I will not trouble my readers with quotations from Scewelf (A.D. 1102), from Marinus Sanutus in the fourteenth century, from Andrichomius, and from De Vogue and Dr. Robinson in later times, to prove that this may be so. The fact that it is admitted by many modern geographers would be enough for the inhabitants of Khurbet Kâna or for the Greek Church, if they wished to revenge themselves upon their Catholic rivals. These latter have made another still more happy hit quite lately at Sefurieh, the ancient Sepphoris, distant about three miles from Khurbet Kâna, in reviving there an almost forgotten “holy place.” The merit of its discovery seems to rest with Saint Helena, who made a pilgrimage to Palestine in the fourth century, and to whose ardent piety, vivid imagination, and energetic exertions are due most of these traditional spots connected with the life of Christ which attract pilgrims to the Holy Land. On what authority she decided that a certain house in Sepphoris—called in those days Diocæsarea—had been the abode of Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Virgin, we are not told, nor how, upon descending into details, she was further enabled to identify the exact spot upon which the Virgin received the salutation of the angel; suffice it to say that the proofs were so convincing to her devout and august mind that she stamped it with her sanction, and a cathedral was afterwards erected upon it. In the course of centuries this edifice crumbled away, the site, curiously enough, became the manure and rubbish heap of the village, and under the mound thus formed was buried nearly all that remained of this ancient cathedral. Only the high arch of the middle aisle and the lower ones of the side aisles still testified to the modern tourist the ancient proportions of the edifice.
Within the last two years, however, it has occurred to the Franciscans to make excavations here, with the view of restoring the ancient cathedral and of renewing its fame as a holy place, for, to all good Catholics, it must ever be a matter of the deepest interest to see where the angel saluted the Virgin, and where her parents lived, and to press their lips to the ancient stones thus hallowed. Moreover, an influx of pilgrims to this point will have a threefold effect. It will bring money to the Franciscan treasury; it will probably be the means of converting the resident local population, who have been fanatic Moslems, but who, I was assured by my ecclesiastical informant, had benefited so much by the money already spent, that they were only deterred by fear, and by its not being quite enough, from declaring their conversion to Christianity to-morrow; and, thirdly, it would give the French government another holy place to protect. For it is by the manufacture and protection of holy places that republican France extends and consolidates her influence in these parts.