Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

“ In a country so circumstanced a wise ruler would strain every nerve to conciliate the conquered people, to strengthen himself by alliances which should be firmly maintained and by treaties which should be scrupulously kept, to weaken such states as he might fail to win over to his friendship by anticipating combinations which might bring with them fatal dangers for his power. That the history of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem presents a mournful and even ludicrous contrast to this picture it must surely be unnecessary to say. ”

“ Notwithstanding the many sacred memories connected with their city, and the fact that it had been the seat of a Temple in the days of the Israelitish kingdom, to which the tribes of Israel had resorted in numbers, no attempt was now made on their part to dispute the legitimate right to Jerusalem being regarded as the only place where the sacrifices and services enjoined by the precepts of the Mosaic Law could be offered. ”

“ If, from the feeble kingdom of Jerusalem, we pass into Egypt, we there behold the strange spectacle of a government founded by revolt, and strengthening itself amidst political tempests. The Christian colonies, since the taking of Jerusalem, by Saladin, had no longer a common centre or a common tie; the kings of Jerusalem, in losing their capital, lost an authority which served at least as a war-cry, by which to rally ardent spirits around them. ”

“ The Christian kingdom of Jerusalem still stood; and after Godfrey de Bouillon, from 1100 to 1180, there had been a succession of eight kings; some energetic and bold, aspiring to extend their young dominion, others indolent and weak upon a tottering throne. The rivalries and often the defections and treasons of the petty Christian princes and lords who were set up at different points in Palestine and Syria endangered their common cause. ”

“ Unto thee shall it come; that which thou hast long wanted and wished for, even the first dominion, a dignity and power equal to that of David and Solomon, by whom Jerusalem was first raised, that kingdom shall again come to the daughter of Jerusalem, which it was deprived of at the captivity. It shall make as great a figure and shine with as much lustre among the nations, and have as much influence upon them, as ever it had ”

“ Note.—Infatuated by the doctrine of the world's conversion and a temporal millennium of peace, prosperity, and good will among men, the deluded nations will aim to make Jerusalem the center of a glorious kingdom, at which place they will doubtless expect Christ will come and take up His reign as their king. ”

“ From this period the history of the Holy Land is less connected with the Jews than with the policy of the different governments by which their country has been occupied. More attached to their ancient faith than when it was established at Jerusalem, we find them, both in the East and West, labouring with the most indefatigable zeal to revive its principles and extend its authority. Hence their celebrated schools at Babylon and Tiberias,—the source of all legislation, and the seat of judgment in all cases of doubtful opinion. ”

“ Jerusalem's pangs are not as dying agonies, but as travailing throes, which after a while will be forgotten, for joy that a child is born into the world. Let the literal Jerusalem comfort herself with this, that, whatever straits she may be reduced to, she shall continue until the coming of the Messiah, for there his kingdom must be first set up, and she shall not be destroyed while that blessing is in her ”

“ With the reign of King Solomon the brief glory of the Hebrews ends; the northern and richer section of his kingdom, long oppressed by taxation to sustain his splendours, breaks off from Jerusalem to become the separate kingdom of Israel, and this split ruptures that linking connection between Sidon and the Red Sea by which Solomon’s gleam of wealth was possible. There is no more wealth in Hebrew history. Jerusalem remains the capital of one tribe, the tribe of Judah, the capital of a land of barren hills, cut off by Philistia from the sea and surrounded by enemies. ”

“ Jerusalem cannot, in the present state of Europe, become the exclusive possession of any one European Power. But already the land has been almost all bought up by the Jews, and the City—like its holy sisters, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safet—now virtually belongs to them. ”

“ It is necessary to insist that the contrasts are not easy to turn into combinations; that the red robes of Rome and the green scarves of Islam will not very easily fade into a dingy russet; that the gold of Byzantium and the brass of Babylon will require a hot furnace to melt them into any kind of amalgam. The reason for this is akin to what has already been said about Jerusalem as a knot of realities. It is especially a knot of popular realities. Although it is so small a place, or rather because it is so small a place, it is a domain and a dominion for the masses. ”

