Chapter 14
Marian Devotion in the Contemporary Eastern Mediterranean
In this chapter, I discuss the veneration of Mary in the contemporary Eastern Mediterranean, a predominantly Muslim dominated region. Mary’s devotion is influenced by specific endemic reasons that are unique to this region. First, Mary is considered an autochthonous-canonical figure. From the earliest Christian traditions we learn that Mary’s birth, life, motherhood, Dormition, and Assumption took place in Eastern Mediterranean lands. Second, the unique modern history of Christianity in the region, due to the influences of Ottoman rule as well as European colonialism, plays an important part. Third, the legacy of post-colonialism, the effects of nationalism in the nation states, as well as the impact of Islam and the Arabization of the various aspects of the churches and Christian communities therein, form the contemporary context. All these factors have created a unique portrait of Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean: Because Christianity is not the dominant religion, Mary is seen as the mother of minorities, a venerated image used by the oppressed, and an icon of a Christian identity under threat in the birthplace of Christianity.
Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean
In the Eastern Mediterranean region Mary is the mother of minorities, whether she is venerated by Christian minorities living within Muslim majority societies (such as Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine) or in a Jewish majority state (Israel). What is the meaning of Mary’s veneration in the place where she apparently lived? As appears from various ethnographies conducted in the region and my own work in Israel/Palestine, Mary serves as a powerful symbol and an icon used by minorities to reinforce and invigorate Christian local identity and imagination. In this context, minorities use Mary’s symbols and rituals as a means of empowerment to oppose inequality, a way to challenge Eastern Mediterranean states, and a vehicle to voice discontent about the claiming of lands, exclusion, and growing violence in the region.
In the Eastern Mediterranean sacred places are palimpsests of historical, archetypical narratives and the materialization of rituals and pilgrimages. Over the ages, Christians have created in the Holy Land a landscape, physical as well as symbolic, that reflects their own perceptions of biblical events and scriptural texts (Wilkinson 1990; Halbwachs 1992). According to Luke, Jerusalem was the city which Jesus visited during his childhood, and in all four gospels, where he cleansed the Temple, chasing traders out of the sacred precinct. The gospels end with accounts of Jesus’ Last Supper, his arrest in Gethsemane, his trial, his Crucifixion at Golgotha, his burial nearby, and the Resurrection and Ascension as well as his prophecy to return. All these canonical actions were materialized in different times through history, and constructed as territorial landmarks within Jerusalem as an axis mundi. For Mary, the apocryphal literature provided ample data about her childhood, her life, Dormition, and Assumption, thus just like Jesus her life events materialized in the landscape. Devotion to Mary is based upon a fixed liturgical set of long-established texts and rituals that are kept with great respect by the local clergy of the different communities, especially the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. For example, in Jerusalem, as explained by various members of the clergy I have interviewed, by preserving Marian veneration they wish to follow the scriptural tradition and to preserve what they see as the most authentic way of worshiping Mary in her homeland.
Pilgrims to the ‘Holy Land’ bring the scriptures to life when visiting canonical sites. Marian topography began to take shape after the Council of Ephesus (431) that reinforced the doctrine of Mary as Theotokos; relics, places, and texts have become a significant component of Christian sacred topography in the Eastern Mediterranean. In her seminal work, Ora Limor (2014: 12) portrays the evolution of Marian geography in the area, starting with late antiquity, more specifically the fifth and sixth centuries, when Theodosius in 530 established three places of devotion. These were the Kathisma Church on the road to Bethlehem where, according to the Protevangelium, Mary set down to rest on her way to Bethlehem (Rubin 2009: 59), Mary’s tomb in the Kidron Valley, and Mary’s place of birth near the pool of Bethesda. These places relate to special feasts such as the Annunciation (25 March), Mary’s Nativity (8 September), her presentation in the Temple (21 November), and the Dormition (15 August). According to Limor, what also influenced Marian veneration was the account of a pilgrim from Piacenza who claimed to see the icon of Mary and her girdle as well as the veil she used to have on her head. The items of Mary scattered in the lands she visited have fascinated Christian devotees. The Galilean section of the Piacenza pilgrim’s description included Mary’s flagon and bread basket, the chair on which she sat when the angel came to her, Mary’s house, her clothes, Mary’s robe, and a large cloth that Mary wove for the Temple (parochet), all related to miracles and the construction of sacred places (Limor 2014: 13). In 724 Willibald described the complete course of Mary’s funeral procession, a description that involved a cornucopia of rituals and celebrations, such as Mary’s Dormition on Mount Zion, the place where, according to Christian tradition, the Jews attempted to harm her body, and her burial place in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, sites that have seen worship until today. As such, the Eastern Mediterranean landscape is the area where the sacred geography of Mary evolved in churches, chapels, and shrines that commemorate images depicting her life, and the ritualistic map that juxtaposes Jesus’ route in the Holy Land.
