Talk:Chapel of the Ascension

Wiki Education assignment: History of the Medieval Middle East in 100 Objects Fall 2022

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 5 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Anatrev18, Epham17 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Epham17 (talk) 01:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Muslim history section: total chaos...

"the destroyed eastern section was separated by a dividing wall and was no longer used for religious purposes. Currently, this building is under the authority of the Islamic Waqf of Jerusalem and is open to visitors of all faiths, for a nominal fee."

Source for last sentence: Ordinary Jerusalem, 1840-1940 : opening new archives, revisiting a global city. Angelos D̲alachanēs, Vincent Lemire. Leiden. 2018. pp. 490–509.

Bad. Very bad.

1. What "destroyed eastern section"? Arguably no such thing.
2. What dividing wall? Is it still supposed to be there? Separating what from what?
3. What was no longer used for religious purposes? If the "chapel" is meant: very questionable! If so: maybe the Muslims moved their focus to the Rabiya Mosque? But why would Christians stop venerating the Ascension spot with the "foot trace of Jesus"? Nonsensical.
4. What building is under the authority of the Waqf and is open to visitors for a fee? Actually it's the ruins of the former Crusader church with the chapel-turned-mosque at its centre, but the current text seems to refer to Rabiya Mosque, or maybe the lost few square metres now under private use.
5. Source: no URL to facilitate quick access. Can't get there to check what's actually written. Far too many pages indicated, 19! (pp. 490–509) for a small amount of info. In short, useless.

Cand hardly get more useless and confusing than it is now. Looks as if editors have never been there, haven't understood the sources, and have messed it all up. Arminden (talk) 14:25, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Did Helena build a first church?

"The first church was erected there a few years later, before 392, by a lady from the imperial family, Poimenia. A church is later attributed to Saint Helena and holds that during Saint Helena's pilgrimage to the Holy Land between 326 and 328, she identified two spots on the Mount of Olives as being associated with Jesus' life - the place of his Ascension, and a grotto associated with his teaching of the Lord's Prayer - and on her return to Rome [she died in c. 330], she ordered the construction of two sanctuaries at these locations."

Source: Kirk, Martha Ann (2004). Women of Bible Lands: A Pilgrimage to Compassion and Wisdom. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-5156-8

-1. Is the church allegedly built by Helena another, earlier one than Poimenia's? Is it fictious, since Poimenia's is presented as "the first"? Or can "before 392" mean practically anything, including before Helena, that is: pre-328? That's over 6 decades earlier! It makes no sense. Is there anything based on science, i.e. archaeology, to be said about the 4th-c. church or churches? Any biographical info on Poimenia? If Helena's is strictly fictious, then pls SAY SO!

-2. Again, like above: the source contains no URL, I can't check what it actually says by myself, nor can any editor working from his cellphone, at the very least. Arminden (talk) 15:23, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Rabi'a mosque, crypt: explain!

"The crypt is situated east of the mosque, and lies opposite of the entrance. To the right of the entrance, the cenotaph or sarcophagus stands within a niche."

Pls clarify: "The crypt...lies opposite of the entrance. ... // right of the entrance, the cenotaph... stands". The crypt lies opposite the entrance of the upper structure? Or of the lower one? So opposite ITSELF?! And isn't the cenotaph (what cenotaph?) inside the crypt? Or upstairs? So right of WHICH entrance, the one to the upper mosque or the one to the crypt/lower structure?

One should choose a set of terms, and then use them consistently, to avoid confusions. And understand the site's outlook first and write after. And give the complete information, concise but still comprehensible. And... Arminden (talk) 15:45, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Wrong edit (history)

Onceinawhile, hi. I'm afraid your edit this time went badly wrong in each detail. Please reconsider.

First it was a Byzantine church, then a Crusader one, and THEN Saladin or his commander who got at-Tur as his fiefdom built a mosque.

Also, Pater Noster is elsewhere altogether.

The edicule once at the centre of the Crusader church has been repurposed as a Muslim oratory (with walls between Crusader columns + dome added), or small mosque if you will, in the courtyard of the Rabiya mosque. This edicule/chapel and the courtyard are open to Chr. pilgrims for a fee; the Rabiya mosque building is not, it's not common for visitors to go in.