“ The Patriarch of Jerusalem is first in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and as the head of the Greek Church in Syria, Palestine, and Arabia, he is the pope of the East. Most of the people of Russia belong to what was once a part of the Greek Church, and it has other millions of members in Greece, Turkey, and Asia Minor. As a result of immigration, there are also hundreds of Greek churches in the United States. It is the most powerful and the richest church of all the denominations represented in Jerusalem. ”

“ The temple was left in the hands of Judah and Benjamin. The division of the kingdom into two, insured the downfall of both. The rising power of the Mesopotamian Empire could not be met without union. On the other hand, the concentration of worship at Jerusalem, under the auspices of the two southern tribes, may have averted dangers that would have arisen from the wider diffusion, and consequent exposure to corruption, of the religious system. ”

“ He does not wish to begin His message in Jerusalem where His enemies, gathered together, are the strongest. He wishes to surround the city, take it from the outside, arrive there later with a following behind Him, when already the Kingdom of Heaven has begun slowly to lay siege to it. The Conquest of Jerusalem will be the last test, the supreme trial, the great battle, the tremendous battle between the greater than the Prophets and Jerusalem, slayer of Prophets. ”

“ A temple dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus was erected on the site of the Temple, and other buildings were constructed, known as the Theatre, the Demosia, the Tetranymphon, the Dodecapylon and the Codra. The Jews were forbidden to reside in the city, but Christians were freely admitted. The history of Jerusalem during the period between the foundation of the city of Aelia by the emperor Hadrian and the accession of Constantine the Great in 306 is obscure, but no important change appears to have been made in the size or fortifications of the city, which continued as a Roman colony. ”

“ Around Jerusalem is the kingdom of Syria; and there beside is the land of Palestine; and beside it is Ascalon; and beside that is the land of Maritaine. But Jerusalem is in the land of Judea; and it is called Judea, because Judas Maccabeus was king of that country. And it borders eastward on the kingdom of Arabia; to the south, on the land of Egypt; to the west, on the great sea; and to the north, towards Syria, on the sea of Cyprus. In Jerusalem was formerly a patriarch, with archbishops and bishops about in the country. Around Jerusalem are these cities: Hebron, seven miles ”

“ In the crusades, all the power of Europe was employed to rescue Jerusalem from the Heathens, but equally in vain. It has been trodden down for nearly eighteen 518centuries by its successive masters; by Romans, Grecians, Persians, Saracens, Mamelukes, Turks, Christians, and again by the worst of rulers, the Arabs and the Turks. And could any thing be more improbable to have happened, or more impossible to have been foreseen by man, than that any people should be banished from their own capital and country, and remain expelled and expatriated for nearly eighteen hundred years? ”

“ He had determined to go up to Jerusalem, and to take with him some of those Jews that were in Babylon; and he desired that the king would give him an epistle to the governors of Syria, by which they might know who he was. Accordingly, the king wrote the following epistle to those governors: "Xerxes, king of kings, to Esdras the priest, and reader of the Divine law, greeting. I think it agreeable to that love which I bear to mankind, to permit those of the Jewish nation that are so disposed, as well as those of the priests and Levites that are in our kingdom, to go together to Jerusalem. ”

“ There were sombre-clad Jews of all nationalities, Armenians, Greeks, Russians, and all the peoples who make Jerusalem the most cosmopolitan of cities. To the many styles of European dress the brighter robes of the East gave vivid colour, and it was obvious from the remarkably free and spontaneous expression of joy of these people, who at the end of three years of war had such strong faith in our fight for freedom, that they recognised freedom was permanently won to all races and creeds by the victory at Jerusalem. ”