In the period of Western medieval domination of the Holy Land, other images and details were added to the Eastern Mediterranean veneration of Mary. For example: at the Holy Sepulchre, on the Temple Mount, on Mount Zion, on the Mount of Olives, on the road to Bethlehem, and Ein Kerem village. Impressive European churches dedicated to Mary flourished around the Holy Land, and sacred places were constructed which housed such features as her house, bed, the sites upon which she stood, rested, fed her baby, and icons connected to her (Limor 2014: 17); many are still venerated today. In those times her triumphant, heavenly, and glorified aspects were emphasized in the West having a major effect on her veneration in the Eastern Mediterranean.
During the fourteenth century, the role of the Franciscans as custodians of the holy places reinforced a process of ‘Marianization’. The Franciscans followed the route of Christ on his way to Golgotha, a path that Mary followed after the Crucifixion by visiting the places her son walked on. Following her, they created a Marian route referring to the places she visited as a witness to the Passion, stressing her compassion as a mother. To this route new places were added: her school, the house where she was born, her tomb, and at the Mount of Olives, the place where the angel Gabriel brought Mary a palm branch and informed her that she would soon depart from this world, and where later she was assumed to heaven (Limor 2014: 18). Mount Zion became a powerful Marian devotional site during the fifteenth century as it was resplendent with Marian traditions, for example, the house where she resided after the Resurrection, the place where she met Mary Magdalene, the stone where she sat and listen to Jesus in the morning of his Ascension, and many more. Following the journey of Joseph and Mary, ‘heavy with child’ (Luke 2:5), on the road to Bethlehem, that town became a centre for Mary’s devotion, for example the milk grotto, the place where according to tradition the holy family found refuge during the ‘slaughter of the innocents’. The name derived from the story that a ‘drop of milk’ of the Virgin Mary fell on the floor of the cave and changed its colour to white. The space, which contains three different caves, is visited by pilgrims in the hope of healing infertile couples (Sered 1991).
All these events point to the evolution of Mary’s image in the Holy Land; however, Mary’s devotion was and still is empowered by the politics of the region with respect to the power of states and demographic changes in the Middle East. While in Christian countries worldwide the cult of Mary is strengthening and often related to national identity, places such as Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe, Tinos, and others, in countries that are not Christian, especially within states in the region of the Eastern Mediterranean, nowadays Mary’s worship embodies a nature of resistance, be it symbolic or active.
The Mother of Minorities: Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean as Vehicle of Resistance
In contrast to her traditions in the Holy Land of old, the image and role of Mary has changed considerably in modern Eastern Mediterranean countries, due to constant wars, the impact of changing rules, and modern imperialism (Stadler 2015). Christianity no longer dominates the area; its communities are relatively powerless as well as having lesser means and political strength. In this situation, Christians consist of small minorities, living in a multi-religious context, sometimes surviving in harsh conditions amidst violence. In these contexts, Marian devotion has been transformed. As mother of the subalterns and dispersed, Mary gives comfort to oppressed minorities, as well as serving as an avenger, particularly in troubled times. In this reality, local Christians use Marian veneration to reinforce their identity, their minority rights, and by reviving sacred places of Mary and her representation, to position themselves in a complex religious field (Jansen 2009: 34). The veneration of Mary takes place in what Couroucli (2012: 1–2) terms ‘a post-Ottoman space’, in which ethno-religious minorities have been banned from national territories many times over the last hundred years for the purpose of establishing homogeneous national territories (see also Hermkens et al. 2009; Jansen 2009; Aubin-Boltanski 2014). In places such as Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine, Mary is no longer a triumphant icon like she was during the Middle Ages, but she is the mother of the oppressed, and Mary’s places are a physical representation of their homeland. For instance, Jansen’s study (2009: 33–8) on Marian veneration in Jordan shows that the nexus between identity, power, and place is crucial to understanding the kingdom’s predominately Muslim society. More specifically, she discusses how two local renderings of the Virgin—a bronze statue and an oil painting of the Pietà scene—represent shifts in the local distribution of power between Christians and Muslims. It is in this same context that Glenn Bowman (2012) has examined the veneration of Mary in the West Bank. Bowman examines the multivocality of her shrine at Bir es-Saiyideh (the Well of Our Lady in Beit Sahour) and its significance for both local and national secular Palestinian identities. He analyses the multiple meanings of the shrine and identities of the participating groups. In the town of Beit Sahour the local municipality has organized an appreciable amount of nonviolent resistance against the Israeli occupation (Bowman 2012: 15).
