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65-400: "Campo Santo" can be literally translated as "holy field", because it is said to have been built around a shipload of sacred soil from Golgotha , brought back to Pisa from the Third Crusade by Ubaldo Lanfranchi , archbishop of Pisa in the 12th century. A legend claims that bodies buried in that ground will rot in just 24 hours. The burial ground lies over the ruins of the old baptistery of

130-484: A basilica, that is to say, a church of wondrous beauty", Cyril of Jerusalem , a distinguished theologian of the early Church, and eyewitness to the early days of Constantine's edifice, speaks of Golgotha in eight separate passages, sometimes as near to the church where he and his listeners assembled: "Golgotha, the holy hill standing above us here, bears witness to our sight: the Holy Sepulchre bears witness, and

195-684: A chapel in her honor in Assisi at the Basilica of Saint Francis (an attribution rejected by later scholars), and several prominent commissions at various abbeys and convents in Pisa . Vasari does not attribute the famed Pisan frescoes now associated with Buonamico to the painter, but rather, credits him with four frescoes preserved in the Campo Santo, depicting the Biblical narrative on the creation of

260-716: A city according to a Hippodamian grid plan  – a north–south arterial road , the Cardo (which is now the Suq Khan-ez-Zeit), and an east–west arterial road, the Decumanus Maximus (which is now the Via Dolorosa ). The forum would traditionally be located on the intersection of the two roads, with the main temples adjacent. However, due to the obstruction posed by the Temple Mount, as well as

325-529: A collection of Roman and Etruscan sculptures and urns, now in the Museum of the vestry board. The sarcophagi were initially all around the cathedral, often attached to the building itself until the cemetery was built. They were then collected in the middle all over the meadow. In the years he was the curator of the Campo Santo, Carlo Lasinio collected many other ancient relics that were spread in Pisa to make

390-572: A few years after the spread of the Black Death (1348–1353). Giovanni Boccaccio in his Decameron and Franco Sacchetti in his Il trecentonovelle both describe Buonamico Buffalmacco as being a practical joker. Boccaccio features Buonamico along with his friends and fellow painters Calandrino and Bruno in several tales (Day VIII, tales 3, 6, and 9; Day IX, tales 3 and 5) . Typically in these stories, Buonamico uses his wits to play tricks on his friends and associates: convincing Calandrino that

455-685: A little dome . In this chapel in 2009 were translated the relics of the cathedral: the relics include among the others eleven of the twelve Apostles , two fragments of the True Cross , a thorn from the Crown of Thorns of Christ and a small piece of the dress of the Virgin Mary. Also in the Dal Pozzo chapel sometimes a Mass is celebrated. The Campo Santo contained a huge collection of Roman sarcophagi , but there are only 84 left together with

520-629: A location about 175 m (574 ft) to its south-southeast. The English names Calvary and Golgotha derive from the Vulgate Latin Calvariae , Calvariae locus and locum (all meaning "place of the Skull" or "a Skull"), and Golgotha used by Jerome in his translations of Matthew 27 :33, Mark 15 :22, Luke 23 :33, and John 19 :17. Versions of these names have been used in English since at least

585-434: A proposal that the rocky knoll north of Damascus Gate was the biblical Golgotha . He relied heavily on the research of Edward Robinson . In 1882–83, Major-General Charles George Gordon endorsed this view; subsequently the site has sometimes been known as Gordon's Calvary . The location, usually referred to today as Skull Hill , is beneath a cliff that contains two large sunken holes, which Gordon regarded as resembling

650-653: A site said to have been recognized by the Roman empress Helena , mother of Constantine the Great , during her visit to the Holy Land in 325. Other locations have been suggested: in the 19th century, Protestant scholars proposed a different location near the Garden Tomb on Green Hill (now "Skull Hill") about 500 m (1,600 ft) north of the traditional site and historian Joan Taylor has more recently proposed