So please, reword if you find it necessary, but undo the edit. Thank you. Arminden (talk) 12:03, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

PS: Pater Noster is built next to a Constantinian church ruin on grounds bought by an Italo-French princess who left it to France after her death. There has never been a mosque there, ever. Arminden (talk) 12:05, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy to explain to you what indeed does connects the two sites, but it's 1.7-1.5 millennia old stories, nothing more recent and nothing tangible anyway. Arminden (talk) 12:08, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

”View of the complex of Eleona Basilica or Pater Noster Church on Mount of Olives, Jerusalem View of the Chapel of the Ascension

@Arminden: thank you. Yes I would appreciate your explanation very much. This 500 year old image shows them being together. Onceinawhile (talk) 19:44, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi Onceinawhile. The first site associated with the Acension is a little lower down the slope. There's a cave there said to have bern used by Jesus and hid disciples. Eventually the 2 topics were separated, the Ascension "moved" to the top of the hill and the cave remained associated with Jesus and his disciples. Can't remember if him teaching them the Lord's Prayer was part of this tradition from the very start or was added later. The cave was integrated in the Church of the Disciples (later: Eleona) by Empress Helena. The first Church of the Ascension at the peak of the hill was built by a patrician lady related to the Byzantine emperor. Both churches were destroyed and rebuilt, with a last incarnation during the Crusader kingdom. While the Eleona site wasn't rebuilt by the Muslims for their own purposes after Saladin's victory, the Ascension site was (see Rabiya Mosque). I'm not quite sure why the Iralo-French princess who acquired the Eleona area in the late 19th c. (Aurelia or Aurelie de Bossi) didn't know where to dig, since stones from the ruins were being sold all until the 1850s - maybe they did a very thorough job at that, who knows. Fact is that she built a new convent, Pater Noster, died, and only in 1910 did they find the Constantinian foundations and the grotto. A rebuilding programme for the Eleona church was stopped in the 20s when money ran out, leaving behind a set of unroofed walls and an underground oratory with the last remains of the cave.

Meanwhile, up at the peak, Muslims allowed Christians to use the mosque's courtyard to celebrate the Feast of the Ascension and pilgrims to come and touch "Jesus' last footprint" inside the little "chapel" there - for a fee. The "chapel" is, as I wrote, the former round open structure of the Crusaders, set exactly beneath the oculus in the dome of their church (the church is now long gone), which open structure the Ayyubids have closed by building walls between the columns and setting a dome on top of it.

Two sites, maybe 100 m apart. The Eleona/Pater Noster site hasn't been used as a mosque, the Ascension site has since Saladin and still is. Voila. Arminden (talk) 20:32, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

It took a lot of research and ink to get this succession of events in the correct chronology, so while we (believe to) know what was when, the pilgrims of old did not. They got all kinds of simplifying stories presented to them. What they put to paper centuries ago is not RS, it just reflects, at best, what the traditions sounded like in their time. Plus: they weren't usually drawing plans to scale. It's easy to mix sites together when drawing from memory, or us to misread their sketches. Arminden (talk) 20:40, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @Arminden: below is the best source I have found (as well as the earlier sources Cain references to that I have hyperlinked). It explains the history in context. Are you happy for the articles to be updated to reflect this? I still don’t quite understand how this fits with the 500-year-old image above (from Zuallart, J. (1595). Il devotissimo viaggio di Gierusalemme. Fatto, et descritto in sei Libri dal Signor Giovani Zuallardo, Cavaliere del Santiss. Sepolcro di N. S. l'Anno M. D. LXXXVI. Aggiontini i disegni in Rame di varii Luoghi di Terra S. & altri Paesi. Di nuovo ristampato, e corretto (in Italian). appresso Domenico Basa.), although Cain does say they are only 50 yards apart. Onceinawhile (talk) 23:54, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi. And I don't quite understand what you don't understand :))

I had two main issues with that edit:

1. Mixing the Ascension site with the cave site, with the corolary that the former was "acquired by France in the 19th century" (only the latter was, and not "by France").
2. Creating the impression that the cave site had been a mosque. It never had. As opposed to that, the Ascension site has the edicule which stood at the heart of the Crusader church and was indeed transformed under Saladin into a small mosque, and also an adjacent regular, larger mosque from the same period.

