The Church of the Nativity rises in Bethlehem above a grotto that Christian tradition has venerated, since the 2nd century at least, as the place where "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14). Beneath the choir of the church, a stairway descends to a low cavern, hung with tapestries, lit by lamps: on the floor, a fourteen-pointed silver star bears this Latin inscription — "Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est", "Here, of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ was born".[1]
No other Christian sanctuary holds together, as this one does, two things so disproportionate: the smallness of the manger and the majesty of God made man. In Jerusalem, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre guards the tomb from which Christ rose; in Rome, St Peter's Basilica covers the tomb of the apostle. Here, ten kilometres south of Jerusalem, it is the beginning of the mystery that is adored: not a sepulchre, but a manger; not the glorious end, but God's silent entry into the world.
The Church of the Nativity is also one of the oldest churches still in continuous use in all of Christendom. The building visitors enter was never razed: behind the alterations, it is still Justinian's basilica, built in the 6th century on Constantine's foundations, that stands. Fifteen centuries of pilgrimages, battles and millimetre-precise confessional sharing have never managed to interrupt prayer above the grotto.
This article presents the sanctuary as it is: why Bethlehem, why a grotto, how the memory of the place crossed the centuries, what pilgrims see there today, the singular regime that governs it — and the spiritual meaning of a cavern that Christians venerate precisely because God chose to be small there.
Why Bethlehem? The city of David and the "house of bread"
"And you, Bethlehem": the prophecy of Micah
The choice of Bethlehem is no accident of history: it fulfils a prophecy. Seven centuries before Christ, the prophet Micah announced that the Messiah would be born in this small town of Judah, and not in the capital:
"And you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, the least of the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to govern Israel. His origins go back to ancient times, to days of old." — Micah 5:1[2]
When the Magi ask Herod "where the Christ is to be born", it is the scribes themselves who quote this verse in reply: "in Bethlehem of Judea" (Matthew 2:5-6).[3] Matthew's Gospel makes the birth at Bethlehem the explicit fulfilment of Micah's oracle. Saint Luke, for his part, connects the coming of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem with the census of Emperor Augustus, which required everyone to be registered in the town of his family: Joseph, "being of the house and lineage of David", went up from Nazareth to Bethlehem, "the city of David" (Luke 2:1-5).[4]
The city of David
Bethlehem is first of all the city of David. It is there that the shepherd was anointed king by Samuel (1 Samuel 16), there that Boaz married Ruth the Moabite, ancestress of David. The birth of the Messiah "son of David" in David's city closes a long history: the expected King is born in the cradle of the royal dynasty, but stripped of all pomp, in a stable.
A documentary tradition reports that a palace of David is said to have stood at Bethlehem, later called Birath-Arba, "the old palace of the king", fallen into ruins after the departure into captivity: Jean-François Lavère relays it from ancient authors, as part of his enquiry into a mention of a tower of David at Bethlehem in Maria Valtorta; these ancient sources remain to be audited, and no archaeological proof can be made of it.[5]
Beth-Lehem, the "house of bread"
The very name of the town carries a meaning the Fathers of the Church did not fail to note. In Hebrew, Beth-Lehem means "house of bread". That the living Bread come down from heaven (John 6:51) should be born in the "house of bread", and laid in a manger — the place where animals come to take their food — appeared very early as a sign of the Eucharist to come.[6] The manger of Bethlehem announces the altar: at Bethlehem, God makes himself the food of men. This thread linking the manger to the Real Eucharistic Presence runs through the whole spiritual reading of the sanctuary.
Why a grotto? The oldest Christian testimony
The manger, the grotto and the Gospel
Saint Luke says only that Mary "gave birth to her firstborn son; she wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the common room" (Luke 2:7).[7] The Gospel does not explicitly speak of a grotto. But in the Judea of that time, houses were often built against rocky cavities serving as stable or storeroom, and the tradition of Bethlehem has always located the birth in a grotto sheltering the manger.