715-470: A sort of archeological museum inside the cemetery. At present, the sarcophagi are inside the galleries, near the walls. The walls of the vast structure were covered in over 2600 meters squared of frescoes , a greater expanse than the Sistine Chapel. The earliest, attributed to Francesco Traini, were painted 1336/41 in the south-western corner. The Last Judgement , Hell , Triumph of Death , and

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780-454: A stone he possesses ( heliotrope ) confers invisibility (VIII, 3), stealing a pig from Calandrino (VIII, 6), convincing the physician Master Simone of an opportunity to ally himself with the Devil (VIII, 9), convincing Calandrino that he has become pregnant (IX, 3), convincing Calandrino that a particular scroll can cause a woman to fall in love with him (IX, 5). Throughout the stories, Buonamico

845-612: A teacher in the University of Pisa ; and the chapel Aulla, were there is an altar made by Giovanni della Robbia in 1518. In the Aulla chapel we can see also the original incense lamp that Galileo Galilei used for calculation of pendular movements. This lamp is the one Galileo saw inside the cathedral, now replaced by a larger more elaborate one. The last chapel was Dal Pozzo , commissioned by archbishop of Pisa Carlo Antonio Dal Pozzo in 1594; it has an altar dedicated to St. Jerome and

910-470: Is actually closer to Aramaic Golgolta , which also appears in reference to a head count in the Samaritan version of Numbers 1 :18, although the term is traditionally considered to derive from Syriac Gāgūlṯā ( ܓܓܘܠܬܐ ) instead. Although Latin calvaria can mean either "a skull" or "the skull" depending on context and numerous English translations render the relevant passages " place of

975-438: Is certainly evidence that c.  160 , at least as early as 30 years after Hadrian's temple had been built, Christians associated it with the site of Golgotha ; Melito of Sardis , an influential mid-2nd century bishop in the region, described the location as "in the middle of the street, in the middle of the city", which matches the position of Hadrian's temple within the mid-2nd century city. The Romans typically built

1040-761: Is frequently depicted at work painting in the houses of notable gentlemen in Florence but eager to take time to eat, drink, and be merry. Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari included a biography of Buonamico Buffalmacco in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1550–1568), in which he tells several anecdotes about his comic escapades. Vasari tells of Buonamico's youthful tricking of his master Tafi during his apprenticeship, various pranks and tricks that Buonamico played on his patrons , and his habit of embedding texts within his paintings. Dismissed by Vasari as just another of

1105-535: The 10th century , a tradition shared with most European languages including French ( Calvaire ), Spanish and Italian ( Calvario ), pre- Lutheran German ( Calvarie ), Polish ( Kalwaria ), and Lithuanian ( Kalvarijos ). The 1611 King James Version borrowed the Latin forms directly, while Wycliffe and other translators anglicized them in forms like Caluarie , Caluerie , and Calueri which were later standardized as Calvary . While

1170-463: The Calvary Chapel by the art historian George Lavas and architect Theo Mitropoulos, a round slot of 11.5 cm (4.5 in) diameter was discovered in the rock, partly open on one side (Lavas attributes the open side to accidental damage during his repairs); although the dating of the slot is uncertain, and could date to Hadrian's temple of Aphrodite, Lavas suggested that it could have been

1235-570: The Gospels merely identify Golgotha as a "place", Christian tradition has described the location as a hill or mountain since at least the 6th century. It has thus often been referenced as Mount Calvary in English hymns and literature . In the 1769 King James Version , the relevant verses of the New Testament are: In the standard Koine Greek texts of the New Testament ,

1300-598: The Stories of Job , by Taddeo Gaddi (end of 14th century). In the same time, in the north gallery were the Stories of the Genesis by Piero di Puccio . The last images date from the early 17th century. On 27 July 1944, a bomb fragment from an Allied raid started a fire in the Camposanto, which burned for three days, causing the timber lead roof to collapse. The destruction of the roof severely damaged everything inside

1365-760: The Tenth Legion encampment on the Western Hill, Hadrian's city had two Cardo , two Decumanus Maximus , two forums, and several temples. The Western Forum (now the Muristan ) is located on the crossroads of the West Cardo and what is now El-Bazar/David Street, with the Temple of Aphrodite adjacent, on the intersection of the Western Cardo and the Via Dolorosa . The Northern Forum is located north of

