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This book explores the graphic symphony – if not cacophony – in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Slavic, and Rus scripts, made by pilgrims and travellers as well as the authorities and the different religious communities over the centuries in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is an exceptional epigraphic site. A major restoration campaign (2013–2020) and the recent bibliography dedicated to the building allow us to question hundreds of inscriptions and graffiti which appear on the mosaics, paintings, and walls of this shrine built on the presumed birthplace of Christ. The site exhibits a graphic symphony—if not cacophony—in Latin, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Slavic, and Rus scripts, made by pilgrims and travellers as well as the authorities and the different religious communities over the centuries.

The goal of this book, which gathers epigraphists from different backgrounds, as well as historians, art historians, and restorers, is to approach those writings from a variety of perspectives. Which typologies of graphic acts are uncovered and can we escape from the labels ‘graffiti’ and ‘inscriptions’? What purpose do they serve? With which materials and using which techniques where they created, and by whom? Where were they located in the complex of the Church, which includes the caves, the cloister, and the monastic buildings?

This study explores the stratigraphy of the writings and offers several plans detailing their distribution, revealing a new chapter in the history of the building, in its use by pilgrims. It highlights the various actors in epigraphic communication and the interactions between these graphic acts in the different writings and languages. All these inscriptions and graffiti enable us to build a comprehensive picture of the rich heritage offered by this unique holy site.

Table of contents

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Estelle Ingrand-Varenne is a CNRS researcher at CESCM (Poitiers), expert in medieval epigraphy, and the principal investigator of the ERC GRAPH-EAST Her personal research focuses on the inscriptions of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Clément Dussart is a post-doctoral fellow attached to the ERC GRAPH-EAST project, in charge of the study of Latin graffiti in Egypt in the Middle Ages, after a PhD thesis on pilgrim graffiti in the Holy Land

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