Secrets from the Dark Horizon: A Reader's Companion Guide (The Dark Horizon Trilogy Book 0)
Page 7
(First introduced in The History of Things to Come)
Website: www.trin.cam.ac.uk/library/wren
The Wren Library is the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. It was designed by the architectural genius Sir Christopher Wren in 1676 and was completed in 1695. Not only was Wren in charge of the construction of the building, but he also oversaw the design of its distinctive bookshelves.
The library is essentially a single large room built over an open colonnade. It is credited as one of the first libraries designed to give comfortable natural light for readers with large opposing east/west windows. The oak book stacks are organised in two rows positioned at right angles to the walls between the windows. At the end of each stack is a fine decorative limewood carving by Grinling Gibbons, Wren’s master wood carver.
The library houses numerous rare books and manuscripts, many bestowed by past members of the college. The special collections housed there include books from Sir Isaac Newton's personal library; over a thousand medieval manuscripts; a collection of early Shakespeare editions; A. A. Milne's original manuscripts of Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner; several works printed by William Caxton, including the first book printed in English; and handwritten notes by Robert Oppenheimer describing the ‘Trinity’ atomic bomb test in New Mexico.
Secret Fact
A display cabinet containing Newton’s personal effects is on show at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge. Amongst the exhibits are his pocket watch, a lock of his hair, his walking stick and his personal copy of the Principia (his masterwork setting out the laws of motion and considered by some as the most important science book ever written), complete with annotations in his own handwriting.
The Jerusalem Location Files
Location 1: Temple Mount
The most contested real estate on earth
(First introduced in The History of Things to Come)
The Temple Mount is Jerusalem’s centrepiece. The 35-acre, trapezoid-shaped elevated platform in the southeastern corner of the Old City of Jerusalem is arguably the most fought-over and fascinating piece of land on earth. It holds a central role for three contesting faiths and represents the holiest site in Judaism, the third holiest site in Islam, and a revered site in Christianity.
The Jewish Temples
These are thought to be the location of Solomon’s First Temple (built between 960 and 957 BC) which stood until the Babylonians destroyed it in 586 BC. Then, 70 years later, Jews returning from exile built the Second Temple on the same site. Zerubbabel led the work to build the Second Temple, but it was Herod the Great who enlarged and refashioned the building into the magnificent complex described in the New Testament. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70. The only existing temple structure visible today is the Western Wall, which is probably part of retaining wall of the esplanade built by Herod the Great to support the mount.
Among the many controversies surrounding this sacred area is the precise location of Solomon’s original temple. This question is the focus of intense investigation and serious debate for a number of Orthodox Jewish groups who are already planning the construction of the Third Jewish Temple on the site.
Although freedom of access to the site is enshrined in law, Israel does not allow non-Muslim prayer. Additionally, certain Orthodox Jewish rabbis say that since the Jewish Temple's Holy of Holies was sited somewhere near the middle of today's Temple Mount, Jews are religiously forbidden from entering the area.
The Islamic Perspective
To Muslims, Temple Mount is known as the Haram al-Sharif (or Noble Sanctuary), home of the glittering Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque (‘The Farthest Mosque’) from where the Prophet Muhammed is believed to have ascended to heaven in AD 621 and returned to earth to carry on his teachings. The octagonal structure of the Dome of the Rock covers a rocky outcrop of Mount Moriah, where, according to both Jewish and Arabic tradition, Abraham prepared his son Isaac to be sacrificed to God. The Dome of the Rock is a shrine and not a mosque and is the third holiest place in Islam after the Ka’aba in Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. It was built by Abd el-Malik (685–705), the fifth Omayyad Caliph. Under the exposed area of rock is a cave known to Muslims as Bir el-Arwah (‘Well of Souls’). The cave is believed to be where the souls of the dead gather to pray.
Access to the Temple Mount
Access to the Temple Mount has always been hotly contested. When Jordan captured the Old City of Jerusalem during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Jews were refused entry to the Temple Mount area. During the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli Defence Forces liberated Temple Mount, reclaiming Jewish control over the sacred site for the first time since the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. Today, the area is under fragile arrangements and administrated by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, a trust established in 1187 to manage the Islamic structures in Jerusalem. Israeli military forces provide the security for the area and affirm decisions made by the Waqf.
Secret Fact
Underneath the Mount is a network of 34 cisterns along with other substructures, the largest of which is known as ‘Solomon's Stables’, or where the crusading Knights Templar built their base on the Temple Mount.
Location 2: The Cathedral of St James
The resting place of James the Great and James the Less
(First introduced in The History of Things to Come)
Rising within a walled compound next to the gate of the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City is the Cathedral of St James. It is one of the few remaining Crusader-era churches in the Holy Land to have survived intact, and parts of this ancient church date back to AD 420.