Conversely, the figure of the Virgin in Eastern Mediterranean lands can be understood, in Winter’s turn of phrase (1995: 52), as a ‘collective solace’ from bereavement, or a way to commemorate the dead that strengthens the bonds between a people slowly losing their land. Hermkens et al. (2009: 1) observed that ‘modernity produces power inequality’ between sexes, ethnic groups, religions, and age groups. As a result, in places such as the Eastern Mediterranean people have turned ‘to Mary in order to seek help and empowerment’.
The use of the image of Mary as the mother of the oppressed representing minority voices is apparent in various ceremonies and sacred places dedicated to Mary: her icon is carried out by Catholic girls in the celebrations of the end of May in the streets of the old city of Jerusalem (Figure 14.1). In 2015 the Vatican canonized Mariam Bawardi as the first Palestinian saint. Her home and shrine are both located in the village of Ibellin (Figure 14.2). According to the textual tradition, Mariam was born in 1846 and became a Carmelite nun who later endured demonic visitations and stigmata. Mary is venerated in two churches dedicated to her name, one Catholic and the other Orthodox, representing the two traditions at Ibellin. Christians, as well as Muslim women coming to ask for the saint’s help with infertility and family issues, venerate the shrine and the house. Every year at the end of October local Catholics arrive at the procession at Deir Rafat, a Catholic monastery, also known as the Shrine of Our Lady Queen of Palestine and the Holy Land (Figure 14.3). In a fieldwork interview in 2010, the Latin Patriarch Emeritus, Michel Sabbah, expressed Mary’s role as a symbol of Christian belonging and solace: ‘The role of Mary is greater nowadays in Christian life, especially among those in the Holy Land. … She is to be the protector of all activities for dialogue, reconciliation, and peace, the fruits that must be accomplished thanks to her motherly intervention, the gift of peace that was stated when she gave birth to Jesus, her son, our God’.
Figure 14.1 Catholic Girls holding the icon of Mary, the celebrations of the end of May
Photo: Nurit Stadler, 30 May 2010.
Figure 14.2 The statue of Mariam Bawardy
Photo: Nurit Stadler, 2013.
During 2009 in a Greek Orthodox Church placed in the heart of the old town of Ramle, near Tel Aviv, an icon of Mary was found mysteriously dripping oil and attracted many visitors to the church. In February 2014, people flocked to Tarshiha, a small town in northern Israel, to view a statue of the Virgin Mary that residents have testified to having seen ‘weep’ oil. The family in whose home the statue resides says that it is most striking when a ‘tear’ seems to roll down the statue’s cheek. Members from the family said that they have witnessed a miracle in their living room. Osama Khoury, the owner, suggested in an interview that his wife Amira found the statue ‘covered with oil’; Amira said the statue ‘spoke to her’ and told her not to be afraid. After a neighbour witnessed the oil, word soon spread.
Our Lady of the Wall is a new Marian site which was painted in 2010 on the Palestinian side of the Separation Wall, next to the Emmanuel monastery, as a response to the building of the high wall and its limitations (Figure 14.4). According to the nuns of the Emmanuel Monastery, it arose from a request of nuns living near the wall; a British iconographer, Ian Knowles, a former priest, was commissioned by the nuns and local Christians to paint an icon of Mary on its Palestinian side. The icon is less than 550 yards due east of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and has become a site of pilgrimage and veneration. Nestled among graffiti and new drawings, the icon graces a corner block of the towering, gray wall. The mural depicts, first and foremost, the iconography of the pregnant mother in Byzantine art and it is fused with some Western attributes and interpretations of Mary. In this mural, Mary presses her outer garment close to her chest, while opening her mantle to serve as a safe refuge. Moreover, an iconographical model of the pregnant mother is also amalgamated with some attributes of the Woman of the Apocalypse in Revelation 12. These examples mark the uniqueness of the image of Mary in the Eastern Mediterranean world, and how she has come to be a representative of the voice of the minorities and oppressed.
Figure 14.4 Our Lady on the Wall
Photo: Guy Raivitz, 2018, with permission.
