The Secret Lives of Buildings: From the Ruins of the Parthenon to the Vegas Strip in Thirteen Stories

by Edward Hollis

  The Parthenon was a church for a millennium, longer by far than it had ever been a temple to Athene, and its transformation from one to the other took more than a single act of vandalism or conversion. For a thousand years every bishop of Athens would carve his name into the marble of the old temple to make it his own, in a rite common to all his predecessors and his successors. Visiting dignitaries would donate relics and treasures to the building, to sustain what they hoped would be an endless cycle of prayer.

  If the architectural transformations of the Dark Ages were characterized by brutal shocks of theft and appropriation, those of the later Middle Ages were characterized by repetition. Medieval lives were lived within the enclosed worlds of the monastery and the village, the fixed social hierarchy of aristocrat, priest, and peasant. They were governed by the repeated rituals of the church year and the monastic hours, the routine of the seasons, and the inexorable cycles of birth, inheritance, reproduction, and death.

  This repetitious stability was an astonishing achievement for the societies that emerged from the catastrophes of imperial collapse and barbarian invasion. All those familiar prayers and curses, all that monastic copying of antique texts, all those seasonal songs and dances suffused the medieval world with a sense of divinely ordained order.

  The Holy House possesses nothing of the unique perfection of the Parthenon, the stolen splendor of San Marco, or the layered complexity of Hagia Sophia. It would never have qualified as a member of the elite band of buildings that inhabit the architect’s dream. It is distinguished not by its originality but by its ubiquity: it can be found around the world in any number of outlandish places. And the building of the Holy House—the very process by which it appears—is a ritual repeated again and again, as the joys and sorrows of the Virgin are told again and again on the beads of the rosary. For the story of the Holy House, like the story of the Virgin herself, is a tale of miraculous reproduction.

  THE HOLY HOUSE contains one room, thirteen feet wide and thirty feet long. At the west end of the Holy House there is a square window; and there are two doors, one to each side. The inside of the Holy House is dark, and it smells of candle wax. The walls have a greasy dampness to them, and they are bare, save for the fragments of a fresco that once adorned them.

  The Holy House is everywhere. There is a Holy House above a meadow in the village of Walsingham in Norfolk. There is a Holy House on the hill of Acireale in Sicily, where holy men used to take refuge from brigands; and there is a Holy House in the high valleys of the Valtelline, where it rests under the dome of the church of Tresivio, overlooking steep vineyards and snowy hills. In San Miguel de Allende in Mexico there is a Holy House that dates back to 1735; it is enshrined in the church of San Felipe Neri, blazing with Aztec gold.

  There are some fifty Holy Houses in the Czech Republic alone. In Prague it resides in the cloister of a nunnery whose rococo ornamentation is as sensuous and joyful as the lives of its inmates were ascetic and contemplative. In Slany it is hidden in a church on the edge of a dusty municipal park, where somnolent Romanies doze and argue with one another on benches under the lime trees. In Rumburk, a dusty truck stop between Prague and Dresden, it is guarded by a young girl; in eská Lípa the Holy House is found in the town museum, at the end of corridors inhabited by stuffed animals, geologic specimens, defunct agricultural machinery, and Nazi memorabilia. In Kosmonosy you must ask for the Holy House at the psychiatric hospital, while another Holy House perches on a crag in a forest outside Podbrady. In the shabby village of Ztenice the Holy House is found at the end of a long walk up a wooded hill, so altered by time that only tiny cracks in the stucco reveal where its doors and windows once opened.

  There are also places from which the Holy House has already flitted away. Ancienne Lorette, now a suburb at the end of the runways of Quebec airport, is a place of Travelodges and Comfort Inns, temporary storage containers and taxis into town. Its tourist literature advertises just one historic attraction: “The Church of the Annunciation,” boasts the brochure, “dates all the way back to 1907.” But the tradition of reverence for Our Lady in this place is much older than that, and this story is older still.

  1674

  ONCE UPON A time, a tribe appeared with their sorcerer in a clearing by a great river. The tribe was the Huron, and they called the great river Kaniatarowanenneh; but the old sorcerer’s name was Father Joseph-Marie Chaumonot, and he insisted on naming the river for Saint Lawrence, whoever he might have been. Chaumonot and the Huron had wandered together for many years through the wilderness, and they had endured terrible hardships. They were tired and ill, and they needed to rest, so they laid down their burdens and they built a village in the clearing in the forest by the river.

  The sorcerer named the village Lorette, and in the middle of it he built a Holy House. There was one room, thirteen feet wide and thirty feet long. At the west end of the Holy House there was a square window, and there were doors on the northern and southern sides. The house was dark and the walls were bare, save for frescoes that adorned them in crooked patches. At the east end of the house, on a simple table, the sorcerer placed an image of a little baby and his mother.

  And when the Holy House was finished, Father Chaumonot went into it and uttered his magic in a language that the Huron could not understand.

  Hail Mary, full of Grace,

  The Lord is with thee.

  Blessed art thou among women,

  And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

  The Huron elders waited outside. When he had finished, Father Chaumonot came to them and told them his story in their own language.

