Holy Fire

Holy Fire, flame lit at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday, the Saturday before Easter, as calculated according to the Julian calendar. The paschal ritual takes place annually in Jerusalem, where it is conducted by the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem with the participation of the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem. The day of the ritual is referred to as Sabt al-Nūr (“Saturday of Light”) in Arabic, the primary language of the local Christian community.

Ceremony of the Holy Fire

On the afternoon of that Saturday, the Greek and Armenian hierarchs enter alone into the Edicule, which encloses the tomb in which Jesus was said to have been buried. The Edicule is then closed while the Greek patriarch kneels and prays inside. After some time, a glimmer of light flickers from inside the Edicule, followed moments later by the emergence of the patriarch with a bundle of candles that bear a flame in each hand. The patriarch then blesses the crowd before the flame is rapidly (and at times chaotically) distributed. The event bears similarities to the midnight lighting of the paschal candle in the Eastern Orthodox liturgical tradition.

Delegations representing Eastern Orthodox countries carry the flame that same day to their home countries, where it is presented in cathedrals in time for the Easter service. It is also carried locally to cities in the West Bank and Israel with sizable Christian communities—such as Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nazareth—where crowds gather with fanfare in the city centres to receive the flame.

Claims of miraculous origin

Many celebrants over the centuries have attributed the lighting of the candles to a spontaneous spark that descends miraculously from heaven, a belief affirmed by many Eastern Orthodox Christians today. That interpretation is perpetuated by the theatrics of the event, which include the searching of the patriarch by civil authorities to demonstrate to observers that he is not carrying any means of combustion into the Edicule. Popular belief in the miraculous nature of the event stirred considerable controversy by the turn of the 11th century and may have been the reason al-Ḥākim bi-Amr Allāh, the Fatimid caliph, ordered the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009. In 1100, months after the Crusaders arrived in Jerusalem and took control of the church, the Latin patriarch Daimbert led the ceremony but was unable to obtain the Holy Fire through miraculous means. The Holy Fire subsequently became a tool of polemic between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic clergy, and in 1238 Pope Gregory IX issued a papal bull denouncing the ritual as a fraud and forbidding the participation of Roman Catholic clergy in it.