Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-Judaism in the Eighteenth Century by Matthias B. Lehmann

A rather small portion of old Slavonic literatures is thematically linked with the journey to the Holy Land. Of many Serbian pilgrims over the centuries only three left more detailed descriptions of Bulgarian places and parts: patriarch Arsenije III, Jerotej of Raca and Silvestar Popovic. They described, each in his own way, some of the places and areas along the road to Istanbul or Salonika. Their vivid depiction of encounters with people and observations about the places they saw on their way reveal only a fragment of life in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Ottoman empire. In a seemingly ordinary way, they incorporate into their own epoch the legends heard from the people they met. The descriptions of Bulgarian parts in the Serbian accounts of pilgrimage have all the appeal that generally characterizes travel literature. Although their literary value is modest they belong among the works characterized by the simplicity and immediacy of experience. Rather than being the result of a strong literary ambition, they are witness to the need to speak about the great journey, quite an adventurous enterprise at the time.

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Reading Henry Maundrell’s Sacred Geography in Eighteenth-Century England and Germany

Textual Transformations ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198808817.003.0012 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 210-226

Author(s):

Simon Mills

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Holy Land ◽

The Bible ◽

Late Eighteenth Century ◽

The World ◽

Late Eighteenth ◽

Sacred Geography ◽

History Of

This chapter explains the remarkable popularity of Henry Maundrell’s A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter AD 1697 (1703). It argues that Maundrell’s eye-witness reportage of his travels in the Holy Land provided the book’s readers with a storehouse of geographical observations and descriptions of eastern customs with which they could recreate imaginatively the world of the Scriptures. Tracing the book’s use by editors, commentators, translators, and paraphrasts, it argues that Maundrell was most often put to work in defence of the Bible against attacks on its claims to truth. Yet in the hands of Maundrell’s late eighteenth-century German translator, the naturalist and historicist tendencies inherent in his account were brought into sharper focus; ‘sacred geography’ was transformed into a history of biblical culture.

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“Palestine Sits in Sackcloth and Ashes”: Reading Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad as a Protestant Holy Land Narrative

Religion and the Arts ◽

10.1163/156852911x547484 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (1-2) ◽

pp. 82-110

Author(s):

Broke Sherrard

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Holy Land ◽

Vast Array ◽

Native Son ◽

Total Eclipse ◽

Early Eighteenth Century ◽

The Many

AbstractAmong the vast array of priceless treasures in the collection of Jerusalem’s Armenian Patriarchate is a votive portrait of a local Jerusalem saint, the priest Hanna, a native son of Jerusalem’s Armenian community. The existence of the portrait is all but unknown, despite the fact that its subject has inspired generations of Jerusalem monks to dedicate their lives to the service of the Sts. James. As vicar to Jerusalem’s Patriarch Grigor IV Shirvants‘i (Shght‘ayakir) Hanna was instrumental in reviving the fortunes of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, which, in the early eighteenth century, had suffered a near-total eclipse. Although Hanna died before the age of forty, the many activities of his short career included such major achievements as the renovation of the Armenian sections of the Holy Sepulchre Church and the transformation of the Patriarchate compound into a fully enclosed and self-sufficient enclave.

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Kharetat al mousafer, an 18th-century proskynetarion of Jerusalem and The Holy Land from Saydnaia

Chronos ◽

10.31377/chr.v40i.640 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 40 ◽

pp. 95-118

Author(s):

Rand Abou Ackl

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

18Th Century ◽

Holy Land ◽

The Relationship ◽

The Way

In this article, I discuss a proskynetarion icon of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, called the Kharetat al mousafer, located in Saydnaia Monastery in Syria. The relationship between pilgrimages and proskynetaria, which served as a tool of Christian propaganda, will be discussed with a focus on the Saydnaia proskynetarion as a case study, showing the way of the Melkite painter, Issa al-Qudsi depicted the Holy Land topography. In this icon, the Holy Sepulchre (Church of Resurrection) was also represented, opening a discussion around proskynetaria in Syria during the eighteenth century.

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Holy Wars, Empires, and the Portability of the Past: The Modern Uses of Medieval Crusades

Comparative Studies in Society and History ◽

10.1017/s0010417506000120 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 48 (2) ◽

pp. 293-325 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Adam Knobler

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

Middle Ages ◽

Military Force ◽

Holy Land ◽

Napoleon Bonaparte ◽

The Past ◽

Political Struggles ◽

Modern Warfare ◽

Church Policy ◽

The Middle Ages

On 12 June 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of the islands of Malta. The Knights Hospitaller surrendered with little fight, and the independently recognized polity of the Knights of St. John, the last bastion of the medieval chivalric orders, fell. Founded in the Middle Ages as a military order created both to carry the sword against Islam and provide shelter and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land, the Knights had by the end of the eighteenth century become an anachronism. The Ottoman Empire, the last of the great Muslim powers of the Mediterranean, had long been considered little more than a pawn in larger political struggles on the Continent. The practical application of crusading as church policy had long fallen out of favor. As a military force, the Order was no longer of any consequence. The Grand Council that directed the Order consisted for the most part of Maltese or Italian nobles of little formal training in the strategy and tactics of “modern” warfare. Historians of the late eighteenth century had come to the conclusion that the crusades of the Middle Ages were little more than the fanatical hate mongering of an unenlightened time. As Edward Gibbon wrote: “The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause…. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends…. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion…. The lives and labours of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country….”

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