Reviews for Saving The Holy Sepulchre

The average rating for Saving The Holy Sepulchre based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-11-22 00:00:00 Jean Serrano The author has, I suppose, written the authoritative work on this subject. Clearly a huge amount of research has gone into this book and a hugely complex story has been told as engagingly and as clearly as possible. The book is a must for anyone who wants to understand how the Status Quo (the very arcane agreement that governs the relations between the different Christian denominations in the church) works today. Through no fault of the author, the story he tells is inherently depressing. Only for that reason did I give four stars rather than five.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-11 00:00:00 Multicarros Multicarros Beginning right after the first world war, the Mother Church (Church of the Holy Sepulchre) was described as dark, dank and dirty. It would take over sixty years to fix most of the problems of the structure, which were complicated by an earthquake in 1927. Under the Ottoman Empire, the administration of all the holy places in Jerusalem were protected. Any problem between the three main denominations (Latin, Greek and Armenian) would be taken to the Shari'a courts. After the crumbling of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was not interested as being responsible and came under the British League of Nation Mandate. Later, after 1948 it would be under the auspices of the Kingdom of Jordan, and after 1967 the State of Israel. Each new authority had to educated itself as to the byzantine 'Status Quo' agreement that had been created over the four hundred years of the Ottoman occupation. Unfortunately, each new occupier had to start from scratch, when it appeared that the files from the prior responsible party had disappeared. To understand the way the system worked or didn't, you have to read through the very thorough narrative of this book. It is a truly scholarly work and is not for the faint of heart. Just trying to figure out each section and who claims ownership or usage (not the same thing) of such area can scramble your brain. Underlying all this was the animosity between the three christian sects due to doctrinal squabbles. Well written and presented, it's an interesting story, but only for a limited set of historians.