This tradition is not late. It is attested by witnesses of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, long before Constantine built anything.
Justin and Origen: the memory of a place
Around 155-160, Saint Justin, philosopher and martyr born in Nablus in Samaria — a few dozen kilometres from Bethlehem — writes in his Dialogue with Trypho that Joseph, finding no lodging,
"lodged in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there, Mary gave birth to Christ and laid him in a manger." — Saint Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, 78[8]
A century later, around 248, Origen testifies that the grotto was publicly shown to visitors, and known even to non-Christians:
"At Bethlehem they show the cave where he was born, and, in the cave, the manger where he was wrapped in swaddling clothes; and what is shown there is famous in those parts, even among strangers to the faith: in this cave, they say, was born that Jesus who is worshipped and revered by Christians." — Origen, Against Celsus, I, 51[9]
The Protoevangelium of James, a 2nd-century apocryphal writing, likewise places the birth in a grotto.[10] Three independent sources, over three generations, converge: even before the peace of the Church, the Christians of Palestine pointed to one precise grotto at Bethlehem. It is an argument of continuity comparable to that of the Holy Sepulchre: the memory of the place long predates its monumentalisation.
Hadrian, the grove of Adonis and the preserved memory
As in Jerusalem, it is paradoxically a pagan profanation that sealed the memory of the place. After the Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135), Emperor Hadrian dotted Judea with pagan cults to erase Jewish and Christian memory. Saint Jerome, who lived on the spot, reports that a sacred grove of Tammuz-Adonis was planted above the Grotto of the Nativity:
"Bethlehem, now ours... was overshadowed by a grove of Tammuz, that is, of Adonis; and in the cave where once the infant Christ wailed, they bewailed the lover of Venus." — Saint Jerome, Letter 58 to Paulinus, 3[11]
Far from effacing the place, the pagan cult marked it with a landmark: for two centuries, Christians knew exactly where, beneath the grove of Adonis, the memory of the manger was prayed over. When Constantine wished to honour the place, clearing it would suffice.
The basilica of Constantine (326-339)
Helena, Constantine and the Holy Land programme
After the Council of Nicaea (325), Emperor Constantine and his mother Saint Helena undertook to endow the great holy places of Palestine with monumental basilicas. The programme was threefold: the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, the Eleona on the Mount of Olives, and the Nativity at Bethlehem. Eusebius of Caesarea, a contemporary, attributes to Helena the foundation of the church of Bethlehem "in memory of the birth of the Saviour".[12]
The Constantinian basilica was dedicated on 31 May 339.[13] As early as 333, the Pilgrim of Bordeaux — the oldest preserved Christian pilgrimage itinerary — already notes at Bethlehem "a basilica built by order of Constantine".[14] Half a century later, the pilgrim Egeria would describe the Nativity vigils celebrated in the grotto with a considerable crowd.[15]
The octagon above the grotto
Excavations conducted by the archaeologist William Harvey in 1934 recovered, beneath the present floor, mosaics of the Constantinian building. The reconstructed plan shows a five-aisled basilica extended, to the east, by an octagonal choir raised exactly above the grotto: a circular opening in the centre of the pavement allowed pilgrims to see the holy grotto from the upper church. The whole architecture was ordered to a single point: the place of the birth.
The mosaic floor
Of this first basilica there remain above all panels of pavement mosaic, visible today beneath trapdoors set in the floor of Justinian's church: geometric interlacing, floral motifs, birds, in the 4th-century style. They are among the oldest Christian mosaics preserved in situ in the Holy Land.[16]
Justinian's basilica (6th century): the one we visit
The Samaritan revolt and the reconstruction
Constantine's basilica was gravely damaged in the 6th century, probably during the Samaritan revolts (529 or 556).[17] Emperor Justinian (527-565) — the builder of Hagia Sophia — then had it rebuilt from the ground up, larger and higher. It is this building, barely altered in its structure, that pilgrims enter today. Dendrochronological analysis of the roof timbers confirms this dating: the oldest elements lie between 545 and 665.[18]
The Church of the Nativity is thus the oldest intact church in the Holy Land: neither Persians, nor caliphs, nor earthquakes, nor wars ever razed it — a unique privilege distinguishing it from the Holy Sepulchre, destroyed and raised again several times.
