page_title: Jerusalem in Christianity
section_title: Early Christianity
hierarchical_section_title: Jerusalem in Christianity / Early Christianity
caption_attribution_description: English: Jerusalem, Church of the Holy Sepulchre Français&#160;: Jérusalem, Église du Saint-Sépulcre, Basilique de la Résurrection Deutsch: Jerusalem, Grabeskirche
context_page_description: Jerusalem's role in first-century Christianity, during the ministry of Jesus and the Apostolic Age, as recorded in the New Testament, gives it great importance.
context_section_description: The exclusion of Jews from the new city of Aelia Capitolina meant that gentile bishops were appointed under the authority of the Metropolitans of Caesarea and, ultimately, the Patriarchs of Antioch. The general significance of Jerusalem to Christians outside the Holy Land entered a period of decline during the Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire but resumed again c.325 when Emperor Constantine I and his mother, Helena, endowed Jerusalem with churches and shrines, making it the foremost centre of Christian pilgrimage, see also Constantine I and Christianity. Helena is remembered as the patron saint of archaeologists and (according to the church historian Socrates of Constantinople) claimed to have found (with the assistance of Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem) the True Cross, after removing a temple to Venus that had been built over the site. Jerusalem received special recognition in Canon VII of Nicaea in 325, without yet becoming a metropolitan see. The traditional founding date for the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre (which guards the Christian holy places in the Holy Land) is 313 which corresponds with the date of the Edict of Milan which legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 raised the Bishop of Jerusalem to the rank of patriarch, together with Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch. However, Byzantine politics meant that Jerusalem simply passed from the Syrian jurisdiction of Antioch to the Greek authorities in Constantinople. For centuries, Greek clergy dominated the Jerusalem church. Meanwhile, the Roman church never accepted the Pentarchy and instead claimed primacy, see Papal supremacy and East–West Schism. On the other hand, ancient notion of the primacy of the Church of Jerusalem was preserved in several texts, like the early medieval list known as the "Limits of the Five Patriarchates" (Greek: Γνώσις και επίγνωσις των πατριαρχών θρόνων).
caption: Main entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
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