Robert Wagman

CHAPTER XXX

I can now conclude my narrative if I add what others have written about the Holy Fire of Jerusalem. But let me digress once more in order to explain: this is about a phenomenon which is believed to take place during the days of our Lord’s passion, when all lights in Jerusalem are out, and a divine flame is believed to rekindle the extinguished lamps in both the tomb and the church of the Holy Resurrection. Up until the time of pope Urban II, such phenomenon would occur every year: Urban himself mentions it in his appeal for the rescue of the Holy Land, given to the representatives of western Christianity at the council of Clermont (William of Malmesbury, De Rebus Anglicis, bk. 4, ch. 2). Likewise Burchard of Ursberg, quoting from a letter of the bishop Hermann, reports that the same event took place before the people of God in the year of the Lord 1101. And a certain Bartholomaeus Polychronius, who signed the last page of that famous evangeliary in the Barberini Library known as n. 13, affirms that he saw this divine light while visiting Jerusalem in the year 1168:

Readers, pray for the sake of humble Bartholomew from Brescia, that I may partake of that legacy which is due to just men; amen. According to God’s will, I came to worship in Jerusalem a first time in 1158 and a second in 1168, when I purchased this book. And, although unworthy, I did see the sacred light on Great Saturday. It did descend on the ninth hour upon the holy tomb of Christ.

In my own annotations I also have this excerpt which I took from a very old manuscript:

The following evening hymn was conceived thus. Every Great Saturday in Jerusalem the Holy Church of the Resurrection receives a new light from heaven, which burns in the lamps hanging over the life-giving holy tomb. One time, a Patriarch—whose name I cannot remember—stood in expectation of this event in the silent church. No lamps were alight, but the whole city was waiting in order to rekindle its lights from the heavenly flame. All of a sudden, not only the tomb but the entire Holy Church of the Resurrection was filled with light. Then, as an expression of gratitude, the Patriarch began singing this hymn, ‘Joyous light of the holy glory of our heavenly immortal Father, of the holy and blessed Jesus Christ, which comes at sunset. Soon as we see the vesper light, we praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Son of God who gives life, you deserve to be praised throughout time with merry voices: thus the world celebrates your glory’.

More about this can be found in Gretser’s On the Cross, Vol. 3, bk. 2, ch. 11. That the prodigy continued to occur even after the Christians were expelled and Jerusalem returned to Muslim hands, we learn from John Cantacuzenus’ work, Defense against Mohamed, 3. 9—where Cantacuzenus appeals to this yearly miracle of the divinely ignited light in an effort to convert Muslims to Christianity. Similar information is also given by the Anonymous Author on the Sites of Jerusalem,

On the holy day of Great Saturday, at nightfall, the holy light descends on the holy tomb of Christ and turns all of its lamps ablaze.

However, according to Petrus Arcudius bk. II, ch. 9 ‘On Confirmation’, Greeks are the only ones to claim that the lamps used for the Resurrection celebrations are lit by a miraculous light descended from heaven the day before. According to Arcudius, very well-known and reliable men who happen to have visited those places for religious reasons have discovered that this is false.

NOTES

Forthcoming