CALVARY. 
The history of the building erected on the site of the Crucifixion has given rise to long 
disquisitions, from the days of Eusebius to our own. But in limits like those of the present 
work, we must content ourselves with conclusions. In the year 326, Helena, the mother of 
the great Constantine, ordered the erection of Churches at Bethlehem and on the Mount of 
Olives, on the presumed sites of the Nativity and the Ascension. 
The strong interest excited by the Nicene Council probably revived religious subjects in 
the mind of a monarch, till then engrossed with the government of the civilised world; and 
he determined to distinguish himself by giving such honour as imperial munificence could 
give to the place of the Resurrection. The pagans had intentionally desecrated the spot, 
and had even hidden it beneath an idol temple; 1 Constantine commanded that a Church 
should be erected over the Holy Sepulchre. A great assemblage of Bishops was convened, 
first at Tyre and afterwards at Jerusalem, to do honour to the dedication; 2 but the Church 
then erected seems to have had but little resemblance to that of the present day. We may 
well regret its loss, for it is recorded to have been of “ great length and breadth,” and of 
“ immense altitude, the interior covered with variegated marbles, the ceilings decorated with 
carved work, and the whole glittering with burnished gold.” 3 
The fifth century was the age of pilgrimages, and the journey to the Holy Sepidchre 
became a constant exercise of piety. But it received a formidable check from the Persian 
invasion under Chosroes II., who, after overrunning Syria, stormed Jerusalem in June of 
the year 614, slaying many thousands of the clergy and pilgrims, destroying the Churches, 
and burning the Holy Sepulchre. The Patriarch Zacharias, with multitudes of the people, 
was carried into captivity. 4 On the turning of the tide of war, Chosroes was pursued into 
his own dominions by the Greeks under Heraclius, when the Persian monarch was put to 
death by his own son; the Patriarch, after fourteen years of exile, was restored. 
After various calamities under the Saracens, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, though 
twice burned in the interval, was again opened in the year 1048, to the general rejoicing of 
Christendom. An impression, that in the eleventh century the Day of Judgment was at 
hand, poured immense crowds of pilgrims of every rank and from every soil into Palestine; 
princes and nobles with retinues of armed followers, and sometimes with royal luxury, filled 
the roads of Europe on their way to Jerusalem. 
Jerusalem, in the possession of the Crusaders for nearly the entire of the twelfth century, 
rose once more from its ruins. Calvary forms a portion of what is now termed the Holy 
Sepulchre. The spot is covered with a small chapel, in whose centre, under an altar, is 
