Gerasa

GERASA. - A Greco-Roman city in Transjordan, today Jerash, on the banks of the river Chrysorrhoas (Wadi Jerash), whence the name Antioch ad Chrysorrhoas, attested in epigraphy and numismatics, in honor of its founder Antiochus IV (198 B.C.).

Occupied by Alexander Jannaeus in 78, it was liberated in 63 by Pompey and became part of the Decapolis (Fl. Josephus, Bell. Jud., 80, 86-87, 104). From the province of Syria it passed in 106 A.D. to the province of Arabia, and in the period of the Antonines (117-80) it acquired new splendor in its extent and in the creation of monuments. To commemorate the visit of Hadrian, the triumphal arch was erected in 129-30, then the temples of Artemis (150) and of Zeus (163), the nymphaeum (191), the stoas, the theaters and the baths, which excavation work has in recent times restored to the admiration of scholars. It was one of the most important fortresses of the region and was garrisoned by the III Legio Cyrenaica.

The extent of its territory is not known; the reading - region of the Gerasenes - indicated by some Gospel manuscripts to the east of the lake of Gennesaret (Mk. 5:1; Lk. 8:25) certainly has in view another locality of the same name (Gergesenes), but not this city, which is more than 50 km from the lake.

The arrival of the Persians in 611 and then of the Muslims in 634 marked the end of G. In the 8th century there was still a Greco-Arab population, but afterward G. remained deserted. Baldwin II in 1121 destroyed the fortress of Togtekin, emir of Damascus. In 1878 a colony of Circassians settled there and founded the present village of Jerash.

Donato Baldi

ARCHAEOLOGY

The first reliable notice of a Christian community in G. is given by the presence of one of its bishops at the Council of Seleucia in 351. But the preaching of the Gospel must have penetrated there much earlier. Other known bishops are: Placcus (ca. 454), Claudius (ca. 464), Aeneas (ca. 495), Marianus (5th century or beginning of the 6th century), Paul (ca. 531), Anastasius (ca. mid-6th century), Genesius (ca. 611). Among the recognized churches: the largest and oldest Christian monumental complex of G. dominates the great colonnaded street, and it was reached through Roman propylaea, with a long flight of steps, toward which the Basilica turned its apse end, so that, in order to enter it, one had to pass along two side corridors. Opposite the entrance was the atrium with the sacred fountain which annually would have poured wine instead of water on the day of the Epiphany, the commemoration of the miracle of Cana. This church, 42.20 m long, is the only one whose date of foundation has not come down to us; only a restoration of it between 526 and 533 is known. Originally the area was occupied by a pagan temple, perhaps of Dionysus-Dusares, which collapsed in the 6th century, due to an earthquake: the Christians then built their Cathedral there, also making use of the material of the ruined building.

The church of St. Theodore, with three naves, of the end of the 5th century, was built on the site where there had previously been a cattle market described in a picturesque mosaic inscription, while another epigraph hails St. Theodore as the invincible wonder and the undivided support of the city and its inhabitants. In the northwest quarter another church, dated between 530-31, was built above a synagogue oriented in the opposite direction, adorned with scenes from the Old Testament, among which the best preserved are those of the flood, of the seven-branched candelabrum, of objects of worship, etc. The church of the diaconia, inaugurated in May 565, above a public building of 150 A.D. (v. DIA-

CONIA). The church of the Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs is cruciform, inspired by that of the Apostles erected by Justinian at Constantinople; the church of Procopius (526). Three churches side by side with entrances onto a single portico were built between 523-29 by the paramonarius Theodore, his wife Georgia and others, among them the tribune Daghisteus, mentioned by Procopius. From north to south they were dedicated to Sts. Cosmas and Damian, to St. John the Baptist and to St. George; the latter in use until the 8th century, if a hoard of coins of the Umayyads recovered there has probative value. The church of St. John the Baptist repeats, in reduced proportions, the cathedral of Bosra, a rotunda with radial niches. More intact in Sts. Cosmas and Damian, and partially destroyed in the figures in St. George by the iconoclasts, the mosaic pavement has instead almost disappeared in the center of St. John the Baptist, except for the beautiful inscription in front of the cancellum, while it preserves exedrae adorned with fantastic candelabra of the Hellenistic type, and, in the intervening sectors, representations of cities marked by their names (to the north Alexandria and the Pharos, to the left two other localities which Crowfoot identifies with Canopus and with the sanctuary of Sts. John and Cyrus at Menuthis; to the west Memphis); all localities that were seats of famous sanctuaries. A similar decoration, with the Pharos, Alexandria and Memphis, is found again, also in G., in the church of Sts. Peter and Paul, which, according to the inscription, was also to display precious ornaments in silver, in addition to the mosaics, of which it boasts the rich decoration. The preferred motifs, besides those already noted (and not only in G.: v. ARABIA) of famous holy places, are the figurations of the months and the seasons, portraits of donors in prayer, and reproductions of animals, birds and fish; the geometric motifs all go back to three schemes hinged on different combinations of rhombuses and polygons, the borders are often very rich and varied and suggest an exchange of motifs with the contemporary art of the carpet. A great quantity of lamps illuminated the interior of the churches; several were found in St. Theodore. There was no lack of jewels, fabrics and precious sacred furnishings, of which a glass chalice is remembered, bearing carved on it a great cross with equal arms worked in a grid pattern, with two stars above and, below, the hypocalistic letters, flanked by two lambs turning their backs to a tree.

Beside the churches have also been brought to light the remains of a house for the clergy, of a bath establishment for the faithful, adjoining St. Theodore, and even of a meeting hall for the singers. According to the date marked in its mosaic (for the first time the name of a month appears there in its Latin form), the last church built in G. would go back to ca. 611, at least in the present state of our knowledge, while Genesius was bishop, so that it is named after him; two or three years later the Persian occupation of the city began, lasting until 628, and with it its decline, catastrophically concluded with the severe earthquake of 18 January 746.

The excavations of G., besides having been the object of the normal activity of the Department of Antiquities of Transjordan, of which the Italian architect P. A. Ricci was a member until his death, were from 1928 to 1934 expanded by a scientific expedition resulting from an agreement between Yale University and the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. The study of the Christian monuments was devoted in particular to the director of the latter, Prof. J. W. Crowfoot, who was also its first editor. - See plate VI.

Renato Battocini