  1631

  ONCE UPON A time, there was a naughty little boy called Joseph, whose parents were very poor. This naughty boy stole a hundred sous from his uncle, and he ran away from home and wandered for many years. He grew up on the road and lived on his wits. He learned the smooth manners of a valet, the spurious authority of a tutor, and the ardor of a lady’s lover; but ultimately he fell on hard times. He found himself begging on the streets of Ancona in Italy, covered in sores, wearing only filthy rags, unshaven, unkempt, unloved.

  He had heard about a shrine nearby that was frequented by many pilgrims. Not, of course, that he was interested in pilgrimages: he had seen enough of the world to sneer at superstition. “Let them keep their eyes on Heaven and their hands clasped in prayer,” he thought, “while I relieve them of their worldly goods!” So Joseph followed the pilgrims on the day’s walk to the sanctuary. They could see it for miles before they got there: a dome atop a fortified hill on the horizon.

  The walls of the sanctuary enclosed a magnificent piazza. A fountain played in the center, and colossal colonnades shaded the thirsty, the sick, and the hopeful. At the end of the piazza the doors of the church were open, and Joseph entered the sacred gloom. A queue of pilgrims led to a shrine under the great dome he had seen from afar.

  Directly under the dome, right at the heart of the church, was a small structure entirely encased in marble. Between Corinthian columns as slim and as beautiful as a young virgin, bas-reliefs told the story of the life of Our Lady. There was Mary at her birth, with her mother, Saint Anne, lying in bed and her father, Saint Joachim, poking his nose around the door. There was Mary taken to the Temple. There was Mary betrothed to Joseph. There was Mary receiving the visitation of the angel Gabriel, and there was Mary coddling the infant Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem. There was Mary at the empty tomb, grieving for her lost son. The prophets and sibyls who had foretold all these things were also there, seated in niches.

  Joseph followed the pilgrims into the marble structure. Inside, there was one simple dark room. The walls had a greasy dampness to them, and they were bare, save for scraps of painting and graffiti in a language that Joseph could not understand. At the east end of the house, in a mandorla, an aura of gilded flame, resided a magnificent idol: a little baby with his mother, Our Lady. The beggar forgot for a moment why he was there. He knelt with the other pilgrims
at the altar and said his Ave Marias.

  And when he emerged into the sunshine, he realized that something had changed. His lice and his sores and his filth had left him, and he had been made clean. He ran back into the basilica and accosted the nearest priest he could find. He told him, breathlessly, of the miracle that had occurred.

  The priest expressed no surprise whatsoever. He sat the young man down in front of a stone plaque affixed to the wall and pointed to the words carved upon it: “The Wondrous Flitting of the Kerk of Our Blest Lady of Laureto.”

  1294

  ONCE UPON A time, the priest said, there was a virtuous matron called Laureta who lived in a grove of laurel trees. She had spent many years secluded there, praying to Our Lady amid the beasts of the forest and the wilderness.

  One night Laureta had a vision. Her grove was filled with light, and a small building descended from the heavens. As it touched down, the laurels of the grove bowed to the ground. Laureta did not move; but the next morning she found that a clearing had appeared in her grove, and in the middle of that clearing there was now a small shrine. She entered it. At the east end of a dark room, thirty feet by thirteen, scrawled with foreign graffiti, she saw the little baby and his mother at the heart of a flaming golden mandorla.

  Laureta knelt down and said her Ave Marias. She valued her solitude, and for several days she kept the Holy House secret among the laurels; but it was not to remain hidden for long. First came the curious, who had heard the commotion and wanted to see what had happened. Then came the devout, who made their way to the little house to honor Our Lady in prayer. And then came thieves and bandits, who hid amid the dark laurel trees and stole the offerings that the pilgrims brought to the shrine. What had once been a quiet retreat had become a seething mass of people, and Laureta prayed to Our Lady for deliverance.

  Her prayer was answered. The Holy House flitted away as quickly as it had appeared, and it reappeared moments later in a meadow outside Laureta’s grove which belonged to two brothers. There the pilgrims could approach the sacred structure on open ground, and the thieves could not come close to them without being seen. So many people flocked to the Holy House with offerings that the small building was soon piled high with gifts. The two brothers who now owned the shrine looked at their newfound wealth, and they looked at each other; and they licked their lips, and rubbed their hands, and laughed.

  But it was not long before they laughed a little less, and rubbed their hands a little less, and looked at each other sideways. It was not long before they started to suspect each other of filching gifts from the shrine. And it was not long before the two brothers, who had once loved each other, began fighting; and as they fought over the gifts it had brought them, the Holy House flitted away once more.

  It reappeared moments later on a nearby hill. There, only the most devoted could reach it. There guards could guard it; and there it stayed. The guards and the priests lashed the Holy House to the ground with ropes and pegs so that it would not flit away again, and they built a wall around it so that no one could steal its treasures.

  Everyone knew the house was holy, but they had no idea where it had come from or what it was. Then, a couple of years later, a hermit came to the authorities with a dream. The Blessed Virgin had appeared to him, he told them, and revealed to him the true nature of the Holy House and the source of its flitting. The authorities passed the information to their masters, and they to theirs, until eventually it reached the ears of Pope Boniface, who—not being the type to believe such stories too readily—gathered some sixteen men of credit to verify the tale.