The Mother of Jerusalem and the Dormition Feast
The Procession
In the Tomb of Mary, fieldwork consists of my own participant observations carried out in Jerusalem starting in August 2003 at Orthodox Masses, blessings, processions, rosaries, and other displays of worship during the Feast of the Dormition, which is celebrated every year between 25 August and 5 September. In particular, this involves the Dormition Procession and the Rituals at the Tomb. The nocturnal procession sets off from the Metoxion1 Church towards the Tomb of Mary, every 25 August, and after ten days a second procession is held on 5 September during daylight hours, in order to take the icon back to its place. In the following, I only discuss the first procession. I focus especially on the clergy of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem; pilgrims from throughout the Orthodox world, most of whom arrive in small groups that are led by their own priest; and Orthodox Christian Arabs from the Palestinian territories and Israel. The local Arab devotees are far and away the largest group, despite the fact that they are a community in crisis. Their population is declining; they are alienated from an increasingly unsympathetic Israeli body politics (Cragg 1991: 235, 237; Dumper 2002: 105), and frowned upon by radical Islamic elements.
In Jerusalem, the Greek Orthodox Church considers itself to be the only authentic stream of Christianity, an irreplaceable link in an age-old chain. Its members claim to perpetuate the ancient tradition of monasticism, which dates back to the colony of monks that was established in the Judean Desert during the Byzantine era. Moreover, they consider the region’s Orthodox settlement, liturgy, and ceremonies to be part of an unceasing effort to preserve a legacy that extends back to biblical times. From the standpoint of the local clergy, the Jerusalem rites are performed in the venues in which the Madonna personally set foot. Although the details of Mary’s final days on Earth are not mentioned in the Gospels, local Orthodox monks praying in the tomb explained to me that the various components of the Dormition rite are predicated on the original and other early interpretations of the apocryphal narratives, such as the Protevangelium of James from the late second century. During interviews and informal discussions, the organizers always expressed their conviction that the Jerusalem rite is the most genuine representation of Mary’s Dormition and thus its performance should be kept with much strictness and devotion. However, many changes in the geopolitical context, especially security factors and rivalry among communities in the old city, as well as pilgrims’ and visitors’ claims during the procession, have challenged the wish of the Jerusalem Orthodox clergy to keep the Dormition ritual in what they see as the traditional authentic order.
Like any other Orthodox festival, an icon—in this case, the Icon of the Theotokos—stands at the forefront of the procession (Figure 14.5; cf. Dubisch 1995: 65). The Dormition Icon’s permanent residence is the Metoxion, a small monastery adjacent to the Holy Sepulchre Church. Following an all-night vigil at the Metoxion, a funeral procession heads out of the monastery at the break of dawn. Insofar as the Greek Orthodox clergy are concerned, the main objective of this procession is to transfer the icon from the Metoxion to Mary’s Tomb. They assert that this annual event constitutes a mythic return to the final days of the Virgin’s life and her funeral procession, in which the Apostles carried her body through the streets of Jerusalem along the route to her burial plot on the foothills of the Mount of Olives. One of the Greek Orthodox priests I interviewed summarized what he believed to be his denomination’s narrative:
At the time of her death, the disciples of our Lord, who were preaching throughout the world, returned to Jerusalem to see the Theotokos. All of them, including the Apostle Paul, were gathered together at her bedside. At the moment of her death, Jesus Christ himself descended and carried her soul to heaven. … Following her repose, the body of the Theotokos was taken in procession and laid in a tomb near the Garden of Gethsemane. When the Apostle Thomas arrived three days after her repose and requested to see her body, the tomb was found to be empty. The bodily assumption of the Theotokos was confirmed by the message of an angel and by her appearance before the Apostles.
Figure 14.5 The Icon of the Theotokos
Photo: Nurit Stadler, 2011.
Accordingly, the trek to the tomb is based on several early Byzantine accounts of Mary’s Dormition and Assumption, so that the ceremony is replete with symbols of death, mystery, and rebirth. The Orthodox clergy officiate over the procession in strict adherence to their interpretations of the Jerusalem traditions of Mary’s last days. What is more, they attempt to dictate the funerary script to the ‘flock’. However, almost all of the lay groups maintain their own ideas and expectations of the procession, which often run counter to those espoused by their hosts. In consequence, the attendees conduct themselves in a less than uniform fashion. At the various stages of the rite, the different groups tend to stress their own particular needs, feelings, and aspirations, to include their conceptions or fantasies of Mary in Jerusalem, while ignoring, resisting, or even interrupting the Patriarchate’s efforts to run the procession as a funeral. At the outset, though, the organizers manage to conduct a regimented ceremony that strictly adheres to their script, as the vigil at the Metoxion is held entirely in Greek and is presided over by Orthodox priests, foremost among them Father Philomenos, the superior of the Gethsemane Monastery. In reality, most of the local devotees, who use Arabic as their mother tongue, and the pilgrims coming from different Orthodox countries are excluded from the formal prayers and ceremonies.
