The Holy Fire (, "Holy Light", ) is a ceremony that occurs every year at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on Great Saturday, the day before Orthodox Easter. During the ceremony, a prayer is performed after which a fire is lit inside the aediculae where some believe the Tomb of Jesus may have been located. According to the belief, the fire emerges miraculously and is lit by the Holy Spirit. Orthodox Christians believe that this is the blessed light of resurrected Christ, who gives them comfort, joy and peace through it.
The ceremony of the Holy Fire is presided over by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem. According to the regulations governing the ceremony, the Patriarch is accompanied into the Aedicule by a representative of the Armenian Apostolic Church, while representatives of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Syriac Orthodox Church have designated positions outside the Aedicule. After the fire is lit, it is distributed to various national churches and transported to their seats, including Athens, Sofia, Moscow, Belgrade, and Bucharest. The ceremony is usually attended by priests and believers of different Christian denominations.
Description from within the Orthodox faith
Orthodox tradition holds that the Holy Fire happens annually on the day preceding Pascha (Orthodox Easter). In the past, blue light was said to emit within Jesus' tomb, rising from the marble slab covering the stone bed believed to be that upon which Jesus' body is to have been placed for burial. The marble slab is now in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. Previously, the light was believed to form a column of fire, from which candles are lit. Today, a lighter or match is used to light the candles of the clergy and pilgrims in attendance. The fire is also said to spontaneously light other lamps and candles around the church. Pilgrims and clergy say that the Holy Fire does not burn them.
Before the fire is lit, the Patriarch kneels inside the chapel in front of the stone, with crowds gathered outside. When the fire is lit, the Patriarch comes out of the church with two lit candles."Light at the Holy Sepulchre, Great Miracle Given by God, Only to the Orthodox Church", The Christian Life. 1 January – 31 March 1999 (Vol. 42 / No. 1-3) Thousands of pilgrims as well as local Christians of all denominations gather in Jerusalem to partake and witness this annual event.
The Holy Fire is taken to Greece by special flight,The Holy Fire Arrives in Athens From Jerusalem By Areti Kotseli on 14 April 2012 in News. Greek Reporter. http://greece.greekreporter.com/2012/04/14/the-holy-fire-arrives-in-athens-directly-from-jerusalem/ and similarly to other Orthodox countries or countries with major Orthodox churches, such as Jordan, Syria, Georgia, Bulgaria, Lebanon, Romania, Egypt, Cyprus, North Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, being received by church and state leaders.
History The tradition that a lamp hanging over the tomb of Christ would spontaneously be lit by a light from the heavens after nightfall on the eve of Easter Sunday dates back to the Patristic period, predating the consecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335. Eusebius (c. 260-339), a church historian native to Caesarea Palaestina, records in his Ecclesiastical History (Book VI, Chapter 9) an interesting occurrence in Jerusalem on Easter in the year 162. When the church wardens prepared to fill the lamps with oil to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, they found there was none left, so Bishop Narcissus of Jerusalem ordered the lamps be filled with water and set alight, and every single lamp burned as if filled with pure oil.Meinardus, Otto. The Ceremony of the Holy Fire in the Middle Ages and to-day. Bulletin de la Société d'Archéologie Copte, 16, 1961-2. Page 242-253 The Greek historian Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-494) also mentions the mysterious illumination of Christ's tomb in his fifth Easter homily, 'On the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.'
Around 385 AD, Egeria, a noble woman from Spain, traveled to the Holy Land. In the account of her journey, she speaks of a ceremony by the Holy Sepulchre of Christ, where a light comes forth (ejicitur) from the small chapel enclosing the tomb, by which the entire church is filled with an infinite light ().
Early Islamic period John of Damascus, who was a monk at Mar Saba, recalls in 8th century liturgical chants that Peter saw the tomb of Christ illuminated. Despite these early references, the liturgy of the Holy Fire is believed to have been first recorded by the Christian pilgrim, Bernard the Wise (Bernardus Monachus), in 867. This liturgical practice likely developed in the 8th century and evolved to form an important element of the identity expression of the local Christian community of Palestine in the wake of the Muslim conquest of Syria, which had produced some isolation from Constantinople.
Ibn al-Qass (d. 946), a Muslim scholar, provides one of the earliest detailed descriptions of the annual rite, which is preserved in the original manuscript in the National Library of Egypt. Ibn al-Qass distinguishes between two forms of light that appear during this rite, (nūr, "light") and (nār, fire), describing the former as a "white flame" that is the first to emanate from the interior of the tomb, which is locked with no one inside, while the faithful are gathered around it praying. This light, which he says does not burn, then ignites the candle carried by the Sultan into the interior of the tomb. He passes the flame from his candle to the imam, at which point it has been transformed into earthly fire, and the imam uses this to light the lamps of the mosque in Old City of Jerusalem. The timing of the light's appearance is documented in a report composed for the Sultan. If it appears while people are praying, it is interpreted as a good omen for a fertile agricultural year; and if only appearing afterward, it indicates a year of drought. Ibn al-Qass' description accords significant involvement to Muslim notables in the ceremony and indicates it was not a solely Christian ceremony at his time.