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1430-662: The Thebaid (stories of the Desert Fathers) , usually attributed to Buonamico di Martino da Firenze, detto il Buffalmacco , were painted in the years after the Black Death. The cycle of frescoes continues with the Stories of the Old Testament by Benozzo Gozzoli (15th century) that were situated in the north gallery, while in the south arcade were the Stories of Pisan Saints , by Andrea Bonaiuti , Antonio Veneziano and Spinello Aretino (between 1377 and 1391), and

1495-405: The basilica church Constantine built over the remainder of the enclosure was destroyed at the turn of the 11th century, and has not been replaced. Christian tradition claims that the location had originally been a Christian place of veneration, but that Hadrian had deliberately buried these Christian sites and built his own temple on top, on account of his alleged hatred for Christianity. There

1560-412: The 14th century by a follower of Giovanni Pisano . This was the original entrance door. Most of the tombs are under the arcades, although a few are on the central lawn. The inner court is surrounded by elaborate round arches with slender mullions and plurilobed tracery . The cemetery has three chapels. The oldest ones are the chapel Ammannati (1360) and takes its name from the tomb of Ligo Ammannati ,

1625-413: The 7th century BC and that the site may have been abandoned by the 1st century. Eusebius comments that Golgotha was in his day (the 4th century) pointed out north of Mount Zion . While Mount Zion was used previously in reference to the Temple Mount itself, Josephus , the first-century AD historian who knew the city as it was before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem , identified Mount Zion as being

1690-540: The Great , in 325. Less than 45 meters (150 ft) away, Helena also identified the location of the tomb of Jesus and claimed to have discovered the True Cross ; her son, Constantine, then built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre around the whole site. In 333, the author of the Itinerarium Burdigalense , entering from the east, described the result: On the left hand is the little hill of Golgotha where

1755-552: The Holy Sepulchre . This places it well within today's walls of Jerusalem , which surround the Old City and were rebuilt in the 16th century by the Ottoman Empire . Proponents of the traditional Holy Sepulchre location point to the fact that first-century Jerusalem had a different shape and size from the 16th-century city, leaving the church's site outside the pre-AD 70 city walls. Those opposing it doubt this. Defenders of

1820-455: The Holy Sepulchre and under the nearby Muristan , it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white Meleke limestone was struck; surviving parts of the quarry to the north-east of the chapel of St. Helena are now accessible from within the chapel (by permission). Inside the church is a rock, about 7 m long by 3 m wide by 4.8 m high, that is traditionally believed to be all that now remains visible of Golgotha ;

1885-543: The Lord was crucified. About a stone's throw from thence is a vault [crypta] wherein his body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica ; that is to say, a church of wondrous beauty. Various archeologists have proposed alternative sites within the Church as locations of the crucifixion. Nazénie Garibian de Vartavan argued that

1950-700: The Temple Mount, on the junction of the Via Dolorosa and the Eastern Cardo (the Tyropoeon ), adjacent to the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus , intentionally built atop the Temple Mount. Another popular holy site that Hadrian converted to a pagan temple was the Pool of Bethesda , possibly referenced to in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John, on which was built the Temple of Asclepius and Serapis . While

2015-401: The Temple of Aphrodite was still present, of a ship, a common early Christian symbol and the etching "DOMINVS IVIMVS", meaning "Lord, we went", lending possible support to the statement by Melito of Sardis' asserting that early Christians identified Golgotha as being in the middle of Hadrian's city, rather than outside. During 1973–1978 restoration works and excavations inside the Church of

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2080-482: The Western Hill (the current Mount Zion), which is south of both the Garden Tomb and the Holy Sepulchre. Eusebius' comment therefore offers no additional argument for either location. 31°46′43″N 35°13′46″E  /  31.77861°N 35.22944°E  / 31.77861; 35.22944 Buonamico Buffalmacco Buonamico di Martino , otherwise known as Buonamico Buffalmacco (active c. 1315–1336),