  He gave them the measurements of the Holy House as he had been told them, and sent them on a journey to the place from which the building had supposedly flitted. The pope’s emissaries crossed

  the Adriatic Sea and arrived at the Croatian port of Fiume. They were directed up to the fortress above the town, and there they were introduced to an old priest, Father Alexander Georgevich, who told them his story.

  1291

  ONCE UPON A time, there were some shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. The angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” But the shepherds were still sore afraid, and they ran back to the fortress, which was called Tersatto.

  The next day the shepherds went out again into the fields. In place of the heavenly host, they found a little house sitting on the grass. But the shepherds did not dare to enter the building, and they returned to the fortress a second time.

  The third time they brought the castle guard and old Father Georgevich out into the fields with them. They helped him down the hill, since at his age his limbs were painful and stiff, and now they ventured into the little building. The bare walls were streaked with grease and soot, under which could be discerned graffiti in a language that not even learned Father Georgevich could understand. At the east end of the house, mounted on a high table, stood an image of a little baby in his mother’s arms.

  The shepherds and the guards and old Father Georgevich left the shrine, and Father Georgevich hobbled home to pray to Our Lady for guidance. He fell asleep at his kneeler. The Virgin Mary appeared to him and told him all about the Holy House, and then she said: “In order that you may bear testimony of all these things, be healed. Your unexpected and sudden recovery shall confirm the truth of what I have declared to you.” Father Georgevich sprung up from his kneeler without a twinge of pain, and he did what Our Lady told him to do. He went to the governor of the fortress and told him the story the Virgin Mary had imparted to him.

  The governor reported it to his master, the ban of Croatia, who sent artificers to examine the building. They told him that its dimensions were thirty feet in length and thirteen in breadth; and that the golden stone of which it was constructed was a certain type of limestone, and the sweet smelling timber of its roof was cedar, neither of which was then obtainable in Croatia. Then the ban sent the clerics of his court to their archives, and they told him that such limestone and cedar could be obtained from Palestine alone. They also told him that the dimensions of the house matched those of only one other, in Nazareth, in Palestine, in the Basilica of the Annunciation.

  And so the ban sent deputies to distant Nazareth to see this Holy House of which his clerics had spoken. The deputies traveled over sea and mountain, suffering many dangers, until they arrived in Nazareth. The Christian crusaders had only just been expelled from the Holy Land, which was now firmly under the sway of Islam. Churches had been demolished or made over into mosques, and Christians everywhere were converting in droves to the religion of their new rulers. The Croatian deputies found Nazareth desolate and the Basilica of the Annunciation in ruins. They picked their way through the rubble, until at last they found a makeshift shrine on the spot where their guide had told them the Holy House would be. There was one old priest at the door. They went in, and he told them his story.

  328

  ONCE UPON A time, there was an innkeeper’s daughter who married a soldier. Some say it happened in Nicomedia, others in York, but at any rate, her name was Helena, and her son—who also became a soldier—she named Constantine. He became the emperor of Rome, moved its capital to Constantinople, converted his empire to Christianity, and declared himself as the fourth member of the Holy Trinity, joining the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost on his deathbed. And so Helena, whose beginnings were humble, ended up as the mother of a god.

  Helena was a Christian at least as enthusiastic as her son, and when he had pacified the eastern parts of his empire she undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Three hundred and twenty-eight years after Jesus Christ had been born, Helena went to see the places where Jesus, the codivinity with her son, had lived and died and risen again.

  Helena traveled all over Palestine, doing good works, endowing churches, and discovering
miraculous relics. She founded the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and the Church of the Ascension in Jerusalem. Helena discovered the True Cross, upon which Christ had hung for our sins, hidden in a cistern on Golgotha. In the governor’s palace in Jerusalem she located the staircase down which Pontius Pilate had walked after condemning Jesus to death. Among the ruins on Mount Moriah, Helena had her men excavate columns from the very Temple of Solomon. All of these things she ordered to be labeled, packed, and shipped back to her son in Rome. They are all still there.

  Nazareth had always been a small village, and hard to find, but Helena found it. She swept into the hamlet with her imperial entourage and began to seek out the childhood haunts of Our Lord. She found the well from which Mary drew water and the carpentry shop used by Saint Joseph. She also found a little house with just one room, thirteen feet wide and thirty feet long, lit by a single square window high on the western wall. On a shelf of living rock at the east end perched a statue of a mother and child.

  “What is this shrine, and what is that image?” demanded Helena. “Is it Cybele or Juno? Or some other pagan idol?”

  The attendant of the shrine shrugged his shoulders and told her.

  1

  ONCE UPON A time, in an obscure village, there was a little house. In this house there was but one bare room, about thirty feet long and thirteen feet wide; and in this little room there dwelled a mother and her child. The name of the village was Nazareth. The name of the child, who was a girl, was Mary.

  As Mary sat in her house, to her great surprise, an angel flew in through the window on the western wall and spoke to her. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” he said, “the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”