The services are held in the presence of the Dormition Icon. Encased in a wood and glass display case, the two-sided effigy (apparently crafted in the nineteenth century) is inserted into an oklad (a traditional silver frame) that is mounted on a broad cross. Mary’s face is illustrated in great detail, and shadings create a sense of depth on the wooden base. Mary lies on her back and a sparkling metallic crown graces her head. It bears noting that, in the Orthodox tradition, icons are not mere ornaments, but constitute the heart of the proskínima, a Greek term for the set of rituals performed upon entering a church.2 Participants explained that the Dormition Icon possesses miraculous powers in all that concerns livelihood, fertility, health, solace, and other basic human needs.
Lay devotees, mainly pilgrims from Orthodox countries, constantly enter and leave the prayer hall. At the entrance, participants light candles, leave a couple of coins, and offer a prayer. Many of them kneel down on a carpet opposite the icon and kiss the glass encasement. Outside the sanctuary, throngs of believers sit on the floor of the monastery’s small courtyard and the adjacent steps, which lead to the Holy Sepulchre’s main square. At this point, everyone inside the complex is braced for the pending moment when the icon will be ushered out of the building. According to the Old City Police’s figures, about 3,000 people take part in the procession every year. However, the numbers fall off considerably during times of war or security threats in the general area. In any event, these numbers pale in comparison to Marian events in other countries. What is more, for security reasons, devotees who are neither citizens of the Israeli state nor pilgrims from Orthodox states3 visiting as tourists, for example, those coming from Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and other towns and villages in the West Bank and Israel, have to get permission and go through military barriers and long security checks at different checkpoints. To this end they must obtain in advance specific documents from the Israeli military, and get permissions from the Israeli bureaucracy. As I discovered over the years, according to both security officials and the participants themselves, in recent years the Israeli authorities have granted more entry permits to Orthodox Palestinians; however in order to participate they have to endure a long voyage that requires military and state permissions, walking long hours to the old city, and comply with many other security demands.
The ceremony’s hosts—the patriarch, bishops, monks, and nuns of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem—live in and around the Christian Quarter. The local Christian denominations (Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Catholics, Ethiopians, and Copts, among others) constitute a small minority among Muslim Arabs and Israeli Jews. From the perspective of some Muslims, the Palestinian Christians are an anomaly and guilty by association with European imperialism, the Jewish state, and other purveyors of modernity (cf. Jansen 2009: 34). These tensions are palpable in the clergy’s comportment, the shaky confidence of the local Christian communities, and the relations between the clergy and the local laity. In that respect, the local (mostly Arab) Christians are trapped in a very difficult situation. On the one hand, they are blocked by the state and its agents from their sacred places in general, and the Tomb of Mary in particular. On the other hand, the Orthodox clergy of Jerusalem limits their participation and sense of belonging by the use of language, ritual, and prayers at the event itself.
Several minutes after the vigil, black-garbed Orthodox sisters are the first members of the Patriarchate to descend the steps of the Metoxion and enter the plaza. They are carrying Byzantine-style paintings of the Holy Mother and Son as well as wreaths of basil and lilac. Likewise, the procession will advance along a route that is demarcated with candles, torches, and wreaths. These objects, which constitute the principal Greek funerary symbols, are embedded into the procession ceremony for the purpose of reinforcing the Orthodox Church’s Dormition narrative. In fact, the death motif dominates the first stages of the rite, as the clergy manage to implement their version of the feast (at least for the time being).
Devotees pack the narrow entrance to the plaza as soon as the priest reaches the square carrying the icon with him. At this stage, all the church bells of the Christian Quarter ring in concert. This is the signal for the participants to gather and commence the procession. In the crowd, the mounting intervention of the Israeli police is sensed. Together with the Greek monks, albeit for reasons of security, the police officers try to force the overflowing masses towards less crowded areas. Israeli police and soldiers are scattered in the crowd and their presence is prominent.
From the Holy Sepulchre, the procession heads in the direction of Olive Press Street (Rechov Bait Ha’bad in Hebrew; Suq Khan es-Zeit in Arabic). Hundreds of people squeeze into the narrow street and advance at a glacial pace. Many others, especially packs of youngsters, proceed via alternate routes along the shuttered stalls of the bazaar. Entire families, mostly Palestinian Christians, join us from the side streets. As the procession advances, more and more young Christian Arabs emerge from the Old City’s alleys. Upon joining the procession, they are immediately engulfed by the masses. By the time the procession arrives at the tomb grotto, the Palestinians will have become the majority and Arabic the dominant language of both conversation and song.