Al-Biruni (973-1050), the Persian polymath, includes a detailed description of the Holy Fire rite in his Arabic work Αl-Athar al-baqiyah ("The Chronology of Ancient Nations") that confirms several aspects of Ibn al-Qass' description, including the participation of Muslim notables, and the forecasting of the year's trajectory based on the timing of the light's appearance. A significant difference in his account concerns the way the lamps come to be lit, as they are placed on top of the sealed tomb and light spontaneously as the same white light described by Ibn al-Qass appears. He describes the imam and emir of the city as being present, sitting and waiting outside the tomb, with Muslim onlookers in the gallery, as the Christian faithful pray. He also mentions that at some point prior to his time, one (unnamed) Sultan tried to spoil the ceremony by replacing the cloth wick of the oil lamp with a copper one, but that even this could not stop the lamp from spontaneously igniting with the appearance of the white light. Al-Biruni's acceptance of the Holy Fire as a miracle is indicated by the final sentence of his passage dedicated to his description, which reads: "The coming that day of the fire from the sky, which recurs at the specific place and time, is cause for us to be in awe."
Haris Skarlakidis, whose work Holy Fire compiles Al-Biruni's description, among many other historical testaments, notes that it is likely that the Destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009, less than a decade after Al-Biruni's work was composed, was partially fuelled by a desire to put an end to the growing reverence around this ceremony, especially as it was seen as genuine and sacred by many Muslims, as well as Christians. Robert Ousterhout also contends that the caliph's actions seem to have been related to the ritual, speculating that the caliph regarded as them as "a fraud". Whatever the caliph's real views and motivations, as early as 1004, he had already banned Easter and Epiphany celebrations, and following the destruction of the Church, banned other processions, as well as continuing a campaign of destruction and confiscation affecting almost all of the convents and churches in Fatimid ruled Palestine.Robert Ousterhout, "Rebuilding the Temple: Constantine Monomachus and the Holy Sepulchre" in The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 48, No. 1 (March, 1989), pp. 66–78
Crusader period Under Baldwin I, Latin clergy had taken over the Holy Sepulchre, and according to Christopher Tyerman, the Greek clergy were restored "after the fiasco of the failure of the regular Easter miracle of the Holy Fire under Latin auspices in 1101, the annual ritual on Easter eve when Holy Fire is supposed to descend from heaven to light the priests' candles in the edicule of the Holy Sepulchre. The newcomers evidently had not learnt the knack."
Nevertheless, other sources describe that the Holy Fire appeared in the holy grave on Sunday (Easter day), when the Latin archbishop Daimbert was not in Holy Sepulchre and processing was carried over by Greeks and other Orthodox Christians. The holy grave was closed during this period by Daimbert.
Ottoman period In 1834, in the presence of governor Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, the frantic pilgrims in the smoke-filled and overcrowded church created a stampede, aggravated by the guards of the pasha, who cut their way out through the masses. Four hundred lost their lives according to an eyewitness, according to the words of English Near East traveller, Robert Curzon.Sebag Montefiore, Simon (2011). Jerusalem: The Biography, chapter The Albanian Conquest 1830–40: Ibrahim the Red. Accessed 15 April 2023.Igniting Holy Fires, David Rapp for Haaretz, 29 April 2005. Accessed 15 April 2023.
Modern period The ceremony was marred in 2002 when a disagreement between the Greek Patriarch and the accompanying Armenian bishop over who should emerge first with the Holy Fire led to a struggle between the factions. In the course of the scuffle, the Greek Patriarch twice blew the Armenian's candle out, while the Greek Patriarch was despoiled of one of his shoes. In the end the Israeli Police entered the premises to restore order.
Criticism and opposition In 1238, Pope Gregory IX denounced the Holy Fire as a fraud and forbade Franciscans from participating in the ceremony. Similarly, many Christians have remained unconvinced by the occurrence. According to Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi, the 13th-century Ayyubid ruler Al-Muazzam Turanshah (r. 1249–1250) is mentioned as having discovered the fraudulence of the Holy Fire; however, he allowed the monks to continue their fraud in exchange for money. The Ottoman traveller, Evliya Çelebi (1611–1682), said that a hidden zinc jar of naphtha was dripped down a chain by a hidden monk.Jerusalem: The Biography, page 305, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2011. Edward Gibbon (1737–1794), wrote scathingly about the alleged phenomenon in the concluding volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth century, was devoutly cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is annually repeated by the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and Coptic sects, who impose on the credulous spectators for their own benefit and that of their tyrants.Edward Gibbon. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. VI. Chapter LVII. Everyman's Library. p. 34.
Thomas Tegg, a 19th-century Englishman, included an account of the event in The London Encyclopaedia, published in 1828, speculating that the event is purely natural and motivated by pecuniary interest.Thomas Tegg (1829). London Encyclopaedia Volume 16, page 449, in the article on Palestine. N. Hailes.