ABSTRACT
On 15 July 1149, Frankish Jerusalem celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its liberation in 1099 with the dedication of the new church of the Holy Sepulchre. A commemorative inscription in verse was painted in gold letters above one of the arches leading to the Golgotha chapel, to the right of those entering through the main twin-gates from the south. It has been partially preserved in three copies: those made by John of Würzburg 1 and Theoderic 2 within two decades of the dedication, and by Quaresmius in 1626, though by that time its text had already become "almost obliterated, and what remains is unintelligible." 3 Quaresmius's copy, although inferior to those made by John of Würzburg and Theoderic, is nonetheless useful byway of a control for the two earlier copies and as a basis for the reconstruction of the inscription's final part, omitted by his two forerunners. Textual reconstructions are, by definition, somewhat speculative, but Quaresmius's readings have significantly reduced the purely speculative element in the reconstructions proposed by students of this inscription. 4