The spared church: the Magi of 614
In 614, the Persian armies of Khosrow II ravaged Palestine, burned the Holy Sepulchre and massacred. Yet at Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity was spared. Tradition, reported from the Middle Ages onward, gives a striking reason: above the door, a mosaic depicted the Magi in Persian dress, wearing the Phrygian caps of the Zoroastrian priests; the Persian soldiers, recognising their countrymen, did not dare destroy the building.[19]
The episode, however embellished, states a historical truth: art saved the stone. An image of the faith disarmed the hand that destroyed. No other major church in the Holy Land crossed the Persian conquest without ruin.
The present building: nave, columns and roof frame
Justinian's basilica forms a long vessel 53.9 metres long by 26.2 metres wide, ending in a 35.8-metre transept and three trefoil apses.[20] The nave is carried by forty-four monolithic columns of pink Bethlehem limestone, crowned with white marble Corinthian capitals. The exposed roof frame, remade several times — larch in the 15th century, Anatolian oak in the 19th — covers one of the largest early-Christian spaces preserved in the world.[21]
What do pilgrims see today?
The Door of Humility
No one enters the Church of the Nativity standing upright. The original great door was walled up in stages: first reduced in Crusader times (the Gothic pointed arch can still be seen above), then lowered under the Ottomans to a tiny opening — 1.30 m high by 78 cm wide — to prevent entry on horseback or pillaging on pack animals.[22] This Door of Humility obliges every visitor, be he king or patriarch, to stoop to enter where God made himself small. What was a defensive measure has become the sanctuary's finest catechesis: the manger is approached only by lowering oneself.
The forty-four columns and the painted saints
Thirty of the forty-four columns bear frescoes of saints painted by the Crusaders in the 12th century: saints of East and West, sometimes accompanied by Latin and Greek inscriptions, witnesses to the era when Latins and Byzantines shared devotion of the place.[23] Effaced by time and candle smoke, they have reappeared since the recent restoration.
The Crusaders' golden mosaics (1167-1169)
Under the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, an exceptional programme covered the high walls of the nave with gold and glass. A preserved inscription dates the completion of the work to 1169 and names the artist, one Ephraim, working "in the reign of Emperor Manuel Komnenos, in the time of the great King of Jerusalem Amalric, and of Ralph, most holy Bishop of Bethlehem".[24] These mosaics, the fruit of a collaboration between the Byzantine Empire and the Crusader kingdom, depicted the councils of the Church and the ancestors of Christ, unfolding the Saviour's genealogy along the nave. One panel bears a bilingual Latin and Syriac inscription signed by an artist named Basil, a sign of workshops mingling East and West.[25]
The pavement of Constantine
In the middle of the nave, trapdoors open onto the pavement mosaics of Constantine's basilica, preserved a metre below the present floor: Justinian's basilica literally rests on the 4th-century one.
