VIIITHE STORY OF THE STABLE
Betweenthe years 1480 and 1483, Brother Felix Fabri, a learned German monk of Ulm, made two voyages to Palestine, during the course of which he collected information of all sorts about the holy places, which he later published in a large and important book. Some of his statements about Bethlehem are very accurate. Others do not strike us as quite so convincing.
According to these stories told by Brother Felix, Boaz inherited from his father Salmon, who had married Rahab of Jericho, a largemansion built at the very edge of Bethlehem, so that part of the house projected outside the town wall. In the rock underneath the main building was a natural grotto which was used as a cellar, and also as a dwelling room during the hot months. The house passed in due time into the possession of Boaz’ grandson Jesse, whose son David was born in the lower room. After David became king, however, the family removed to Jerusalem, the deserted homestead gradually came into a state of disrepair, and finally the part in the rock was used as a public stable. This degradation of the once splendid mansion was permitted by Providence, so that at last the great Son of David might be born amid humble surroundings, and yet in the very place where His famous ancestor first saw the light.
After our Lord’s Ascension, His mother lived for fourteen years, dwelling in Jerusalem, whence every month she and her friends made a pious pilgrimage to Bethlehem, that they might worship at the cave of the Saviour’s birth. This so enraged the Jews that finally they defiled the stable and blocked up its entrance with stones.
Following the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, inA. D.70, Christians were again allowed to dwell in the Holy Land and to visit the place of the Nativity, which they cleansed from the Jewish defilement and hallowed by their worship. But in the year 132, the Emperor Hadrian laid waste the city of Bethlehem, placed in the sacred cave a statue of Jupiter and, as a crowning insult, instituted in the very Grotto of the Nativity the iniquitous rites of the Adonis cult, whichcontinued to be celebrated there for almost two hundred years.
This, however, was the last heathen desecration of the holy spot. In the year 326 the pious Helena, mother of the Christian emperor, Constantine, “cleansed the place of the sweet Nativity of our Lord, cast out the abominations of the idols from the holy cave, overthrew all that she found there, and beneath the ruins found the Lord’s manger entire.” In the manger she discovered the stone on which the Blessed Virgin had placed the Babe’s head, and the hay and the swaddling clothes and Joseph’s sandals and the long, loose gown which Mary wore.
THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY
THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY
THE CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY
These were all carried to the capital, Constantinople, and remained five hundred years in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, until Charlemagne, returning from the conquest of Jerusalem(so says Fabri), begged the relics as the reward of his holy labors and took them with him to the West. The hay was bestowed in the church of Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome, the manger in St. John Lateran, and the garments in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle.
After St. Helena had purified the place of the Nativity, she erected above it a church of wondrous beauty, but in such a manner that the rock beneath and the cave in which the Saviour was born should remain untouched. Whereupon the Jews of Bethlehem in derision nicknamed the saintly empress “the Woman of the Stable.”
But by the time we reach St. Helena and the building of the Bethlehem church, legend is beginning to merge into history.