In a picturesque valley dividing Israel’s parliament and government offices from Jerusalem’s ritzier areas, an ancient monastery nestles within a small nature reserve. Traces of hidden treasure, desperate struggle, and daring heroes are said to be found inside its walls

Jerusalem’s Monastery of the Cross had every excuse to blend quietly into the pastoral background at the far edge of the middle of nowhere, hidden among ancient olive trees in the valley that now bears its name. It didn’t, thanks largely to a persistent legend connecting the place with the lost treasures of the Temple (see “Temple Treasures,” p. XX). The monastery’s resulting fame wasn’t necessarily positive. Here’s the tale.

The Monastery of the Cross, built around a fourth-century Byzantine church. The nave and smaller rooms extending out from it are all that remain of the original building | Photo: Haggai Agmon-Snir

The Giving Tree

No one knows when the monastery was built, but some Christians swear it was already standing at the dawn of the Byzantine Empire, in the fourth century. Back then, their ancestors were looking to anchor their religious traditions in concrete places and objects – a quest that led to many sacred sites, including a lovely valley between sloping vineyards and plentiful olive groves.

In the heart of the valley, the believers chanced upon a miraculous hybrid of cedar, pine, and olive, surely the wondrous offshoot of three sprigs given – according to Christian lore – to Abraham by the three angels who warned him of Sodom’s impending doom (among other tidings). Abraham gifted the sprigs to his nephew Lot after the latter’s escape from the city. On a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Lot planted the three shoots as penitence for sinning with his two daughters. The three grew into one, which Lot watered daily, drawing from the River Jordan (even though it flows a good few dozen kilometers northeast of the spot).

Upon discovering the tree millennia later, the Byzantines swiftly hallowed the site with a church. Through a hole in the floor of the crypt, the earth that had nourished the exceptional growth could still be glimpsed.

“But not the tree?” you ask?

An illuminated page from The Knight in the Panther Skin | Courtesy of the Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts

Well, my friends, that brings us to the sad part of the story. In the first century, after thousands of peaceful years in the valley, Roman legionaries cut down the tree to make a crucifix, which they used to execute a Judean provocateur some called Jesus.

Of course, once Christianity became a world religion, its adherents could hardly leave such a seminal site unsupervised. Allegedly, in the mid-fourth century, Mirian III of Iberia – later known as Georgia – appeared in Jerusalem. This king kindly offered to mark the spot with what he fittingly called the Monastery of the Cross. (That’s its name in most languages, apart from Arabic and subsequently Hebrew, which adopted the more gruesome “Monastery of the Crucifixion.”)