2145-677: The ambient temperature every 10 minutes, thus preventing condensation. The restoration campaign concluded with the reinstallation of part of the Buffalmacco cycle in 2005; the Thebaid frescoes in 2014; Hell in 2015; the Last Judgement in 2017; and the Triumph of Death in July 2018. Golgotha Calvary ( Latin : Calvariae or Calvariae locus ) or Golgotha ( Biblical Greek : Γολγοθᾶ , romanized:  Golgothâ )

2210-455: The cemetery, destroying most of the sculptures and sarcophagi and compromising all the frescoes. An initial effort to rescue the frescoes was organized by Deane Keller of the U.S. Army's Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program . Pieces of the frescoes were salvaged and a temporary roof was erected to prevent further damage. After World War II , restoration work began. The roof was restored as closely as possible to its pre-war appearance and

2275-514: The church of Santa Reparata, the church that once stood where the cathedral now stands. The term "monumental" serves to differentiate it from the later-established urban cemetery in Pisa. The building was the fourth and last one to be raised in the Cathedral Square. It dates from a century after the bringing of the soil from Golgotha, and was erected over the earlier burial ground. The construction of this huge, oblong Gothic cloister

2340-540: The church on the site. The height of the Golgotha rock itself would have caused it to jut through the platform level of the Aphrodite temple, where it would be clearly visible. The reason for Hadrian not cutting the rock down is uncertain, but Virgilio Corbo suggested that a statue, probably of Aphrodite, was placed on it, a suggestion also made by Jerome . Some archaeologists have suggested that prior to Hadrian's use,

2405-619: The crucifixion site involves identifying a site that, in the city of Jerusalem some four decades before its destruction in AD   70, would have been outside a major gate near enough to the city that the passers-by could not only see him, but also read the inscription 'Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews'. Christian tradition since the fourth century has favoured a location now within the Church of

2470-403: The design of the church means that the Calvary Chapel contains the upper foot or so of the rock, while the remainder is in the chapel beneath it (known as the tomb of Adam ). Virgilio Corbo , a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, present at the excavations, suggested that from the city the little hill (which still exists) could have looked like a skull. During a 1986 repair to the floor of

2535-400: The eyes of a skull. He and a few others before him believed that the skull-like appearance would have caused the location to be known as Golgotha. Nearby is an ancient rock-cut tomb known today as the Garden Tomb , which Gordon proposed as the tomb of Jesus. The Garden Tomb contains several ancient burial places, although the archaeologist Gabriel Barkay has proposed that the tomb dates to

2600-513: The frescoes were separated from the walls to be restored and displayed elsewhere. Once the frescoes had been removed, the preliminary drawings, called sinopie were also removed. These under-drawings were separated using the same technique used on the frescoes and now they are in the Museum of the Sinopie, on the opposite side of the Square. The adhesivity of the casein glue initially used to fix

2665-658: The lives of the Desert Fathers ). Painted some ten years before the Black Death spread over medieval Europe in 1348, the cycle enjoyed an extraordinary success after that date, and was often imitated throughout Italy during the Renaissance . The youngsters' party enjoying themselves in a beautiful garden while Death piles mounds of corpses all around is likely to have inspired the setting of Giovanni Boccaccio 's literary masterpiece The Decameron , written

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2730-547: The medicine for all pain, come to give us our last supper". In the Trionfo della Morte ("Triumph of Death"), a group of leisurely young aristocrats and their animals occupy the central part of the fresco. These rich young men and women riding horses, surrounded by their decorative hunting dogs, have gone on a pleasant journey. But suddenly, their path, somewhere deep in the wood, is barred by three open coffins with corpses in different degrees of decomposition . Everybody in

2795-633: The name and its origin. Jerome considered it a place of execution by beheading ( locum decollatorum ), Pseudo-Tertullian describes it as a place resembling a head, and Origen associated it with legends concerning the skull of Adam . This buried skull of Adam appears in noncanonical medieval legends, including the Book of the Rolls , the Conflict of Adam and Eve with Satan , the Cave of Treasures , and

