The Orthodox call the Jerusalem Church the mother of all churches that emerged later. And it's clear why. It is believed that the Jerusalem Church, which arose in the city where Jesus Christ was crucified and resurrected on the third day, was the first church of the new Christian doctrine. According to legend, Jacob is considered its founder - one of the apostles and the first bishop of Jerusalem.
Christianity arose in a very difficult period for the Jews, when the official religion began to give up position after position. Judea experienced many misfortunes and conquests, its inhabitants ended up in Babylonian captivity and returned to their native lands after a long time, without losing their faith. But Roman rule was more destructive than Babylonian. The Romans had a perfect apparatus of power and a highly developed culture. Resisting them turned out to be much more difficult than the conquerors from Assyria and Babylon. Judaism was too dogmatic a religion to fight the invaders on equal terms. Another faith had to arise, capable of combining monotheism on a Jewish basis with the cultural heritage of antiquity. This was Christianity. The center of the new trend was the main city of Judea - Jerusalem.
The first martyrs
The last days of Jesus' life are connected with Jerusalem. Although he preached throughout Judea, the main events took place here. Jesus delivered his last sermon to his disciples in Jerusalem. He spent the last night in the Garden of Gethsemane on the outskirts of Jerusalem. In this city he was brought for questioning to the prosecutor's office of Judea Pontius Pilate and to the trial of the Jewish Sanhedrin. Here he was sentenced to death and crucified on the cross. And here he rose from the dead and gained immortality. It is quite understandable that there were more followers of Jesus in Jerusalem than in all other Jewish cities. The first Christian church also originated in Jerusalem.
The Roman authorities persecuted Jerusalem Christians. But it was in Jerusalem, 18 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, that the Apostolic Council took place. And in this city, the apostle Paul received the approval of the Christian community. The Christians of Jerusalem were ready for any sacrifice for the sake of their faith. No wonder the first martyrs were the apostle James, executed in 62, and the Jerusalem archdeacon Stephen.
Of course, the Romans were not only fighting the emerging Christianity. They also considered Judaism a dangerous and undesirable religion for Rome. But the war with the Jews was, so to speak, on two fronts. In 70 AD, the Jerusalem temple was razed to the ground, a few decades later, the city itself was renamed in the Roman manner in Elia Capitolina, and the townspeople were evicted to the lands on the other side of the Jordan. Thus, with one rescript, Rome got rid of both too active and patriotic Judaists and Christians who were ready to die for their faith.
Nevertheless, the Jerusalem Christian community did not perish. Jerusalem refugees settled in the city of Pella, where they continued their activities, despite the prohibitions concerning their faith. Much worse than the Romans turned out to be another enemy - the Jewish radicals who actively made denunciations against the secret followers of Christ. Thanks to these denunciations, many Christians lost their lives. But the teaching about the Son of God, who came into the world for the salvation of all mankind, gradually became very popular not only among the Jews, but also among the Romans themselves.
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Several centuries later, a new Christian center arose in Elia Capitolina. Rome then exhausted its resources and the time of its power was on the decline. Emperor Constantine, having officially recognized Christianity and made it the state religion, returned to the ancient city not only its old name, but also the most important place among the then religious centers. In 326, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built in Jerusalem, and then a monastery after a monastery began to arise throughout Palestine. By 451, when the head of the Jerusalem Church received the title of patriarch, there were already over 10 thousand monks, all of them were Orthodox and all were subordinate to the Jerusalem episcopate.
Unwanted faith
It would seem that a bright future was provided for the Jerusalem Church. But in the 7th century, the city became a bone of contention. In 614, Jerusalem was conquered by the Persians, and then became part of the Arab Caliphate. Orthodox Byzantium no longer had rights to it. The consequences were dire. Many Jerusalem Christians were killed, others fled in search of salvation. Nevertheless, the Christians who remained in Jerusalem did not abandon the faith. Of course, their city became a part of the Arab world, they mastered the Arabic language, got acquainted with the Arab culture, but in their activities they were guided by the Byzantine Constantinople. Orthodox saints, ascetics and theologians flourished in the Jerusalem Church.
In the 11th century, after the First Crusade, Orthodox Jerusalem fell prey to Western Christian knights. On the one hand, it was a return to the rule of co-religionists, on the other hand, insurmountable differences already existed between co-religionists of that time. In this situation, the Jerusalem Church found itself in a difficult and ambiguous position. At first, the relationship between children of the same creed looked decent: the knights respected their Orthodox fellow believers. But with the construction and development of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the time began to renounce the office of Orthodox priests and replace them with Western holy fathers.
However, the Latins never managed to establish themselves in the Holy Land. The famous Sultan Saladin, who seized Jerusalem, preferred the Orthodox patriarch to the Roman bishop. Nevertheless, in the end, the Jerusalem church received several rivals at once, who founded their own monasteries and churches in Palestine - the Franciscan order, the Armenian and Coptic churches. Of course, neither the Orthodox, nor the Catholics, nor the Coptic, nor the Armenian believers played a major role in Jerusalem. Later, Jerusalem returned to the fold of Islam and remained in this fold until the 20th century. The patriarchs of the Jerusalem Church were not in Jerusalem, but in Constantinople.
Hand of Moscow
During the Ottoman rule in Jerusalem, Christian churches were regularly plundered, and the Turkish authorities used Christian pilgrims as a means to replenish the state treasury. Nevertheless, the Jerusalem Orthodox Church during this period managed to significantly strengthen its position. If under the Mamluks the patriarchal throne was occupied only by immigrants from the Arab world, from the 1530s this throne began to be occupied by Orthodox Greeks. And the very first Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem established relations with the largest Orthodox country - the Moscow state.
For the Jerusalem Church, this era turned out to be very favorable. After centuries of desolation and persecution, the revival of temples and the foundation of new ones began. Funds for the construction and decoration of churches were now drawn not only from pilgrims, but also from foreign Orthodox donors. These funds were so great that the Jerusalem Church managed to redeem the decayed churches and monasteries of the Serbian, Georgian and Latin churches. One of the patriarchs even managed to take away from the Catholics Golgotha and the Holy Cave, where Jesus was born.
In the 19th century, Russia began to play a huge role in the life of the Jerusalem Church. The main cash receipts came from there. Turkey, which suffered a series of defeats in wars with the Russians, was forced to soften its attitude towards the Orthodox on its territory. In 1845, for the first time in several centuries, the patriarch of the Jerusalem Church moved the throne to this ancient city and began to live there permanently. In 1847, the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission was established in Jerusalem. Missionaries purchased plots of land in Palestine, where they built new churches and monasteries. After the formation of the Soviet state, the mission was under the jurisdiction of the Synod Abroad. In 1948, after the formation of the State of Israel, it was returned to the Moscow Patriarchate.
Today, the Jerusalem Patriarchate occupies the territory of two states - Israel and Jordan. The Jerusalem Church includes the Ptolemiadic and Nazareth Metropolises, as well as the Sinai Archdiocese. The church numbers about 130 thousand believers and owns 65 temples and 25 monasteries in Palestine, Jordan, Israel, including in Jerusalem itself.
Nikolay KOTOMKIN