From Olive Press Street, the cluttered procession enters the Via Dolorosa, where the marchers pass Muslim Jerusalemites, heading in the opposite direction. Some are on their way to prayer services, while others are going to the bazaar to open up their shops. The pedestrians are clearly rankled by the oncoming stream of unexpected traffic, which disrupts their early morning routine. This meeting of the participants with Muslims and Jews is full of tension, sometimes reflected by aggressiveness and violence from all sides.
At this point, in order to reinforce their devotion and feelings, devotees begin to chant the Marian hymns that are used for the Dormition Feast. A few women hand out song sheets in Arabic, and a soft melody rises above the din. The closer we get to the Lions’ Gate on the Old City’s eastern wall,4 the higher the decibel level, as multiple different pilgrim groups sing and pray in a variety of languages. However, the songs in Arabic quickly gather momentum and stand out among the rest, as devotees raise Marian pictures and sing loudly to Mary. After crossing the Valley Street (Rechov Ha’gai in Hebrew), the route widens a bit, so that the congestion starts to ease up.
Once the procession hits the Via Dolorosa, the route is laden with churches and other sacred sites, most notably the fourteen Stations of the Cross. In addition, devotional stops have been set up at the entrance to all the Greek Orthodox churches along the route,5 all of which are already open in honour of the festival. To mark the occasion, the hosts have decorated the entrances with candles, branches, and a rich array of Byzantine-style icons and paintings. Orthodox priests perch themselves on the steps and sprinkle holy water on the passers-by. These temporary stations serve as inspirational-cum-commemorative attractions that remind the participants of the canonical events that, according to sacred Orthodox texts, transpired at these very spots. For the most part, it is the overseas faithful who pause to kiss the proffered icons and offer their prayers at the festooned entrances.
As the faithful exit the Old City through the Lions’ Gate, the olive trees dotting the eponymous mountainside appear in the distance. A new day is upon us, as the sun caresses the Holy City with its pleasant late-summer rays. The mere sight of the Mount of Olives arouses the pilgrims’ fervour. Believers describe the mountain as a sacred place that is distinct from Jerusalem, untainted by the city’s impurity. Many of the devotees claim that the trek to the mountain is an opportunity to actualize one’s faith and enhance one’s sense of freedom and rejuvenation. By contrast, the clergy underscore the symbols of Mary’s funeral and assumption that are embedded in the area, for the Mount of Olives is also identified as the place from which other saints ascended to heaven. Upon leaving the city, the pilgrims are much more inclined to do their own rituals and prayers. They explain that the darkness symbolizing the agony of Mary’s death gives way to the brightness of morning and the accompanying expectations for a miracle, redemption, or consolation. Whereas the ecclesiastical hosts persist in their efforts to manifest some of their funerary symbols, the pressure that they hitherto exerted on the pilgrims, with varying degrees of success, to follow their rigid script evaporates into the fresh morning air of the cavernous Kidron Valley.
The descent from the Old City to Mary’s Tomb traverses Jericho Road (al-Maqdisi in Arabic), where a large contingent of Border Patrol troops has already taken up position. Police officers stop traffic in both directions so that the procession can cross the highway without pause. The decorum that was forced upon the faithful by both the clergy and the narrow streets of old Jerusalem is instantaneously breached, as the long line of marchers disperses in every direction. Upon crossing the road, the opening of the grotto comes into view. The religious ferment steadily intensifies, as the poignancy of the singing, smells, and excitement rises up a few notches. The pilgrims fill the streets outside the city’s eastern wall and proceed towards the stairs leading down to the small square in front of Gethsemane Church. At this point, the terrain enables even the laggards to see the icon-bearer. Just outside the entrance is the Grotto of the Agony, and in front of the square is the tomb of a Muslim saint (Cust 1929: 44). With Father Philomenos back in view, the faithful have but one objective in mind: to get as close as possible to the Dormition Icon. Once again, hundreds of believers rush to kiss the holy object, thereby upsetting the Greek clergy, who struggle to keep the clamorous throngs at bay. Throughout the event, Israeli Border Patrol troops are arrayed along side streets and at key junctures, and soldiers can be seen leaping from roof to roof. Additionally, policemen and policewomen accompany the masses. The troops operate their communication devices, converse out loud in Hebrew, and pass on orders. Although the Israeli units make a concerted effort to maintain order and safeguard the participants, as per the authorities’ understanding of the security needs, they inevitably add to the tense atmosphere. During the first two years of my fieldwork (2003 and 2004), security was increased on account of the Intifada, which was also responsible for a decrease in the number of participants. Unrest in Gaza and the Second Lebanon War had a similar impact, as did twenty-six military operations in Gaza, Nabulus, and other territories since 2004, and three major operations carried out in 2008, 2012, and 2014. All of these have affected the level of permissions given to pilgrims to attend the Jerusalem processions.