2860-470: The now-buried Constantinian basilica’s altar was built over the site. Prior to Helena's identification, the site had been a temple to Aphrodite . Constantine's construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure, and the Rotunda and cloister (which was replaced after the 12th century by the present Catholicon and Calvary chapel ) roughly overlap with the temple building itself;

2925-526: The old city, they "incidentally confirm[ed] the bringing of Golgotha inside a new town wall." In 2007 Dan Bahat , the former City Archaeologist of Jerusalem and Professor of Land of Israel Studies at Bar-Ilan University , stated that "Six graves from the first century were found on the area of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. That means, this place [was] outside of the city, without any doubt…". The traditional location of Golgotha derives from its identification by Queen Mother Helena , mother of Constantine

2990-411: The paint layers to wooden supports, failed after mold penetrated the glue. This required the ungluing, transferring again, and re-affixing of all the paintings to new supports. To prevent intramural condensation from seeping into the panels, an elaborate system of sensors woven into a synthetic fabric was placed between wall and panel. These sensors adjust the temperature of the wall to within 3 degrees of

3055-508: The place had actually been known as "Gol Goatha"—which he interpreted to mean "heap of death" or "hill of execution"—and had become associated with the similar sounding Semitic words for "skull" in folk etymologies . James Fergusson identified this "Goatha" with the Goʿah ( גֹּעָה ) mentioned in Jeremiah 31 :39 as a place near Jerusalem, although Krafft himself identified that location with

3120-462: The positioning of the Temple of Aphrodite may be, in light of the common Colonia layout, entirely unintentional, Hadrian is known to have concurrently built pagan temples on top of other holy sites in Jerusalem as part of an overall " Romanization " policy. Archaeological excavations under the Church of the Holy Sepulchre have revealed Christian pilgrims' graffiti, dating from the period that

3185-464: The relevant terms appear as Golgothâ ( Γολγοθᾶ ), Golgathân ( Γολγοθᾶν ), kraníou tópos ( κρανίου τόπος ), Kraníou tópos ( Κρανίου τόπος ), Kraníon ( Κρανίον ), and Kraníou tópon ( Κρανίου τόπον ). Golgotha's Hebrew equivalent would be Gulgōleṯ ( גֻּלְגֹּלֶת , "skull"), ultimately from the verb galal ( גלל ) meaning "to roll". The form preserved in the Greek text, however,

3250-476: The rock outcrop had been a nefesh – a Jewish funeral monument, equivalent to the stele . The Itinerarium Burdigalense speaks of Golgotha in 333: "... On the left hand is the little hill of Golgotha where the Lord was crucified. About a stone's throw from thence is a vault (crypta) wherein His body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built

3315-513: The rock. Based on the late 20th century excavations of the site, there have been a number of attempted reconstructions of the profile of the cliff face. These often attempt to show the site as it would have appeared to Constantine. However, as the ground level in Roman times was about 4–5 feet (1.2–1.5 m) lower and the site housed Hadrian's temple to Aphrodite, much of the surrounding rocky slope must have been removed long before Constantine built

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3380-445: The scene including men, women, and even the animals are horrified by this terrible and palpable presence of Death . The unsupportable stench hits their noses and the abhorring scene of cruel truth dismays them. The elder monk standing above them teaches the youngsters a lesson about life and death by reading from a scroll. Vasari discusses various paintings by the artist which no longer exist, and many of which had already perished by

3445-469: The separate Gennáth ( Γεννάθ ) of Josephus , the "Garden Gate" west of the Temple Mount . There is no consensus as to the location of the site. John 19:20 describes the crucifixion site as being "near the city". According to Hebrews 13:12 , it was "outside the city gate". Matthew 27:39 and Mark 15:29 both note that the location would have been accessible to "passers-by". Thus, locating