The Grotto of the Nativity
A stairway on either side of the choir descends to the heart of the sanctuary: the Grotto of the Nativity, a long cavern of about 12.3 m by 3.5 m, cut from the rock, hung with fabrics, lit by dozens of lamps.[26]
The silver star and the inscription
At the back of the grotto, beneath an altar, the precise place of the birth is marked by a fourteen-pointed silver star, sealed into the marble pavement. It bears the inscription:
"Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est." "Here, of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ was born."[27]
The fourteen points recall the three series of fourteen generations which, according to Matthew's genealogy (1:17), separate Abraham from David, David from the Exile, and the Exile from Christ. The star is pierced at its centre with an opening through which pilgrims can touch and kiss the rock itself. Around it, fifteen silver lamps burn day and night — six Greek, four Catholic, five Armenian: the sharing of the three communities is inscribed even in the light.[28]
The Altar of the Nativity and the Chapel of the Manger
The grotto holds two distinct centres of devotion, which give material form to Luke's account:
| Venerated place | What is honoured there | Community that serves it |
|---|---|---|
| Altar of the Nativity (above the star) | The place of Christ's birth | Greek Orthodox and Armenians |
| Chapel of the Manger ("ad Praesepe") | The spot where Mary laid the child in the manger | Latin Catholics (Franciscans) |
Facing the Manger stands the Altar of the Magi, where the Latins celebrate Mass.[29] A few metres from the Greek star, Catholics thus guard the memory of the manger properly speaking — the place of the crib — where a marble manger is still venerated.
The relics of the Crib in Rome
The grotto of Bethlehem is not the only place linked to the manger. According to an ancient Roman tradition, fragments of wood venerated as coming from the manger of the Nativity (the Sancta Culla) are kept in Rome, at St Mary Major, in the "crypt of the Crib". That is why this Roman basilica was nicknamed Sancta Maria ad Praesepe — "St Mary at the Manger". Bethlehem keeps the place; Rome keeps, it is said, the wood.
Saint Jerome at Bethlehem: the grotto of the Vulgate
Beneath the basilica, a network of grottos communicates with that of the Nativity. One of them is venerated as the cell of Saint Jerome.
Jerome, Paula and Eustochium
In 386, Saint Jerome, the greatest scholar of the Latin Church, left Rome and settled at Bethlehem, near the grotto. With the noble Roman lady Saint Paula and her daughter Eustochium, he founded monasteries there and a hospice for pilgrims. He would spend the last thirty-four years of his life there, until his death around 420.
Translating the Bible at the foot of the manger
It was there, a few steps from the manger, that Jerome accomplished his life's work: the translation of the Bible into Latin, the Vulgate, which would become for a thousand years the reference text of the Christian West. Working on the Word of God in the very place where "the Word became flesh" was in his eyes no coincidence. Describing Paula's pilgrimage to the grotto, he writes:
"She protested, in my presence, that she saw with the eyes of faith the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, wailing in the manger, the Magi adoring him, the star shining above." — Saint Jerome, Letter 108 (Epitaph of Saint Paula)[30]
Jerome regretted that the poverty of the manger had been covered with silver and gold, preferring to the gleam of precious metals the simplicity of the manger seen by the shepherds.
St Catherine's church and Midnight Mass
Adjoining the north flank of the basilica, St Catherine's church is Bethlehem's Catholic parish church, served by the Franciscans of the Custody. Neo-Gothic in style, modernised after the Second Vatican Council, it communicates with the Grotto of the Nativity by an interior stairway.[31]
It is from St Catherine's that Christmas Midnight Mass is celebrated and broadcast around the world, presided over by the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The statue of the Christ Child is carried there in procession to the grotto on the night of 24-25 December.[32] The adjoining cloister preserves a statue of Saint Jerome, his foot resting on a skull, in memory of the scholar of the Vulgate; in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI offered there a large bas-relief of the Tree of Jesse, sculpted by Czesław Dźwigaj.[33]
The three communities celebrate Christmas on three different dates, according to their calendars:
| Community | Calendar | Christmas date |
|---|---|---|
| Latin Catholics | Gregorian | 24-25 December |
| Greek Orthodox | Julian | 6-7 January |
| Armenian Apostolics | Own (Nativity + Baptism) | 18-19 January |
The regime of the sanctuary: Status Quo and tensions
Three communities under one roof
As at the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Nativity is governed by the Status Quo, that freezing of each community's rights fixed by the Ottoman firmans of 1757 and 1852, and recognised internationally by the Treaty of Paris (1856).[34] Three communities share the premises: the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate (which owns most of the building and the Altar of the Nativity), the Franciscan Custody (Latin Catholics, guardians of the Manger and of St Catherine's) and the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate; Copts and Syriacs hold minor rights there. Every altar, every lamp, every hour of procession is regulated to the letter.
