Along the walls of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there are hundreds of hand-carved crosses. This most sacred place, built upon the same ground where Christ was crucified and buried, may not be where you expect to find graffiti. But these crosses are not considered defamatory—rather, they point to the importance of this place.
Carved by hand into the walls of the Church of Holy Sepulchre, Crusaders left these crosses over several centuries.
Considered the most important site in Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—and much of the Holy Land—has been a place of pilgrimage since the 4th century. But by the 10th century, much of the Holy Land had been seized and Islamized, with Turkish Islamic powers enslaving the local Palestinian Christians.
Looking towards the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem
In response to the persecution of the Church, Pope Urban II issued a call to action that was simultaneously military and spiritual, a campaign to defend Christendom against Muslim aggression and to help persecuted Christians in eastern lands.
Thousands of Christians answered his call, motivated by religious reasons—as a penance for one’s sins or in solidarity with those being persecuted. Making their way deep into the Holy Land, the Crusades would take on a different tone, one of profound pilgrimage.
When these men reached their goal, both as Crusaders and as pilgrims, they would find themselves on sacred ground, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There they would carve crosses into the walls in remembrance of their own cross borne in the Crusades and in honor of the True Cross, the one that’s always worth fighting for.
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