New Oxford Review July/August 2008
Pilgrimage to Meryem Ana Evi By Nan Rooksby Rohan
Nan Rooksby Rohan is the former Assistant Managing Editor of the NOR, a straw artist, and Editor of Straw Talk, the newsletter of the California Wheat Weavers Guild.
On a misty mid-January morning earlier this year, my husband, older son, and I were driven by our hotel host, Adem, southwest out of Selçuk, Turkey (pronounced "sell-chuck," about two miles from Ephesus), and up Bülbül Dag (Nightingale Mountain). Our destination was the House of Mother Mary, or Meryem Ana Evi as the Turks know it. As we rose higher and higher on the winding mountain road, views of the Aegean Sea on one side, and the agricultural town of Selçuk (reminiscent of small Irish towns with tractors chugging down the main street) on the other, alternately opened up before us. We could still see wisps of mist in the low-lying areas, but within minutes we were in full radiant sun.
In another few minutes we had completed the 5.6-mile journey, arriving in a wooded, park-like area. A large parking lot has been built to accommodate tour buses, but on this particular day, there were only a handful of cars. (January is the off-season.) We walked up the path, past the inevitable vendors of postcards, icons, and other holy items (profane items too), past the olive trees planted by priests of the Vincentian order, and the statue of Mary that greets visitors, and past the covered outdoor area adjacent to the house where Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI said Mass when they visited the site in 1979 and 2006, respectively (daily and Sunday Masses are regularly celebrated here).
LINK: Photos courtesy of Çakan Osman Tanidik
Dappled light from the surrounding trees filtered down upon the modest, honey-colored, stone-and-brick house adorned with a façade of three shallow arches. Standing there gazing at the house, and knowing that many factors had worked together to enable us to be present at that moment, I felt that a small miracle had occurred. With its lovely woods and many pine trees, the surrounding environs might have partly explained the profound peace I felt, but those physical characteristics could not completely account for my sense that I was standing on holy ground. The center of the three arches served as an entry way, so I went in.
Once inside, I was struck with the simplicity and elegance of this house-become-chapel. Sadly, for this shutterbug, photography is not allowed inside the chapel. On the positive side, I was released from involvement with a mechanical contrivance that can obscure or obstruct the real experience of being in a place. A lone nun was praying before the altar, and I too knelt to pray. (Because of the special status accorded to Mary in Islam, Muslims are often seen performing namaz -- prayer -- in this chapel, although none was present this day.) A soberness and peacefulness borne of gratitude overwhelmed me. The deep stillness I felt brought me close to tears, but few words came. How does one describe simultaneous joy and sorrow?
Making my way toward the altar, I found myself putting both my hands on some blackened stones on the inner walls. The chapel is actually two small rooms connected by a beautifully proportioned stone archway. This theme is echoed behind the altar with a rounded brick arch and niche framing the black statue of Mary on the altar, and by two small arched side niches. The statue on the altar has no hands, and I remember reading that it was found among the ruins when the house was discovered in 1891, disappearing twice, and reappearing after the house was returned to the Vincentians in 1931. I looked around for a candle to light, but did not see any. Turning right at the altar, I came to the only other room open to visitors, a cell-like room thought to have been where Mary slept. Immediately outside the exit door was a bank of candles protected from the wind by a clear enclosure. I have read that on August 26, 2006, a devastating fire swept this vicinity but came to a halt about a meter (less than three feet) from Meryem Ana Evi. I lit a candle in thanksgiving for blessings past and present, both those known and as yet unperceived.
Descending a short flight of steps to the terrace below, we came upon the sacred spring (ayazma -- the Turks have borrowed this word from the Greeks) whose water is said to be curative. Both Muslims and Christians visit this sacred spring. The water comes out from taps in the arches that have been built into the mountainside. Crutches and other limb supports have collected here. Just past the spring is a section of terrace wall, mounted with a metal grid upon which Turkish Muslim pilgrims have tied strips of cloth to represent prayers or petitions they hope will be answered. I was moved to see thousands of cloth strips tied to this grid.
So, what is the story of the House of Mother Mary? Donald Carroll has recounted it cogently in his book Mary's House (Veritas Books, London, 2000). Although the Church has made no official pronouncement, three popes have visited here, Paul VI (1967), John Paul II (1979), and Benedict XVI (2006). The most enigmatic question regarding Meryem Ana Evi is: How could the house of the Blessed Mother have gone undetected for almost 1,900 years? Nobody has the answer. A saying comes to mind (some say its origin is Portuguese, some say Spanish): God writes straight with crooked lines.
The story of its discovery begins with Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, a German stigmatic nun, who began experiencing visions of the life of Christ and of Mary in 1818, visions that continued off and on until her death in 1824. She was bedridden for all this time, and had never in her life left Germany. A German poet, Clemens von Brentano, visited her and began transcribing these voluminous visions, which were finally published in several volumes, fifty years later.
