions with which they had been covered for nearly two hundred years. On the news of the discovery Constantine at once sent two Greek architects, Zenobius and Eustathius, to Jerusalem with orders to construct a basilica upon these Holy Sites. The Constantinian architectural ensemble consisted of two separate churches, one, called the Martyrium, built * on Calvary and the other, called the Anastasia (the Resurrection), built over the Empty Tomb. At the same time,
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* i.e. the Rock or Calvary. The actual site of the Crucifixion (Golgotha) lay towered the south east corner of the atrium (open court surrounded by porches) which was constructed to join the two churches of the Anastasis and the Martyrium. A chapel was built over Golgotha about a century later by St. Melania the Younger.

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