Here’s a great story.

Archaeologists unearth 4th century church in Serbia

BELGRADE — Archaeologists have discovered a 4th century Christian church in southern Serbia, the Blic newspaper reported Tuesday.

“It’s an exceptional discovery,” Gordana Jeremic, the lead archaeologist at the Mediana site near the city of Nis, was quoted as saying.

The ruins were located only several meters (feet) from another church that was discovered in 2000, the paper reported.

The excavation also unearthed more than 600 objects including coins, jewels, utensils, and frescos.

“The discovery of a bronze ring decorated with a cross is particularly important because it proves that Christians lived here,” Jeremic said.

Mediana, once a Roman vacation resort, is located on the outskirts of Nis, the birthplace of Roman emperor Constantine The Great, which at the time was known as Niassus.

Here’s the latest on the discovery of Herod’s tomb, from Haaretz:

Archeologist: King Herod’s tomb desecrated, but discovery ‘high point’

The archeologist who located King Herod’s tomb at Herodium said Tuesday that the grave had been desecrated, apparently shortly after his death, but called the discovery a “high point.”

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Monday night that it has uncovered the grave and tomb of Herod, who ruled Judea for the Roman empire from circa 37 BCE.

Professor Ehud Netzer of the university’s Institute of Archaeology told reporters Tuesday that the tomb was discovered when a team of researchers found pieces of a limestone sarcophagus believed to belong to the ancient king.

Although there were no bones in the container, he said the sarcophagus’ location and ornate appearance indicated it was Herod’s.

“It’s a sarcophagus we don’t just see anywhere,” Netzer said. “It is something very special.”

Netzer led the team, though he said he was not on the site when the sarcophagus was found.

He said the sarcophagus had been smashed into pieces, most likely by someone seeking revenge on Herod during the great Jewish rebellion of 66-72 CE.

“The discovery of the grave is the high point in the excavation at the site,” said Netzer.

The professor, who is considered one of the leading experts on King Herod, has conducted archeological digs at Herodium since 1972 in an attempt to locate the grave and tomb.

The discovery solves one of Israel’s greatest archeological mysteries.

The majority of researchers had believed that Herod was in fact buried at Herodium, based on the writings of the ancient Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, but multiple excavations at the site failed to locate the grave.

Netzer’s successful dig focused on a different part of the site than previous excavations, between the upper part of Herodium and the site’s two palaces.

Herodium, a fortified palace built by Herod some 12 kilometers south of Jerusalem, was destroyed by the Romans in 71 CE.

Herod, whose father and grandfather converted to Judaism, was appointed governor of Galilee at the age of 25 and was made “King of the Jews” by the Roman senate in approximately 40 BCE. He remained king for around 34 years.

Herod, also known as Herod the Great, is credited with expanding the Second Temple and building Caesarea, Masada, and many other monumental construction projects. He died in the year 4 BCE in Jericho after a long illness.

Herod decided to construct his tomb at Herodium because the site played a role in two dramatic events in his life. In the year 43 BCE, when Herod was still governor of the Galilee, he was forced to flee Jerusalem along with his family after his enemies the Parthians laid siege to the city.

His mother’s chariot flipped over near Herodium, and Herod became hysterical until he realized she was only lightly wounded. A short while later, the Parthians caught up to Herod and his entourage, although Herod and his men emerged victorious in the ensuing battle.

At Herodium, Herod built one of the largest monarchical complexes in the Roman Empire, which served as a residential palace, a sanctuary, an administrative center and a mausoleum. Herod first built an artificial cone-shaped hill that could be seen from Jerusalem, on which he constructed a fortified palace surrounded by watchtowers that he used solely in wartime.

At the base of the hill, he built an additional palace, which was the size of a small town and known as “Lower Herodium.” The palace included many buildings, fancy gardens, pools, stables, and storage areas.

Herod spared no expense in an attempt to turn the site into a regional gem, bringing water from Solomon’s Pools and special soil to allow his gardens to blossom in the heart of the desert.

Following Herod’s death, his son and heir Archilaus continued to reside and Herodium. After Judea became a Roman province, the site served as a center for Roman prefects.

With the outbreak of the Great Revolt, Herodium was seized by the rebels, but then handed over without resistance to the Romans following the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Fifty years later, Herodium was also used by the rebels during the Bar Kokhva revolt, but was abandoned thereafter.

In the 5th century CE, the site was settled by Byzantine monks, and then served as a leper colony before being finally abandoned in the 7th century CE.

The first archeological dig at the site, between the years 1956 and 1962, was conducted by a Franciscan monk and revealed most of the currently-known remains. Israel began excavations at the site in 1972, several years after its capture during the Six-Day War.