The stolen star and the Crimean War
The Status Quo was not born of a spirit of peace, but of sometimes bloody conflicts. The most famous episode concerns precisely the silver star. Placed by the Franciscans in 1717, it disappeared in 1847 — removed, it was charged, by the Greeks. The quarrel over the guardianship of the Holy Places, opposing France (protector of the Catholics) to Russia (protector of the Orthodox), poisoned relations between Paris, Saint Petersburg and the Sublime Porte, and counts among the immediate causes of the Crimean War (1853-1856). The star was finally put back in place by the Ottoman government in 1853.[35] That a silver star in a grotto could weigh upon a European war says enough about the symbolic price of the place.
The siege of 2002 and the brawl of 2008
Recent history has known other trials. In April-May 2002, during the Second Intifada, some fifty armed Palestinians took refuge in the basilica to escape the Israeli army: the siege lasted thirty-nine days, religious included, without the sanctuary being stormed.[36] In 2008, during the Christmas cleaning, a brawl broke out between Greek and Armenian monks over the boundaries of their respective zones — a cruel image of the tensions the Status Quo seeks, for better or worse, to contain.
Restoration and recognition (2012-2019)
UNESCO 2012: first Palestinian site
On 29 June 2012, UNESCO inscribed "Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem" on the World Heritage list — the very first inscribed site of Palestine. The vote, by secret ballot, was carried by 13 votes to 6. Because of its worrying state of conservation, the site was simultaneously placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger.[37]
The Piacenti restoration and the rediscovered angel
A vast restoration campaign, conducted from 2013 by the Italian firm Piacenti S.p.A., saved the building: repair of the roof frame and roofing, consolidation of the walls, cleaning of the golden mosaics and painted columns. The works revealed, beneath layers of grime, a seventh mosaic angel hitherto invisible, rediscovered by the restorers in 2016.[38] The effort was rewarded: on 2 July 2019, UNESCO removed the basilica from the List of World Heritage in Danger, the danger being averted.[39]
The spiritual meaning: God in a manger
The abasement of God
The whole basilica converges on a scandal and a joy: the almighty God lying in a manger. The grotto of Bethlehem is the place where what Saint Paul calls the self-emptying of the Son was accomplished:
"He who was in the form of God... emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in human likeness." — Saint Paul, Philippians 2:6-7[40]
The manger is the first station of this abasement that would end at the Cross. The Fathers loved to bring together the grotto of the Nativity and the grotto of the tomb: Christ enters the world through a cavern and leaves it through another; he is born wrapped in swaddling clothes and dies wrapped in a shroud; he is laid in a stone manger and placed on a stone slab. The Nativity and the Resurrection answer each other from one grotto to the other. It is the mystery developed by the Incarnation: God did not merely come down towards man, he made himself one of them, and the smallest.
From the manger to the altar: Bethlehem and the Eucharist
The sign of the "house of bread" finds here its fulfilment. The child laid in the manger — where the food of animals is placed — is the one who would say: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven" (John 6:51).[41] The manger announces the altar; the grotto of Bethlehem announces the tabernacle. Every communion prolongs Bethlehem: the same Word who made himself small in the grotto makes himself small under the species of bread. To adore in the grotto is already to adore at Mass; and to adore at Mass is to return to Bethlehem.
Stooping to enter
There remains the lesson of the Door of Humility. The mystery of Bethlehem is contemplated only by lowering oneself, as one passes through the low door: head inclined, knee ready to bend. "Whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 14:11). The sanctuary says it in its stone before a word is spoken: before the manger, no one enters standing upright.
