History
The earliest recording of a church commemorating Jesus' feeding of five thousand is by the Spanish pilgrim Egeria circa 380.
"Not far away from there (Capernaum) are some stone steps where the Lord stood. And in the same place by the sea is a grassy field with plenty of hay and many palm trees. By them are seven springs, each flowing strongly. And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and two fishes. In fact the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar. People who go there take away small pieces of the stone to bring them prosperity, and they are very effective. Past the walls of this church goes the public highway on which the Apostle Matthew had his place of custom. Near there on a mountain is a cave to which the Savior climbed and spoke the Beatitudes."
The church was significantly enlarged around the year 480 with floor mosaics also added at this time. These renovations are attributed to the patriarch Matryrios. In 614 Persians destroyed the original Byzantine church and the exact site of the shrine was lost for some 1,300 years. In 1888 the site was acquired by the German catholic society (Deutsche Katholische Palaestinamission) which was associated with the Archdiocese of Cologne. An initial archeological survey was conducted in 1892, with full excavations beginning in 1932. These excavations resulted in the discovery of mosaic floors from the 5th-century church, which was also found to be built on the foundations of a much smaller 4th-century chapel. The current church was built to the same floor plan as the 5th-century Byzantine church. Since 1939 it has been administered by the Benedictine order as a daughter-house of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem.
Read more about this topic: Church Of The Multiplication
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“America is, therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s history shall reveal itself. It is a land of desire for all those who are weary of the historical lumber-room of Old Europe.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“So in accepting the leading of the sentiments, it is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul, or the like, but the universal impulse to believe, that is the material circumstance, and is the principal fact in this history of the globe.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)