Besides the cavern of Bethlehem of which I
shall speak presently, is the cavern of St. Jerome, where he lived
with that real or legendary lion who was drawn by the delicate
humour of Carpaccio and a hundred other religious painters.
That it should appear in Christian art is natural; that it should
appear in Moslem art is much more singular, seeing that Moslems
are in theory forbidden so to carve images of living things.
Some say the Persian Moslems are less particular; but whatever
the explanation, two lions of highly heraldic appearance are carved
over that Saracen gate which Christians call the gate of St. Stephen;
and the best judges seem to agree that, like so much of the Saracenic
shell of Zion, they were partly at least copied from the shields
and crests of the Crusaders.
And the lions graven over the gate of St. Stephen might well be
the text for a whole book on the subject. For if they indicate,
however indirectly, the presence of the Latins of the twelfth century,
they also indicate the earlier sources from which the Latin life had
itself been drawn. The two lions are pacing, passant as the heralds
would say, in two opposite directions almost as if prowling to and fro.
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