Sr. Emmerich wrote in The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, translated into English by Sir Michael Palairet (TAN Books, 1954):
"Mary did not live in Ephesus itself, but in the country near it where several women who were her close friends had settled. Mary's dwelling was on a hill to the left of the road from Jerusalem.... Narrow paths from Ephesus lead southwards to a hill near the top of which is an uneven plateau, some half-hour's journey.... It was on this plateau that the Jewish settlers made their home. It is a very lonely place, but has fertile and pleasant slopes as well as rock-caves, clean and dry and surrounded by patches of sand....
[St.] John had had a house built for the Blessed Virgin.... Christian families and holy women had already settled here, some in caves in the earth or in the rocks, fitted with light woodwork to make dwellings, and some in fragile huts or tents. They had come here to escape violent persecution.... Mary's house was the only one built of stone. A little way behind it was the summit of the rocky hill from which one could see over the trees and hills to Ephesus and the sea with its many islands....
Mary's house was built of rectangular stones, rounded or pointed at the back; the windows were high up near the flat roof. The house was divided into two compartments by the hearth in the center of it. The fireplace was on the floor opposite the door; it was sunk into the ground beside a wall which rose in steps on each side of it up to the ceiling.... The front part of the house was divided from the room behind the fireplace by light movable wicker screens on each side of the hearth. In this front part, the walls of which were rather rough and also blackened by smoke, I saw little cells on both sides, shut in by wicker screens fastened together. If this part of the house was needed as one room, these screens, which did not nearly reach to the ceiling, were taken apart and put aside. These cells were used as bedrooms for Mary's maidservant and for other women who came to visit her. To the right and left of the hearth, doors led into the back part of the house, which was darker than the front part and ended in a semi-circle or angle....
The Blessed Virgin lived here alone, with a younger woman, her maidservant, who fetched what little food they needed. They lived very quietly and in profound peace. There was no man in the house, but sometimes they were visited by an Apostle or disciple on his travels. There was one man whom I saw more often than others going in and out of the house; I always took him to be John.... He came and went in the course of his travels.... "
Sr. Emmerich goes on to describe a Way of the Cross paced out by Mary herself a little distance up the hill, which she followed every day (stones with Hebrew inscriptions were found during excavations); Sr. Emmerich also describes the circumstances of Mary's death and Assumption.
Her voluminous tomes were not bestsellers, but in 1880, the volume The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary came into the hands of a French abbot, Fr. Julien Gouyet, who was so intrigued that he traveled from Paris to Smyrna (now Izmir) to investigate. Encouraged by Archbishop André Timoni of Smyrna, he traveled to Ephesus (34 miles from Smyrna/Izmir), and found the ruins of an ancient house. His superiors, however, did not believe him, and the matter was dropped.
It wasn't until another decade had passed that the Emmerich/von Brentano book again came to light -- in the convent library of the sisters in charge of the French Hospital in Smyrna. Marie de Mandat Grancey, Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity, asked a visiting priest if he would read from a book of his choice after dinner. This priest, Fr. Eugène Poulin, a Vincentian (also known as Lazarist), was the Director of the French Sacred Heart College in Smyrna, and was opposed to any form of mysticism. He happened to pick up the Emmerich/von Brentano book, and, in spite of himself, became fascinated. Entering the story shortly thereafter was another Vincentian priest, Fr. M.H. Jung, a Hebrew scholar and professor of science at Sacred Heart College. He ridiculed Sr. Emmerich's visions, but ironically it was he who ended up leading an expedition to try to establish the truth of the existence, on the hill above Ephesus, of the house where Mary lived and died.
On July 29, 1891, Fr. Jung, accompanied by three companions -- another priest, a Greek friend, a luggage carrier, and a combination mountain guide/bodyguard (the area had a reputation for bandits and thieves) -- after one day's searching in the wrong place (having not paid attention to Sr. Emmerich's description), set out walking up Bülbül Dag (the hill above Ephesus). The group ran out of water and asked some women working in a tobacco field if they had water. The women said no, but pointed up the hill and said they thought there was a spring up at the "monastery." Within fifteen minutes they found the spring, and near it a ruined stone structure, open to the sky. Around it were some rickety huts, whose inhabitants gradually emerged once they determined that the visitors were not government officials.
Andreas, one of the hill-dwellers (these people were all Greek), told Fr. Jung and his party that he had built the huts with his helper, Yorgy; that he actually lived in the town of Sirinçe (pronounced "shirin-jeh") about ten miles away (five hours by foot over mountain paths); and that he and his family camped in this place during the tobacco-growing season. Andreas also said that these ruins had long ago been a monastery known as Panaghia-Capouli, or "The Gate of the All Holy." (In ancient Ottoman land registers, the land where Mary's house stands was listed as "The Three-Doored Monastery of the All Holy.") Andreas also told them that he and his fellow Christians from Sirinçe come annually to this site on pilgrimage during the octave of the Feast of Mary's Dormition, August 15. He had been coming there every year since he was five, and his father before him had come all his life. The Vincentian priests did some research among the residents of the area and confirmed the existence of a centuries-old devotion that recognized in the ruined chapel the place of the last residence of Meryem Ana, Mother Mary.
