Infidels_ A History of the Conflict Between Christendom and Islam - Andrew Wheatcroft [39]
However, I also questioned how reliable either interpretation was as evidence of general oppression. Mary Eliza Rogers lived in Palestine during the 1850s. She described many Christian churches in great detail, but never referred to these architectural symbols of oppression, nor once alluded to Christians bending double to enter their places of worship. Were there other interpretations that did not signify oppression? In Christian Europe, church doors came in all shapes and sizes. Large and heavy doors often contain a smaller portal that is used daily, while the great doors are thrown open only on holy days and festivals. Many European churches also have small and narrow secondary entrances. So which interpretation is correct? Was it official tyranny, designed to humiliate Christians? Was it a Christian response to a distasteful problem? Or could it have been only a rhetorical device, a metaphor presented in the guise of fact, a graphic means to express the quality of “Turkish toleration”? We cannot know. Perhaps the consul just wanted a convenient emblem of oppression for the “bad old days” of the 1840s.
However, there is one specific door that might have been the archetype for these stories. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built by Justinian in 529, originally had three great doors in its western façade. But the history of the building reveals how it changed over the centuries:
The main access to the Basilica is by the very small Door of Humility (78 cm in width and 130 cm in height, 2.3 by 4.3 feet). Visitors must enter bending over, as if to a real cave. Originally the church had three entrances, two of which have been bricked up. They are hidden respectively by a buttress built later (after the 16th century) and by the Armenian buildings. The central and highest portal of Justinian’s church door was reshaped by the Crusaders. This resulted in a pointed arch which is still visible today with the cornice of the Justinian entrance which can be seen above. The present small entrance was made during the Ottoman era to prevent mounted horsemen from entering the Basilica.45
All the modern accounts repeat this story, with the Ottomans stabling their horses on the holy ground.46 But there the trail peters out. There is no agreement as to precisely when or why this sacrilege happened. Moreover, there is no sense that other sites of equal importance, such as the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, were subjected to the same treatment. So which story is right: horses, or humiliation? Or was the door in Bethlehem reduced in size for structural reasons, which might account for the changes made in the era of the Crusaders? Certainly, the low portal made no symbolic impression on Mary Rogers when she visited the Church of the Nativity. “We passed under a deep arched way” was the matter-of-fact way she described her entry through the Door of Humility.47
These tales, and others like them, should always, I suggest, be interpreted with care. Undoubtedly, over the centuries, linking “Islam’s rule” with the image of a low and narrow church portal generated ideas of Christian humiliation. This, Westerners were expected to infer, was how Muslims always behaved toward Christians. Yet changing the context alters the meaning. The same narrow door, in a Christian land, would have a quite different significance. Then it might become a metaphor for the path to salvation, recalling the words of Christ “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.”48
This paradox reminded me of Lacan’s graphic example of how meaning was created, conveyed, and perceived. He first drew two identical doors side by side. Neither had any special significance until he wrote the word “Men” above one and “Women” above the other. Then