The 2 sites are distinct from each other. If the distance is of 50 yards or actually a bit bigger is a matter for surveyors to sort out, but they were never part of the same complex/compound, at least none among the historians has ever claimed that.

The 1597 drawing (you've posted it here too) of Zuallart contains 4 elements listed in its legend, which is part of the drawing:

• A. The Chapel of the Ascension
• B. The cell of St Pelagia
• C. Ruins of the monastery
• D. Gate

No word about Eleona there (let alone of "Pater Noster", which is a 19th-century name chosen for the newly-built convent; so a nonsensical anachronism for the late 16th c.). At the most, maybe someone interpreted point C. in Zuallart's legend to refer to a monastery connected to Eleona, which is wrong, because 1) Zuallart doesn't have it in his legend, 2) every important church had its own monastery, and 3) it's on the wrong side of the chapel: if "the cell of St Pelagia" is what is now venerated as the tomb of St Pelagia (and hermits being buried in their cells is a very real tradition), then Eleona should be to the right of it (and quite a distance away), not adjacent and to the left.

What the website presents as "Title" seems to be some student volunteer's or librarian's own interpretation - unless there is a passage in Zuallart's text, which is not part of the file, and which makes this false claim, or is ambiguous enough as to mislead in this direction. This we don't know. So this so-called "Title" reads:

"View of the complex of Eleona Basilica or Pater Noster Church on Mount of Olives, Jerusalem. View of the Chapel of the Ascension in the same complex."

The 1st part is totally wrong and not supported by Zuallart's legend (beyond the "on Mount of Olives" bit). The 2nd part is partially correct ("View of the Chapel of the Ascension"), but wrong in its final part ("in the same complex").

As always, beware of unreliable, sketchy sources.

Apart from that, we have no controversy here whatsoever. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 09:58, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Cain, A. (2013). Jerome's Epitaph on Paula: A Commentary on the Epitaphium Sanctae Paulae with an Introduction, Text, and Translation. Oxford Early Christian Texts. OUP Oxford. p. 271. ISBN 978-0-19-967260-8.

There was a cave near the summit which as early as the second century had come to be identified as the place where Jesus delivered his eschatological 'Olivet discourse' (Mt. 24.1-26.2). As Taylor, 143-56, argues, this association probably came about through the influence of Gnosticism, for this cave was spoken of in numerous Gnostic writings as the spot where Jesus imparted 'secret teaching' to his disciples. Over the grotto Constantine (or Helena) had a somewhat large (30.5 × 19 m) church built which was known as the 'Eleona', after the Greek name for the 'Mount of Olives' (τὸ ὄρος τῶν ἐλαιῶν). For a reconstruction of the plan of this church, see L.H. Vincent, 'L'Église de l'Eléona, RBi 8 (1911): 219-65; Id., 'L'Eléona, sanctuaire primitif de 'Ascension', RBi 64 (1957): 48-71.

On the very summit of the Mount of Olives, about fifty yards up from the Eleona church, the Church of the Ascension was constructed in 384/5. Financed by the wealthy noblewoman Poemenia (Hunt, 160-3), this church was built on the reputed site of Christ's ascension into heaven (cf. Acts 1.6-11). It was even said that his footprints were still visible there in the late fourth century; see R. Desjardins, 'Les Vestiges du Seigneur au mont des Oliviers', BLE 73 (1972): 51-72. Atop the Church of the Ascension was a giant shiny cross, the very one to which Jer. refers in the present passage... By the early sixth century there were twenty-four churches on the Mount of Olives, one of which housed relics of St. Thecla and the other, called 'Ancona', contained a rock which bore the imprint of Christ's shoulders…

Schick drawings

Peak of the Mount of Olives in the Survey of Palestine, 1938

@Arminden: I have found and published some excellent drawings from Conrad Schick (see the new gallery section). And this map from the Survey of Palestine. They may help us explain the complexities we were discussing above more clearly. Onceinawhile (talk) 08:30, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

Nice, thank you.

Again, if I may: it's much less complex than it might seem. Two sites, quite a distance away from each other, with separate traditions. The only overlap is that the Eleona site had initially marked both traditions:

• Jesus preaching in cave to disciples, and
• Ascension.

