A monastic life leads to indolence and contention, and the Greek and Latin monks of Jerusalem are ignorant and idle, domineering and quarrelsome, and unworthy representatives of the Christian name. No one familiar with their character and devotion can regard them as the true successors of the apostles, or that the faithful missionary spirit underlies their zeal for temporal and spiritual conquest. It is the ancient love of power, and the perpetuation of the controversy which rent the Church of God in the ninth century. Watching the movements of each other with a jealousy as persistent as it is revengeful, their rivalries engender bitter contentions, which, culminating in a quarrel and a riot, the infidel Turk is compelled to suppress by force of arms. By a conventional arrangement, they visit in procession the sacred shrines in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at stated hours on ordinary days, and also on festival occasions. The Greeks have the precedence, and the Latins follow. Occasionally their festivals occur on the same day and at the same hour, when their sectarian virulence gaining the mastery of their piety and reason, they aim to silence each other by louder vocal and instrumental sounds. Such was the case on Easter Sunday. Though not their Easter, it was a high day with the Greeks. As in all basilicas, a broad aisle encircles the interior of the church, serving as a path for the march of the procession. The chapel of the Latins opens into this aisle on the west, and at that time they were intoning the Easter service. Attired in their most gorgeous robes, and followed by an immense concourse of people, the Greeks had made the circuit of the church, and, turning their faces toward the open chapel of the Latins, chanted a barbaric hymn with such force that for a moment the Catholics were unable to proceed. Fortunately, the organist came to the rescue of his bishop, and, opening the stops of his magnificent organ, so thundered with his instrument as to compel the Greeks to beat a retreat.
With all their admiration for the Church of St. Helena, their mutual jealousies are allowing the building to fall to ruin for the want of timely repairs. The rain, beating in through the circular aperture in the dome, has so far detached the plastering as to leave the lathing exposed. After every storm large quantities of the plaster fall, and, while present on one occasion, a piece fell to the injury of a personal friend. Supposing it would be a concession of the right of possession to allow either sect to repair the dome and save the church from ruin, both parties refuse to do it conjointly, and neither will allow the other to do it separately.