To go further
- The Church of the Holy Sepulchre — in Jerusalem, Calvary and the empty tomb beneath a single roof; the sister sanctuary of the Nativity in the Holy Land, from which the Christ who entered the world through a grotto leaves it through another.
- St Peter's Basilica in Rome — the other great apostolic sanctuary, raised over Peter's tomb.
- St Mary Major — in Rome, Sancta Maria ad Praesepe, which keeps the venerated relics of the Crib.
- How to explain the Incarnation simply? — the mystery the grotto makes visible: God made man.
- The Real Eucharistic Presence — how the manger of the "house of bread" announces the altar.
Notes and References
Star of the Nativity (converging sources: custodia.org, French/English Wikipedia): fourteen-pointed silver star sealed into the grotto floor beneath the Altar of the Nativity, inscription Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est, pierced at its centre to touch the rock; surrounded by fifteen silver lamps (six Greek, four Catholic, five Armenian); placed by the Franciscans in 1717, removed in 1847, which contributed to the tensions behind the Crimean War, then replaced by the Ottoman government in 1853.
1 27 28 35Micah 5:1 (liturgical numbering; 5:2 in some versions). Messianic oracle on Bethlehem Ephrathah, "the least of the clans of Judah". Quoted in Matthew 2:6.
2Gospel according to Saint Matthew 2:1-6 (liturgical translation). The Magi at Jerusalem; the scribes quote Micah to place the birth "in Bethlehem of Judea". Matthew 1:17: three series of fourteen generations (Abraham-David, David-Exile, Exile-Christ).
3Gospel according to Saint Luke 2:1-7 (liturgical translation of the Bible). Census of Augustus, Joseph's ascent "of the house and lineage of David" to Bethlehem, "the city of David"; birth and laying of the child "in a manger, because there was no room for them in the common room".
4 7Jean-François Lavère, Dictionnaire géographique de l'Évangile, d'après Maria Valtorta — Lieux, monuments, peuples, Éditions Maria Valtorta, 2017, p. 376: palace of David at Bethlehem called Birath-Arba, "old palace of the king", in ruins after the departure of the children of Judah into captivity, after F. E. Chassay as relayed by Lavère; mention by Maria Valtorta of a tower of David at Bethlehem; ancient sources cited by Lavère (Chassay, Sepp, Bynaeus, Midrash Rabba, Jerusalem Talmud Berachot 25b) to be audited; a documentary lead, not archaeological proof.
5Gospel according to Saint John 6:35,51 (liturgical translation). "I am the bread of life"; "I am the living bread which came down from heaven". Patristic parallel with Bethlehem ("house of bread") and the manger.
6 41Saint Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ch. 78 (c. 155-160). Justin, born at Flavia Neapolis (Nablus) in Samaria, martyred c. 165: Joseph, for lack of lodging in the village, "lodged in a certain cave near Bethlehem", where Mary gave birth to Christ and laid him in a manger. Text on newadvent.org (Church Fathers) and earlychristianwritings.com.
8Origen, Against Celsus (Contra Celsum), book I, ch. 51 (c. 248). "At Bethlehem they show the cave where he was born, and the manger in the cave where he was wrapped in swaddling clothes"; the place is "famous in those parts even among strangers to the faith". Testimony of a public veneration of the site from the 3rd century.
9Protoevangelium of James, ch. 18-19 (apocryphal, 2nd century). Places the birth of Christ in a grotto near Bethlehem; one of the oldest witnesses to the grotto tradition.
10Saint Jerome, Letter 58 to Paulinus of Nola, 3 (c. 395). Jerome reports that after Hadrian (135), a sacred grove of Tammuz-Adonis was planted above the Grotto of the Nativity, "in the cave where once the infant Christ wailed, they bewailed the lover of Venus". See also the Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent), "Bethlehem".