The cathedral is dedicated to two Christian saints: James the Great (one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus) and James the Less, believed to be a close relative of Jesus, who became the first Bishop of Jerusalem.
It is the cathedral of the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Armenia was the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion (in AD 301), and Armenian Christians established the first ‘quarter’ in Jerusalem. For several hundred years, the Armenian Patriarch was considered the most senior Christian dignitary in the Holy Land. The Armenian Orthodox Christians still have jurisdiction over part of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre today. The peaked hoods worn by the priests, shaped like the steeple of an Armenian church, are intended to make the priest look like a walking church in the world.
According to Armenian tradition, within the cathedral are buried the head of St James the Great (his body is believed to be in Spain in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela) and the body of St James the Less.
St James the Great
According to Acts 12:1-2, St James the Great was beheaded by Herod Agrippa I, grandson of Herod the Great, in around AD 44. A piece of red marble in front of the altar of the Chapel of St James the Great marks the place where the head is buried on the reputed site of his beheading.
St James the Less
St James the Less was martyred by Temple authorities about 20 years later by being thrown from the Temple platform, and then stoned and clubbed to death. In the front of the cathedral’s main altar are two thrones. The larger is dedicated to St James the Less and is carved out of precious wood and completely inlaid with mother-of-pearl. A low iron grille behind it encloses St James’s original grave, which is located under the main altar.
Secret Fact
Close to the Cathedral of St James is an Armenian Orthodox seminary. Some academics believe that the seminary is built on the site of Pilate’s praetorium, formerly the palace of Herod the Great. If this is the case, then the Judge’s seat where Jesus was finally condemned would have been located where the Cathedral of St James now stands (John 19:13).
Location 3: Church of the Holy Sepulchre
Buried lies the True Cross
(First Introduced in The History of Things to Come)
Located within the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Church of the Ho
ly Sepulchre is built around the traditional sites for Jesus’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection. The church has been an important destination for Christian pilgrimage since at least the 4th century AD and today serves as the headquarters of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.
In a show of Roman authority, the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD built a temple over Jesus’s burial cave that was dedicated to the goddess Venus. In about AD 325–326, the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, ordered the temple to be demolished and replaced by a church.
Constantine’s original church was completed in AD 336 and was topped by a magnificent golden dome. The church enclosed the traditional site of Golgotha (the site of Jesus’s crucifixion) and a rotunda containing the remains of a rock-cut hollow identified as the burial site of Jesus. According to tradition, Constantine arranged for the surrounding rock face to be hewn away from around the tomb in order to isolate and protect it. The basilica was destroyed by fire in 614.
As part of a campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine, Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church in 1009. The action was seen as a catalyst for the later Crusades. In 1028, Caliph Ali as-Zahir gave his consent for the rebuilding of the church. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099. For the next hundred years, no European Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land would be complete unless prayer was made at the altar of the Holy Sepulchre.
The crusaders began to remodel the church and added a bell tower and completed a new basilica in 1168. The church was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187. Emperor Frederick II regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century.
In subsequent centuries, the church suffered from damage and neglect. Following a fire in 1808, a new church was built by the Greek Orthodox and Armenian community. The church’s giant dome mirrors the design of Constantine’s original.
Today, the church is managed by a number of Christian factions and secular entities that control different parts of the building. Disagreements between these competing groups often spill over into violence. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk repositioned his chair from a designated position into the shade. This was interpreted as an antagonistic move by the Ethiopians, and eleven people were hospitalised after the resulting altercation. Under the current arrangements, no part of what is designated as ‘common areas’ may be so much as readjusted without the formal consent of all parties. This often leads to badly needed repairs being overlooked because of the inability of member communities to agree on the details of the repair.
Secret Fact
During the building of Constantine’s original church, his mother, Helena, is believed to have discovered three wooden crosses. Believing that one of them was in fact the True Cross, she tested each by having it held over a corpse. When the corpse rose up under one, she announced it as the True Cross.
During the crusader period, William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reported that a cistern under the former basilica was the rumoured location where Helena had found the True Cross.
PART 2:
THE PEOPLE FILES
St John the Baptist
Born: Late 1st century BC – Herodian Judea
Died: Between AD 31 and AD 36 – Machaerus, Perea
St John the Baptist is held as a major figure in the Christian gospels, the Qur’an, the Bahai faith, and Mandaeism. Further evidence outside these religious narratives that John was a real person comes from the accounts of Josephus, a well-known 1st-century Jewish historian. He is described by all sources as a zealous holy man who lived out in the wilderness.
John was a cousin of Jesus Christ and the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who themselves were devout country priests. John turned away from the priesthood in Jerusalem and instead chose to live an ascetic life separated from society. His clothing was made of camel hair, and he lived on a diet of honey and locusts.
