ABSTRACT
The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem, revered by untold generations of pilgrims as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, has had a tumultuous history. The Caliph promised the Patriarch Sophronius to protect the church and, with occasional lapses, subsequent Muslim rulers mostly kept that promise. Even fanatical Egyptian Caliph al-Hakim, who destroyed the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1004, did not touch the Church of the Nativity. The Crusader period was crucial for the Nativity Church. Before the arrival of the Crusaders the Royal Church of Byzantium possessed praedominium or primacy at the Holy Places, as it had had since the pilgrimage of Queen Helena. Under the new Turkish dispensation marble was openly removed from the church for the decoration of Muslim buildings, including the Haram es-Sharif in Jerusalem. The Greeks now resorted to violence. On the night of April 2526, 1873, Greek monks, backed by a detachment of Greek marines on pilgrimage to the Holy Places, entered the grotto.