The Rituals in Mary’s Tomb
Built inside a subterranean cavern, Mary’s tomb is a Crusader-period complex with Byzantine foundations. Its commemorative-style cruciform structure is intended to embody the Virgin’s death, Dormition, Resurrection, and Assumption to heaven (Pringle 2007: 287). Testimonies and writings from the Middle Ages attest to the sanctity of the cave’s entrance, which is hewn into the mountain. These same sources also indicate that the tomb has been a popular pilgrimage destination since the sixth century. A monumental Crusader-era staircase, consisting of forty-eight steps, leads down to the ancient crypt (Limor 2014).
Within minutes of Father Philomenos’ arrival and the position of the holy icon near the tomb, the laity are permitted into the church. The clergy are busy preparing for the funerary ceremony, but the devotees’ primary objective is to reach the spot that will serve as the Dormition Icon’s abode for the next ten days. Near the entrance, an Orthodox nun stands over opens boxes of candles. The crypt is indeed abuzz with devotees, and a wide array of ritual activities is under way throughout the shrine. The panoply of personal and frequently improvised prayers, ceremonies, and other rituals all express or consist of a full repertoire of symbols and demands, many of which are incompatible with the other practices going on. In consequence, in the tomb, the differences and disputes between the various groups become ever more salient. Each group positions itself in a separate location for the sake of performing private ceremonies, and a medley of different songs resonates throughout the cave at one and the same time. Among the events in progress are ceremonies and prayers at the site of what the Greek Orthodox believe to be the tombs of Joachim and Anne (Mary’s parents), which are located in a recess about a third of the way down the stairs. Inside this chamber, a priest slices bread into small pieces using a gilded knife while praying in Arabic. It is worth noting that none of the pilgrim groups attend any of the clergy’s rituals in the grotto; the clergy are aware of this and perform rituals in the Orthodox shrines of the cave according to their own particular timetable, a procedure that is not known to others. By this stage in the day, most of the pilgrims are sweaty and their hair is dishevelled. Many appear to be exhausted, and some have even fallen asleep in isolated corners of the shrine.
The Orthodox clergy perform most of the prayers in the eastern iconostasis which, to the right of the bottom step, partitions the main expanse into distinct areas, each of which is under the jurisdiction of either the Greek Orthodox or the Armenians. Behind the tomb is an Orthodox chapel, next to which sits the Altar of St Bartholomew. This devotional table is owned by the Armenians, but the Syrian Jacobites conduct their ceremonies around it. The adjacent Altar of St Stephanos and all the outer extremities of the church belong to the Greek Orthodox.6 The passage housing the sepulchre leads to the northern part of the complex. In a corner opposite and about 12 feet away from the staircase is the Orthodox St Stephanos Altar. A handful of devotees wait in line to enter the Virgin’s aedicule. When their turn arrives, they squeeze into the entrance and bend down to touch and kiss the stone.
As opposed to the Orthodox clergy, who situate themselves in their special areas in front of the tomb, the lay believers are interested only in the icon, in a massive flock they move towards the eastern side of the church. Pilgrims and visitors do not seem to be interested in internal ecclesiastical divisions or politics and simply pray. The vast majority of pilgrims and local Christians line up to the left of the aedicule, for the purpose of entering a narrow room that houses the Icon of the Dormition. At the end of the chamber housing the venerated object is a rounded apse, which is nearly fenced in by Greek Orthodox altars. On one of these altars is the Panagia Iersolymitissa (Panayia the Jerusalemite). According to local Orthodox legend, this icon was painted by Sister Tatiana in around 1870 following a revelation that she experienced opposite the tomb. The Panagia is surrounded by Byzantine-style paintings, whose primary motifs are the Dormition and the Assumption.7 Although most of the pilgrims are unfamiliar with Tatiana’s vision, many of them spend time at this icon as well. On an ornate chair in the prayer room behind the sepulchre, the effigy of the Madonna is out in the open, accessible to anyone willing to brave the lines. Besides the desire to touch and kiss the sacred epitaphios (icon), many pilgrims are waiting to partake in the popular Greek Orthodox rite of crawling. This potentially gruelling feat is considered a solemn public expression of piety as well as devotion and gratitude to Mary.