This dissipated very soon. Egeria already finds the sites separated. It happened within a few decades in the 4th century (cave further down the slope -> gathering place before Edict of Milan (313), don't know how early, followed by Helena & Eleona church built in c. 325; hilltop -> Egeria (384) sees Ascension celebration under the open sky, follwed by Poimenia & Imbomon church built sometime between 384-390).

Indeed more complex is the story & situation of the hilltop site, and that one only. But we've dealt with it too :)

I guess the difference is between having visited the sites, as opposed to reading about them, honestly. Once one becomes aware of the distance between them and the general topography, any confusion becomes unlikely. I just checked, there's no StreetView option, but the satellite view on Google Maps might do the trick. The algorithm forbids me using a pin, screw it; just go to Church of the Pater Noster - coord. - satellite view on Google Maps.

Btw: the Wiki coordinates are missing here. Do you know how to calculate them starting from the Google Maps coordinates? There's an algorithm, can't find it now, Zero can do it with his eyes shut. Cheers! Arminden (talk) 11:29, 28 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Arminden. I have visited twice – I always found the place confusing. Why such a tiny structure for such an important event. The most important historical location on the mount, overshadowed by Barluzzi’s nearby Church of All Nations.

The Schick diagrams make me wonder whether a second article is needed. Technically the title refers only to the central octagonal structure. What do you think? Onceinawhile (talk) 06:48, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

The aedicule is like the one of the Holy Sepulchre, something small at the centre of something large: the current courtyard walls were the walls of the last, Crusader church, which more or less followed the outline of the older, Byz. one, except for being octagonal rather than circular. And that means that that octagonal church was comparable in size with the rotunda of the Holy Sepulchre. Judging by the plan in the Oxford Guide, it had an inner diameter of c. 26 m, compared to the HS's 33.7. Not small at all.

Ah, here you go: 26.5 m (at HUJI index of Byz. churches).

So no, never a problem there, nor any doubt about the 2 churches being fully distinct from each other, each w. its own monastery etc., both under the Byz. and under the Crusaders.

The aedicule description we have now is truly "aediculous". Ref. = a hotel's website. Octagons which are "12-by-12-meter" and "3-by-3-meter" are discoveries new to science. Geometry teachers are hanging themselves in drones after reading it, Judas style. Arminden (talk) 10:58, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

I just came across this: a small, probably 4th-c. monastic chapel squeezed in between two of the Imbomon's outer buttresses, on the side facing Eleona. Not connected to anything, other than being part of the site's history. Schick attributed it to St Melania. Arminden (talk) 11:22, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

The website/domain belonged to somebody else when first referenced: here, on 2 Nov 2011, by Spool 26 (inactive since 2018). Maybe the Wayback M. can dig it out, then we can check what it actually meant and if it's RS. Better still, we could find a RS. I've googled a bit, but nothing came up so far. Arminden (talk) 11:50, 29 June 2025 (UTC)

Not so

Hi Prosnu. I understand fighting for causes, but not here, in an encyclopedic project, unless based on knowledge. You wrote:

"This chapel is located in Palestine, the official language is Arabic and it's the main language of the Christian Community there"

Wrong in so many ways.

• This is a chapel to Christians, but a mosque to Muslims, who own it. But it's of huge importance to Christians, but hardly at all to Muslims.
• Located in Palestine: Pal. is not a state yet, its territory is under dispute, much of it is under Israeli occupation and the de facto situation doesn't fit the de jure one at all. For Israel it's part of Israeli Jerusalem. That means for instance that the Palestinian guy who sells the entrance tickets pays tax on the entry fee to the Israeli Tax Authority; the famed & numerous thieves in the village who make life miserable for tourists and hard for the honest people there, are under surveillance by the Israeli police. Once they stole your phone and passport, even you will have to make your theft declaration with the Israeli police (or give up on leaving, LOL). Etc.
• Arabic is the main language of the Christian Community there: true, but it's mainly tourists who use the site. The "chapel" was built by the Catholic Crusaders, most of them French, as an edicule. The initial church was built by a Greek-speaking Byzantine lady. Today's pilgrims speak lots of languages, but hardly anyone speaks Arabic. A very large part of them are Eastern Orthodox from Orthodox-majority countries.

You can keep on bringing up politically correct arguments, but reality is much more complicated than that. So let's stay cool, place Arabic first, but also Hebrew third. So that you know what to report to the police. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 18:53, 8 November 2025 (UTC)