Rev. Claudio Peppas at the Monastery of the Cross located in the Valley of the Cross in Jerusalem , April 2, 2014. The church is dated to the Byzantine Period . According to legend, the monastery was erected on the burial site of Adam's head and from there grew a holy tree, planted by Lot who used the branches Abraham gave him from pine, fir and cypress. It is believed that the tree provided the wood to the cross on which Christ was crucified.Heidi Levine/The Globe and Mail
It looks like an old prison from the outside – high windowless walls, with the flag of Greece flying on top. For years I drove past it, without ever attempting a visit. But locked inside the Monastery of the Holy Cross, I recently found, is one of the great tales of the Holy Land, a story that attempts to tie the New Testament of the Bible to the Old Testament, and an illustration of the kind of sectarian conflict that has racked the Holy Land for centuries.
The interior beauty of the monastery comes as a surprise. Its high stone walls may block the inside from external view, but much of the facility is open to the sky and its cascading layers linked by external stone staircases are bathed most of the day in sunshine.
Nestled in a valley, historically known as the Valley of the Cross, the handful of Greek Orthodox monks who live there can look up to the full width of the giant Israel museum atop the hill to the West and to the Israeli Knesset on the taller hill to the north.
But it's inside the church, which sits in the middle of the monastery, in a small chamber behind the altar of the church that the story begins.
Here, beneath a large oil painting of the crucifixion, at a spot marked by a large bagel-shaped decorated bronze plate, is where a holy tree grew from which the wood was cut that made the cross on which Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. That's the belief, anyway.
The tree, the story goes, was planted by Lot, from a trio of seedlings given to him by his uncle Abraham. (Yes, that Abraham, father of Isaac and Ishmael.) The three trees – cedar, pine and cypress – would only grow together into one tree if given water from the Jordan River some 35 km away and far below the level of Jerusalem. To be effective, it was important that no one drank from the water that was brought up from the river.
It is said that once a year, for 36 years, Lot carried water from the Jordan up the long, hot, rough path to this site. But, every year, he was met by Satan, disguised as an old woman thirsting for a drink, and every year Lot felt for the old woman and let her have some water. As a result, the water's powers were never passed to the tree that stood stunted. Only in the 37th year was Lot able to pass by the woman and provide the untainted water to the tree that then flourished and grew.
Lot is a major figure of the Old Testament, and his planting the tree of the cross that is the heart of the New Testament binds together the two books.
Lot is the one who lived in Sodom and tried to convince angels sent by God that there was nothing evil in the ways of the people there. When he failed, the angels told him the city would be destroyed and that he, his wife and daughters should get out of town and not look back. His wife, who is not named in the Bible, sneaked a peek at the destruction behind them and was immediately turned into a pillar of salt.
Lot and his daughters continued on to this area, three or four kilometres west of what would become the Old City of Jerusalem.
His tree planting took place about 4,000 years ago and the cross was cut about 2,000 years ago. "No one suggests that it was the same tree that was planted that was used for the cross," said Archbishop Claudio Peppas, the Superior of the monastery. "The tree used was a later generation of the original tree."
On the walls of the chamber of the holy tree are paintings showing scenes of Lot fleeing the destruction of Sodom; of planting the tree, as well as of men cutting down the tree and of Jesus being nailed to the cross.
Elsewhere in the monastery, other paintings and some frescoes can be found.
One fresco, one of the only likenesses of the famous Georgian 12th century poet Shota Rustaveli, was defaced in 2004 on the eve of a visit by then Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili. It stands today as a reminder of the kind of sectarian jealousy and conflict that has been so common here.
The monastery, well outside the protective walls of Jerusalem, was first established in the fourth century by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, who had converted to Christianity. It had been Helena, his mother, who identified this place as the spot where the tree grew during her remarkable – some would say fantastical – visit to this area in 326. In the space of only a few weeks, Empress Helena, then in her late 70s, is believed to have located or authenticated the location of no less than four holy sites that remain recognized to this day and are the objects of pilgrimage.
Her most famous find was the cross itself, discovered in the tomb where, it is believed, Jesus was laid to rest. She only uncovered it, the story goes, after ordering destroyed a temple of Venus that sat atop the tomb.
In the town of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, she is said to have found the place where Jesus was born – the spot is marked by a 14-point silver star beneath the altar in the Church of the Nativity. And, on top of the Mount of Olives, she identified the site where Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven.
The original monastery of the cross was largely destroyed during the Persian invasion of Jerusalem in 614; its remaining monks were slain by Arab Muslims in the late eighth century. Georgian monks rebuilt the place in the 11th century, leaving much of what is visible today. For years, during the Crusades, it was the centre of Georgian life accommodating hundreds of pilgrims and residents.
Desperately short of money, however, the Georgians sold the facility to the Greek Orthodox Church in the 17th century.