The mass crawling at Mary’s Tomb has undergone certain changes over the course of my multi-year study. While the vast majority of laypersons that enter the Tomb of Mary are bent on crawling under the Icon of the Dormition, the Greek clergy are opposed to this practice or, at the very least, wish to limit its scope. Lay believers, especially Palestinian women, adamantly insist on their right to perform the ritual, which they consider to be the festival’s highpoint. Not only does the crawling attest to their devotion, but it is an act of defiance against the strict, alien demands of the organizers that dominate the rituals. Just as the Arabic singing in the streets served as a protest against the clergy’s insistence on sticking to the Greek liturgy and the reinforcement of local, Palestinian, Christian identity, many women obstinately struggle to preserve the crawling tradition without any intervention on the part of the Orthodox hosts. The Palestinian faithful are usually the first ones to get in line and animatedly encourage others to take part in the crawling ritual, even in the face of pushing and stern rebuke.8
The sacred object’s accessibility elicits a tremendous amount of excitement as well as frustration. In contrast to what Jansen (2009: 38) describes in the Jordanian shrine of Mary, Haland’s (2012) analysis of the Dormition rituals on the island of Tinos, or Pénicaud’s (2014) examination of the sharing nature of Mary’s house in Ephesus venerated by Christians and Muslims, in Jerusalem the symbols are contested and highly exclusive, while boundaries and limitations are reinforced. In order to preform rituals, pilgrims stand in a long, dishevelled, and extremely cramped line in order to share a fleeting moment with the icon. Veneration involves kissing, crawling under the icon, bending, laying on the floor, and asking for fertility, health, or recuperation of family members and friends by rubbing the pictures of their kin on the effigy.
In these performances the textual tradition and the idea of the funeral of Mary are given less attention, and life matters, especially matters of health and fertility, are given full emphasis. This performance is done in many ways, such as kissing, praying in their own language, crawling, or crying, even if these actions mean ignoring or interfering with the establishment’s wishes. The first and most prominent dispute revolves around the lay devotees’ avid desire to touch and kiss the Dormition Icon as many times as possible. Scores of participants hurl themselves at the tightly guarded effigy, while the clergy try to keep them at bay for the purpose of ensuring that the icon remains ahead of the procession at every stage of the event. Over the years, a similar conflict has evolved over the aforementioned crawling ritual. Even though these rituals are not accepted because according to the organizers they are not connected to the Dormition or Assumption traditions at all, most of the pilgrims consider them to be most central and see crawling and kissing the icon of the Madonna as the emotional and religious highpoint of the entire festival and the representation of their local identity and political situation.
In the Jerusalem Tomb, these rituals are not only a manifestation of piety and resistance towards clerical authority. It is also, and especially, a challenge to the current political situation of local Christians as minorities in a Jewish state and Muslim landscape. For George, a Christian visitor to the tomb, the pilgrimage is made for clear reasons: ‘Mary helps us Christians, as minorities, feel that they are returning to their cultural centre. We do this by returning to the true times of the Apostles and … Mary’s Assumption.’ Leaning on ‘minority mother’ symbols, George imagines a prominent role for his denomination. Other local Christians that I spoke to claimed that their minority status has fragmented their identities and selves. From their standpoint, visiting this site is no less than an opportunity to reassemble these shattered pieces by enlisting scriptural and mythical symbols of the Virgin’s maternal qualities and her experiences in Jerusalem to strengthen their ties to the land and to imagine a new dispensation.
Conclusion
From the the earliest Christian traditions we learn that Mary’s birth, life, motherhood, Dormition, and Assumption took place in Mediterranean lands. In this context Mary’s status, sacred places, and the rituals devoted to her are unique and powerful images. However, as I have shown, the centrality of Mary has undergone major transformations as a result of turmoil, conflicts, wars, and the minority status of Christianity and the Christian communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. As I demonstrate in this chapter, as the condition of Christian communities has changed, the role of Mary has been transformed. Nowadays, some parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, especially Syria and Egypt, are going through a process of Islamization, and Christians are minorities under threat. In this political context, Mary becomes the representative of the oppressed and the excluded from state, culture, and political affairs. As I show from my ethnography in her tomb, Mary represents the Christians at the Holy Land and is considered to be the mother of minorities. Veneration and processions to Mary are not only a way to express piety and devotion, but also an avenue to prompt identity, aspirations, and territorial claims.