3510-458: The site of the crucifixion, as it would be strong enough to hold in place a wooden trunk of up to 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) in height (among other things). The same restoration work also revealed a crack running across the surface of the rock, which continues down to the Chapel of Adam ; the crack is thought by archaeologists to have been a result of the quarry workmen encountering a flaw in

3575-404: The skull " or "Place of the Skull", the Greek forms of the name grammatically refer to the place of a skull and a place named Skull. (The Greek word κρᾱνῐ́ον does more specifically mean the cranium , the upper part of the skull, but it has been used metonymously since antiquity to refer to skulls and heads more generally.) The Fathers of the Church offered various interpretations of

3640-583: The stone which lies there to this day." And just in such a way the pilgrim Egeria often reported in 383: "… the church, built by Constantine, which is situated in Golgotha…" and also bishop Eucherius of Lyon wrote to the island presbyter Faustus in 440: "Golgotha is in the middle between the Anastasis and the Martyrium, the place of the Lord's passion, in which still appears that rock which once endured

3705-577: The time of Vasari's writing in the 16th century. He describes a series of paintings at the convent of Faenza in Florence (already destroyed by the 16th century), works for the abbey of Settimo (now also lost), tempera paintings for the monks of the abbey of Certosa (also in Florence), and frescoes in the Badia at Florence. He describes a series of paintings depicting the life of Saint Catherine of Siena in

3770-400: The traditional site have argued that the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was only brought within the city limits by Herod Agrippa (41–44), who built the so-called Third Wall around a newly settled northern district, while at the time of Jesus' crucifixion around AD 30 it would still have been just outside the city. Henry Chadwick (2003) argued that when Hadrian's builders replanned

3835-406: The very cross on which the Lord was." Breviarius de Hierosolyma reports in 530: "From there (the middle of the basilica), you enter into Golgotha, where there is a large court. Here the Lord was crucified. All around that hill, there are silver screens." (See also: Eusebius in 338. ) In 1842, Otto Thenius , a theologian and biblical scholar from Dresden , Germany , was the first to publish

3900-504: The witty painter's gags, which his "clumsy" contemporaries had misunderstood and foolishly imitated, the frescoes located in the Campo Santo of Pisa are actually scattered with texts, a possible indication of the veracity of Vasari's remark. In the scroll over the cripple beggars in the center of the Trionfo della Morte ("Triumph of Death"), for instance, it's written: "Since prosperity has completely deserted us, O Death, you who are

3965-548: The works of Eutychius , the 9th-century patriarch of Alexandria. The usual form of the legend is that Shem and Melchizedek retrieved the body of Adam from the resting place of Noah 's ark on Mount Ararat and were led by angels to Golgotha, a skull-shaped hill at the center of the earth where Adam had previously crushed the serpent's head following the Fall of Man . In the 19th century, Wilhelm Ludwig Krafft proposed an alternative derivation of these names, suggesting that

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4030-409: Was a site immediately outside Jerusalem 's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified . Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage . The exact location of Calvary has been traditionally associated with a place now enclosed within one of the southern chapels of the multidenominational Church of the Holy Sepulchre ,

4095-628: Was an Italian Renaissance painter who worked in Florence , Bologna , and Pisa . Although none of his known work has survived, he is widely assumed to be the painter of a most influential fresco cycle preserved in the Campo Santo of Pisa, featuring The Three Dead and the Three Living , the Triumph of Death , the Last Judgement , the Hell , and the Thebais (several episodes from

4160-415: Was begun in 1278 by the architect Giovanni di Simone . He died in 1284 when Pisa suffered a defeat in the naval battle of Meloria against the Genoans . The cemetery was only completed in 1464. It seems that the building was not meant to be a real cemetery, but a church called Santissima Trinità (Most Holy Trinity ), but the project changed during the construction. However we know that the original part

4225-417: Was the western one (and this should be, at least for a while, the mentioned church), and all the eastern part was the last to be built, finally closing the structure. The outer wall is composed of 43 blind arches . There are two doorways. The one on the right is crowned by a gracious Gothic tabernacle . It contains the Virgin Mary with Child, surrounded by four saints. It is the work from the second half of

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