By all accounts, he was a powerful preacher and repeatedly taught an uncompromising message of accountability before God and baptised believers. He is known as the person who first perceived Jesus as the Messiah and then baptised him in the river Jordan. In the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Christ says of John, “Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist…”
John’s martyrdom is one of the most famous and strangely intriguing accounts in the Bible. After publicly denouncing King Herod’s incestuous marriage to his niece Herodias, he is arrested and imprisoned. Herodias persuades her daughter (Herod’s grandniece) to dance before the King, and she beguiles him into granting her a favour. The infamous request was the Baptist’s head on a golden plate. Herod granted her wish and John was beheaded.
Secret Fact
While it might seem more logical for St Thomas—the patron saint of architects and builders—to be the patron saint of stonemasons too, John the Baptist and/or St John the Evangelist have been the patron saints of lodges in England and Scotland from the time of the Crusades. Significantly, the Feast of St John the Baptist was always celebrated in Europe by the Masonic lodges. When the Grand Lodge of England was created in 1717, St John the Baptist’s Day (June 24) was chosen as an auspicious day for the inauguration. Even today, every ‘blue’ or ‘craft’ lodge in the US is still dedicated with the words ‘Erected to God and dedicated to the Holy Saints John’. This practice stopped in England with the creation of the United Grand Lodge in 1813.
Traditionally, the Masonic Year used to start with the Festival of St John the Evangelist on December 27 (a few days after the Winter Solstice), with the Festival of St John the Baptist celebrated on June 24, or Midsummer’s Day (just after the summer solstice). As representatives of the solstices, the Saints John therefore represent the birth and zenith of the sun.
To underline this ancient connection with the Saints John and Freemasonry, a particular emblem is used during the ‘Entered Apprentice Degree’ of initiation. The design exhibits a point within a circle bordered by two perpendicular parallel lines representing the two Saints. In English lodges, the parallel lines are said to represent Moses and Solomon, a change to the original designation and stipulated by the United Grand Lodge of England in 1812 to eliminate any charge of religious discrimination.
Constantine the Great
Born: AD 27 February 272 – Naissus, Serbia
Died: AD 22 May 337 – Nicomedia, Turkey
Constantine the Great was Roman Emperor from AD 306 to 337. He is an important figure in the history of Christianity and is cited as the first emperor to officially embrace the religion. He was responsible for many celebrated building projects, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (on the purported site of Jesus’s tomb) in Jerusalem and Old Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The medieval church upheld him as a model of faithfulness, but Constantine was no saint, as he was responsible for the murder of his wife and son.
Constantine’s father was Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman army officer who in AD 293 became Caesar, or the deputy emperor to the Western Empire. His mother Helena, Flavius’s consort, had a profound influence on his life and later on the development of the Christian church. As a young man, Constantine was sent east to receive an education at the court of Emperor Diocletian, where he learned Latin literature, philosophy, and Greek and, after showing much promise, began to pursue a military career. He quickly rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under the emperors Diocletian and Galerius.
In 305, his father Constantius was raised to the rank of Augustus, or senior Western Emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to Britannia to join his father’s side in the campaigns against the Picts. When his father died a year later, Constantine was claimed emperor by the army at Eboracum (modern-day York).
Constantine's military skill and building projects in Britain, Gaul and Spain secured his reputation as a leader
; however, he could not completely eradicate the whiff of illegitimacy about his claim to the Western throne. Galerius’s death in AD 310 eventually brought the empire to the brink of civil war, which culminated in the famous battle of Milvian Bridge outside Rome in AD 312.
The battle lines were drawn: Constantine, the Emperor of the West on one side, and the usurper Maxentius, the Emperor of the East, on the other.
On the evening before the battle, Constantine experienced a profound spiritual experience (perhaps similar to Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus), which led him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. This experience did not represent his conversion to Christianity—he was only formally baptised on his deathbed in 333 AD—, but it impacted him deeply. The exact details surrounding the event differ between the sources, but one version of the story reports that whilst marching with his army, Constantine saw a cross of light above the sun and with it the words ‘With this sign, you will conquer’.
That night he was visited in a dream by Christ, who advised him to adopt the holy sign of the labarum—the first two letters of the Greek spelling of the word Christ, incorporating the letters Chi (X) traversed by Rho (P)—as the standard for his army. Constantine ordered the symbol to be painted on the shields and flags of his army and, under the protection of this holy sign, he won a historic victory at the Milvian Bridge crossing of the Tiber. Maxentius was drowned during the battle. Under Constantine’s orders, his body was fished out of the water and decapitated. His head was paraded through the streets of Rome for all to see.