“ A brief account of the Roman conquest of the holy city will close this narrative of the Greek age in Jerusalem. The power of Rome was constantly increasing in the north, as she successively defeated Mithridates of Pontus and Tigranes of Armenia; and Pompey in 65 B. C. deposed Antiochus Asiaticus, last of the Seleucidæ, and set up Antiochus of Commagene106 in north-eastern Syria—a ruler half Greek, half Persian, whose remarkable tomb, with its valuable Greek texts, has been found on the Taurus north of Samosata. ”

“ All nations abandon their interests and their rivalries, and see upon the face of the earth but one single country worthy of the ambition of conquerors. One would believe that there no longer exists in the universe any other city but Jerusalem, or any other habitable spot of earth but that which contains the tomb of Jesus Christ. All the roads which lead to the holy city are deluged with blood, and present nothing but the scattered spoils and wrecks of empires. ”

“ FINAL SCATTERING BY THE ROMANS FORTOLD BY MOSES
That this scattering did not refer to their captivity in Babylon is clear from verses 49 and 50, "as swift as the eagle flieth" the nation should come, and "of fierce countenance" should be the nation that should "besiege them in their gates" and cause them to devour their own offspring. This is evidently the Roman nation, and it is generally understood that this terrible prophecy found its dreadful fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem seventy years after the birth of Christ and in what has since then been their history. ”

“ From the period at which the Crusaders were expelled from Syria down to the middle of the last century, we are chiefly indebted for our knowledge of the Holy Land to the pilgrims whom religious motives induced to brave all the perils and extortions to which Franks were exposed under the Turkish government. The faith of the Christians survived their arms at Jerusalem, and was found within the sacred walls long after every European soldier had disappeared. ”

“ Remember your forefathers’ mighty deeds,
This poise your darts, this urge your well-train’d steeds;
Here let our Roman banners be unfurl’d,
Rome still shall be the mistress of the world.”
Again the army their loud voices raise,
And in loud accents echo forth his praise:
“Down with Jerusalem! great Titus, live!
Titus shall reign; to him our lives we give,
For him we’ll fight ’till Jewish tongues shall own,
That only he is worthy Judah’s throne.”
p. 49They raise, their spears, their shining weapons wield,
And strike their arms against the sounding shield ”

“ Historical antagonisms seem to preclude the selection of Rome or Constantinople as the place of meeting of this Council. Surely there is no other place so suited for the purpose as Jerusalem. Here the appointed representatives of all the Churches, living in constant intercourse with one another, might draw together the severed parts of the One Body, till the glory and honour of the nations find, even in the earthly Jerusalem, their natural centre and home. Thus, and thus only, can the spiritual foundation for a League of Nations be well and truly laid. ”

“ The ceremonies essential to their religion can no more be observed: the ritual law, which cast a splendour on the national worship, and struck the Pagans so much that they sent their presents and their victims to Jerusalem, is absolutely fallen; for they have no temple, no altar, no sacrifices. Their land itself seems to lie under a never-ceasing curse. Pagans, Christians, Mohammedans, in a word, almost all nations have, by turns, seized and held Jerusalem. ”

“ Jerusalem was captured by Titus in 70 a. d., and the Temple was destroyed. Under the leadership of Simon, surnamed Bar Cochba (' son of the star ') , there was a final revolt against the foreign yoke. After a struggle lasting for three and a half years (132-135) , the insurrection was quelled and the last remnant of the Jewish kingdom destroyed. Jerusalem became a Roman colony under the name of ^Elia Capitolina, and the Jews were denied access to their ancient capital.^
§ 4. ”

“ His whole kingdom was to be unified; Judaism was an eccentricity and as such doomed to extinction. The Temple of Jerusalem was made over to Zeus Olympius: the temple of Gerizim to Zeus Xenius. All the religious rites of Judaism were proscribed and the neighbouring Greek cities were requested to enforce the prohibition upon their Jewish citizens. Jerusalem was occupied by an army which took advantage of the Sabbath and proceeded to suppress its observance. An Athenian came to be the missionary of Hellenism and to direct its ceremonies, which were established by force up and down the country. ”