Church of the Nativity

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Every visitor must bow to enter here, stooping through the low Door of Humility into the church that Christians have kept over the cave of Christ's birth since Justin Martyr wrote of it around the year 160. Constantine and his mother Helena consecrated the first basilica in 339, and when Justinian rebuilt it around 565 he gave the world essentially the building that stands today, the oldest Christian church in daily use, spared even by the Persian invaders of 614, who, an old account says, recognized the Magi of the facade mosaic dressed as Persians and left the church untouched. Down in the Grotto of the Nativity, a fourteen-pointed silver star bears the words Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est, here of the Virgin Mary Jesus Christ was born, while trapdoors in the floor above reveal Constantine's mosaics and Crusader paintings still color the ancient columns. Today the Church remembers Saint Jerome, who lived some thirty-five years in a cave adjoining the Grotto, translating the Scriptures into the Latin Vulgate beside the place where the Word became a child.