Here’s St. John Chrysostom on Herod the Great:

The attempt to murder the child just born was not only an act of madness but also of extreme folly, since what had been said and done was enough to hold him back from any such attempt. For these were not merely natural or human occurrences … Nevertheless nothing restrained Herod. This is how wickedness works — it stumbles over its own greed, always attempting vain objectives. What utter folly!

There’s no resting place for the wicked. It seems that archeologists have found the tomb of King Herod “the Great.” Here’s the initial report from Reuters via ABC News:

An Israeli university has announced the discovery of the grave and tomb of Herod the Great, the Roman empire’s “king of the Jews”, in ancient Judea.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem said in a brief statement the discovery was made at Herodium, where Herod’s hilltop fortress palace once stood, some 12 kilometres from the holy city where he had rebuilt and expanded the Jewish Temple.

The university said it would give further details at a news conference later today.

The Gospel of Matthew says Herod ordered the ‘Massacre of the Innocents’, the killing of all young male children in Jesus’s birthplace of Bethlehem, out of fear he would lose his throne to a new “king of the Jews”, whose birth had been related to him by the Magi.

According to Matthew, Joseph and Mary fled with baby Jesus to Egypt to escape the slaughter.

The Roman Senate appointed Herod “king of the Jews” in approximately 40 BC.

According to the ancient Jewish historian Falavius Josephus, Herod died in 4 BC.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper says on its website that Herod’s tomb was discovered by Hebrew University professor Ehud Netzer, who has conducted archaeological digs at Herodium since 1972.

Don’t be scandalized by the claim that Herod may have died four years B.C. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t really around to harrass the Holy Family. The calculation of years B.C. and A.D. comes to us as the best guess of a fifth-century monk, Dennis the Little.

It will be interesting to see if, in a few years, Herod’s decorations can make the grand tour, as did those of Caiphas and Pilate last year. I wonder if he ever dreamed he could spend 2011 in Cleveland.

When the Fathers pondered Herod, they pondered the mystery of iniquity. Consider St. Peter Chrysologus:

What does this mean, that it was in the time of a very malevolent king that God descended to earth, divinity entered into flesh, a heavenly union occurred with an earthly body? What does this mean? How could it happen that a tyrant could then be driven out by one who was not a king, who would free his people, renew the face of the earth and restore freedom? Herod, an apostate, had wrongly invaded the kingdom of the Jews, taken away their liberty, profaned their holy places, disrupted the established order, abolished whatever there was of discipline and religious worship. It was fitting therefore that God’s own aid would come to succor that holy race without any human help. Rightly did God emancipate the race that no human hand could free. In just this way will Christ come again, to undo the antichrist, free the world, restore the original land of paradise.

I’ll try to keep up on news of the tomb. This one’s more interesting to me than the tomb of the alleged Christ family. As I find more news, I’ll find more Herodian moments from the Fathers.

The people of Armenia heard the Gospel rather early in history, and their land was the site of much activity during the patristic era. Armenian Christians knew persecution back then — and often again through the centuries since then. The International Herald Tribune can’t help but tell the story as it covers “Armenia Sacra,” an exhibit at the Louvre until May 21.

What mostly survives is the art of religion, the hard-core to which the persecuted cling and carry away if portable. Otherwise it is fragments collected from ruins. Hence the title … “Armenia Sacra” …

Armenia had a very long past when King Tiridate made it the first country where Christianity was declared the state religion around 313, when Byzantium only made its worship permissible…

[The influences of both eastern and western cultures are apparent in] the first art spawned by the advent of Christianity of which the earliest surviving fragments do not predate the 5th century A.D. However disparate these look stylistically, they mostly share a monumental quality and an austere gravity maintained even when startling irony creeps in. Figural art, sometimes rough, invariably explodes with vigor. On one capital of starkly geometrical shape from Dvin, a Virgin and Child carved in low relief stare hypnotically at the viewer. It has a Romanesque feel to it but is not later than the 5th or 6th century A.D.

The stem of a stone cross also from Dvin is topped by the head of Jesus in a style strangely reminiscent of the human masks found in early 1st millennium B.C. bronzes from Luristan, in western Iran.

This aesthetic diversity was maintained into the 7th century A.D. if the datings suggested by art historians are right.

Read on at IHT.

And see the little page at the Louvre’s site: “For the first time, the Louvre will present an exhibition devoted to Armenian Christian art, dating from Saint Gregory the Illuminator’s conversion of the country in the early 4th century to the dawn of the 19th century.”

“Gregory the Illuminator” — the name would have been perfect, really, for a character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger twenty years ago, in a movie with lots of special effects.