TURKS DESPOIL NOTED SHRINE.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14650, 2 March 1918, Page 2

TURKS DESPOIL NOTED SHRINE.

An official despatch received in Washington recently from France says that the Turks, .before surrendering Jerusalem to the British, brutally miscreated Christian priests, carried off the famous treasure of the Church of the1 Holy Sepulchre, valued at millions of dollars, and sent to Berlin the church's celebrated ostensory of brilliants. Mgr. Camassci, the patriarch of Jerusalem, is said to have been deposed from his office!, and Father Piccardo an Italian priest, to have died from the effects of Turkish brutalities. The Church of. the Holy Sepulchre had remained unmolest-' ed heretofore- during all the centuries of Moslem occupation of Jerusalem. The same despatch told of indignation among Mussulmans of Asia Minor over the action of a German general in establishing staff headquarters in the great mosque of .-the city < of Aleppo, near thf> Syrian border. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was consecrated' in the year 336 on the traditional spot where Christ rose from the dead, in the year 614 the buildings comprising' the church were destroyed, 03' the Persians. The original building was in the"'form of a'''rotunda, the shape of which survives in the I existing complex constructs re which asj sumed various forms in the course of rebuilding during the Middle Ages. The edifice was badly damaged by. fire m ?.808. The,' Greeks' contrived to secure to themselves the principal- rightto the buildings, and with the Armenians contributed most of the money for the erection of the new church. The dilapidated dome beneath which the sepulchre is situated was restored by architects of -various, nationalities in 1868 as the result of ah agreement made with Turkey "by France and Rus- ■ sia. . ' -';■ ■' ■ ■ ■■.-

The chief entrance to the church is from a court on the south The court is paved with yellowish slabs of stone, and. is infested always- by traders and beggars. In the interior is'the 'sepulchre proper, enclosed in a 16-sided chapel resting on 18 piers, and containing a great number of., chapels-appropri-ated-to different creeds or nationalities or marking various spots, traditionally connected with the Saviour's Passion.