This land, once known as Asia Minor, was all Greek for centuries, and predominantly Christian from the fourth to the twelfth century. When, in the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks invaded Aegean Turkey, including the area around Selçuk, the Christians fled up into the mountains and established the town of Sirinçe. Andreas and Yorgy were descendants of these Christians.
It gradually dawned on Fr. Jung that the ruins they had discovered conformed almost exactly to Sr. Emmerich's description of Mary's house. When Fr. Poulin heard of the discovery, he too wanted to go and see for himself. There were a few more expeditions, and much investigation. Excavations indicated that, although the walls of the ruined monastery were of seventh century origin, the foundations dated from much earlier, as early as the first century -- that is, from Mary's time. To preserve the house, the Vincentians decided to try to buy the land. Back in Smyrna, Mother Grancey offered her personal inheritance to buy the land. It took a while to find the owner, and he stalled for a long time, but eventually the purchase was successful.
The Turkish government confiscated the property during World War I, and subsequent to that, the country was in great upheaval as Kemal Atatürk led a revolt against the Ottomans, and a mammoth Turkish and Greek population exchange took place. Few cared about an obscure shrine, but the Vincentians patiently petitioned for the return of their property on Bülbül Dag (Mother Grancey had in 1910 signed over the property to Fr. Poulin, who then signed it over to the order). Finally, in 1931, the Turkish court ruled in the Vincentians' favor. Nevertheless, Mary's house remained essentially hidden from the world until 1950, when Pope Pius XII issued his apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus, which proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven. Within months, the Pope declared Mary's house an official shrine for Catholic pilgrims.
The afternoon prior to our visit to Meryem Ana Evi was spent exploring the ruins of the Basilica of St. John on Ayasolek Hill within the town of Selçuk. St. John wrote his Gospel here and died here. Past excavations of the basilica site have brought to light the existence of five tombs, placed in a cross formation around the grave of St. John. For the early Church, this indicated a place of pilgrimage. Emperor Justinian, who had built that greatest church of Christendom -- St. Sophia, Church of Holy Wisdom, in Constantinople -- cleared the ruins of a smaller church (earthquakes and plagues regularly struck this area), and in the 500s had a basilica built on this spot. What we saw were the ruins of this basilica. One of the arguments in favor of Mary coming to Ephesus with John is that Jesus entrusted Mary to him (and John to Mary) from the cross. It seems unlikely that John would have left her in Jerusalem, where persecution of Jesus' followers was rampant. Ephesus was then the capital of Asia Minor, so it was a natural base for proselytizing.
Another argument in favor of Mary's living in Ephesus is that the first church dedicated to her is here: the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, also known as the Council Church, in honor of the Third Council of Ephesus, which was held here in A.D. 431. (In fact, all seven of the great councils of the early Church -- recognized by both Eastern and Western Christianity -- were held within the borders of what is now Turkey.) In the early days of the Church, places of worship were only dedicated to persons who had lived or died in the locality. At the Third Council, Mary was declared to be the Mother of God (Theotokos -- "God-bearer" in Greek). Since 1895 the Austrian Archeological Institute has overseen the research concerning the Council Church, as well as several other local sites. Evidence suggests that the Council Church, which served as a cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of Ephesus throughout late antiquity, was built on the ruins of an earlier Roman basilica-like building that was abandoned around the third century. Archeological finds include coins with a date range of A.D. 364-426.
Ephesus itself is a living history lesson, and features the Odeon, Curetes Street, the Temple of Hadrian, the much-photographed Celsus Library, and the Grand Theater. Seated in the arena, the biblical passage from Acts 19:23-40 came alive for us. St. Paul had reprimanded the Ephesians for making graven images. Irate about this reprimand, a silversmith named Demetrios instigated the Riot of the Silversmiths (who made their living making images of Artemis). Paul barely escaped with his life. Artemis's great temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and four times larger than the Parthenon in Athens, was situated here, a mile or so outside the city gates. Harbor Road, the grand ceremonial entrance to the city from the harbor, silted up over the centuries, with the result that Ephesus lost its importance, and the town moved inland to become Ayasoluk, now Selçuk.
My foremost sense during our visit to this history-saturated part of the world was of my own ignorance. God willing (and with a bit more study), I would return to Turkey in a heartbeat. Though there are reports of Islamic violence against Christians, who now make up less than one percent of the population (religious freedom is guaranteed in the Turkish Constitution), I felt safe at all times, largely due to the warmth and hospitality of the Turkish people with whom we came into contact -- except the carpet touts! Considering the reverence that both Christianity and Islam give to Mother Mary -- she is mentioned about thirty times in the Koran and is the only woman mentioned by name, and the virgin birth of Jesus is fully acknowledged by Islam -- what better bridge between us could there be? As Pope Benedict XVI prayed in 2006 at the end of his homily during his Mass at Meryem Ana Evi, "Aziz Meryem Mesih'in Annesi bizum için Dua et" -- "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!"
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