11Eusebius of Caesarea, Life of Constantine, III, 41-43 (Schaff translation / New Advent). Foundation by Saint Helena of a church "in memory of the birth of the Saviour" at Bethlehem, within the Constantinian programme of the Holy Places (Holy Sepulchre, Eleona, Nativity).
12Wikipedia (English), "Church of the Nativity": dedication of the Constantinian basilica on 31 May 339; destruction in the Samaritan revolts (529 or 556); reconstruction by Justinian (6th c.), dendrochronological dating of the timbers between 545 and 665; basilica spared in 614 by the Persians thanks to the mosaic of the Magi in Persian dress (commander Shahrbaraz); excavations of William Harvey (1934) and Constantinian mosaics; bas-relief of the Tree of Jesse (Czesław Dźwigaj) offered by Benedict XVI in 2009; Status Quo and Treaty of Paris (1856); siege of 2002.
13 16 17 18 19 33 34 36Itinerarium Burdigalense (Pilgrim of Bordeaux), 333. Oldest preserved Christian pilgrimage itinerary: notes at Bethlehem a basilica "built by order of Constantine", prior to the dedication of 339.
14Egeria (Etheria), Itinerarium Egeriae, c. 381-384. The pilgrim describes the vigils and liturgy celebrated at the grotto of Bethlehem; oldest detailed liturgical testimony of the Holy Land alongside the Holy Sepulchre.
15Wikipedia (French), "Basilique de la Nativité de Bethléem": dimensions (53.9 m × 26.2 m; transept 35.82 m); 44 columns of pink Bethlehem limestone with Corinthian capitals, 30 bearing Crusader frescoes of saints; Door of Humility (1.30 m × 0.78 m), Crusader Gothic pointed arch above; roof frame remade (larch in the 15th c., Anatolian oak in the 19th); grotto of 12.3 m × 3.5 m × 3 m lit by 53 lamps; 14-pointed star; restoration since December 2013 and removal from the List of World Heritage in Danger on 2 July 2019.
20 21 22 23 26 39Inscription of 1169 (recorded by historians of mosaics; medievalmosaics.com, database of medieval mosaics): work completed "in the reign of Emperor Manuel Komnenos, in the time of the great King of Jerusalem Amalric, and of Ralph, most holy Bishop of Bethlehem", by the artist Ephraim; works probably begun c. 1167; angel panel bearing a bilingual Latin and Syriac inscription signed by a painter named Basil. Mosaics restored by Piacenti S.p.A. (2015-2016).
24 25Custody of the Holy Land (custodia.org), "Bethlehem – Basilica of the Nativity": joint administration by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Custody of the Holy Land and the Armenian Patriarchate; star bearing the inscription Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est; silver star replaced by the Franciscans in 1717; to the right of the altar, place of the Manger and Altar of the Magi where the Latins celebrate Mass; St Catherine's church, 18th-c. statue of the Christ Child used for the solemnity of Christmas; Saint Jerome retired to Bethlehem to complete his translation of the Bible.
29 31 32Saint Jerome, Letter 108 (Epitaph of Saint Paula), c. 404. Account of Paula's pilgrimage to the grotto of Bethlehem: "she protested, in my presence, that she saw with the eyes of faith the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, wailing in the manger". Jerome, Paula and Eustochium founded monasteries and a hospice at Bethlehem (386).
30UNESCO, World Heritage Centre, "Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem" (ref. 1433), inscribed 29 June 2012 (criteria iv and vi), first site of Palestine, simultaneously inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger; vote carried 13 to 6.
37National Geographic, "In Bethlehem's Ancient Church, a Long Unseen Presence Appears": restoration of the mosaics and roof frame conducted by Piacenti S.p.A. from 2013; rediscovery in 2016 of a seventh mosaic angel hitherto invisible beneath soot deposits.
38Saint Paul, Letter to the Philippians 2:6-8 (liturgical translation). Hymn of self-emptying (kenosis): Christ "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant". Reference text for the spiritual reading of the manger as the first abasement.
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